rotsky's Northern Army staff
quickly seized the opportunity to tell the Allied troops in North Russia
that the war was over and asked us what we were fighting for. They did
it cleverly, as will be told elsewhere. Yet the doughboy only swore
softly and shined his rifle barrel. He could not get information
straight from home. He was sore. But why fret? His best answer was the
philosophic "We're here because we're here" and he went on building
blockhouses and preparing to do his best to save his life in the
inevitable winter campaign which began (we may say) about the time of
the great world war Armistice Day, which in North Russia did not mean
cease firing.

Before passing to the story of the dark winter's fighting we must notice
one remaining unit of the American forces, hitherto only mentioned. It
is the unit that after doing tedious guard duty in Archangel and its
suburbs for a couple of months, all the while listening impatiently to
stories of adventure and hardship and heroism filtering in from the
fronts and the highly imaginative stories of impending enemy smashes and
atrocities rumoring in from those same fronts and gaining color and
tragic proportions in the mouth-to-mouth transit, that unit "F" Company,
the prize drill company of Camp Custer in its young life, now on October
30th found itself on a slow-going barge en route to Yemetskoe, one
hundred and twenty-five versts, as the side wheeler wheezed up the
meandering old Dvina River.

There in the last days of the fall season this company of Americans took
over the duty of patrolling constantly the line of communications and
all trails leading into it so that no wandering force of Red Guards
should capture any of the numerous supply trains bound south with food,
powder and comforts--such as they were--for the Americans and Allied
forces far south on the Dvina and Vaga fronts.

It was highly important work admirably done by this outfit commanded by
Captain Ralph Ramsay. Any slackening of alertness might have resulted
disastrously to their regimental comrades away south, and while this
outfit was the last of the 339th to go into active field service it may
be said in passing that in the spring it was the last unit to come away
from the fighting front in June, and came with a gallant record, story
of which will appear later. Winter blizzards found the outfit broken
into trusty detachments scattered all the way from Kholmogori, ninety
versts north of Yemetskoe, t