e. The
inhabitants were given three hours to vacate. It was a pitiful sight to
see them turned out of the dwellings where most of them had spent their
whole simple, not unhappy lives, their meagre possessions scattered awry
upon the ground.

The first snow floated down from a dark foreboding sky, dread announcer
of a cruel Arctic winter. Soon the houses were roaring flames. The women
sat upon hand-fashioned crates wherein were all their most prized
household goods, and abandoned themselves to a paroxysm of weeping
despair, while the children shrieked stridently, victim of all the
realistic horrors that only childhood can conjure. Most of the men
looked on in silence, uncomprehending resignation on their faces, mute,
pathetic figures. Poor moujiks! They didn't understand, but they took
all uncomplainingly. Nitchevoo, fate had decreed that they should suffer
this burden, and so they accepted it without question.

But when we thought of the brave chaps whose lives had been taken from
those flaming homes, for our casualties had been very heavy, nearly one
hundred men killed and wounded, we stifled our compassion and looked on
the blazing scene as a jubilant bonfire. All night long the burning
village was red against the black sky, and in the morning where had
stood Upper Toulgas was now a smoking, dirty smudge upon the plain.

We took many prisoners in this second fight of Toulgas. It was a trick
of the Bolos to sham death until a searching party, bent on examining
the bodies for information, would approach them, when suddenly they
would spring to life and deliver themselves up. These said that only by
this method could they escape the tyranny of the Bolsheviki. They
declared that never had they any sympathy with the Soviet cause. They
didn't understand it. They had been forced into the Red Army at the
point of a gun, and were kept in it by the same persuasive argument.
Others said they had joined the Bolshevik military forces to escape
starvation.

There was only one of the thirty prisoners who admitted being an ardent
follower of the cause, and a believer in the Soviet articles of
political doctrine, and this was an admission that took a great deal of
courage, for it was instilled universally in the Bolos that we showed no
mercy, and if they fell into the hands of the cruel Angliskis and
Americanskis there was nothing but a hideous death for them.

Of course our High Command had tried to feed our troops the same kind