e up the North Sea and across the Arctic Ocean, zig-zagging day
and night for fear of the submarines, rounding the North Cape far toward
the pole where the summer sun at midnight scarcely set below the
northwestern horizon, was uneventful save for the occasional alarm of a
floating mine and for the dreadful outbreak of Spanish "flu" on board
the ships. On board one of the ships the supply of yeast ran out and
breadless days stared the soldiers in the face till a resourceful army
cook cudgelled up recollections of seeing his mother use drainings from
the potato kettle in making her bread. Then he put the lightening once
more into the dough. And the boys will remember also the frigid breezes
of the Arctic that made them wish for their overcoats which by order had
been packed in their barrack bags, stowed deep down in the hold of the
ships. And this suffering from the cold as they crossed the Arctic
circle was a foretaste of what they were to be up against in the long
months to come in North Russia.

We had thought to touch the Murmansk coast on our way to Archangel, but
as we zig-zagged through the white-capped Arctic waves we picked up a
wireless from the authorities in command at Archangel which ordered the
American troopships to hasten on at full speed. The handful of American
sailors from the "Olympia," the crippled category men from England and
the little battalion of French troops, which had boldly driven the Red
Guards from Archangel and pursued them up the Dvina and up the
Archangel-Vologda Railway, were threatened with extermination. The Reds
had gathered forces and turned savagely upon them.

So we sped up into the White Sea and into the winding channels of the
broad Dvina. For miles and miles we passed along the shores dotted with
fishing villages and with great lumber camps. The distant domes of the
cathedrals in Archangel came nearer and nearer. At last the water front
of that great lumber port of old Peter the Great lay before us strange
and picturesque. We dropped anchor at 10:00 a. m. on the fourth day of
September, 1918. The anchor chains ran out with a cautious rattle. We
swung on the swift current of the Dvina, studied the shoreline and the
skyline of the city of Archangel, saw the Allied cruisers, bulldogs of
the sea, and turned our eyes southward toward the boundless pine forest
where our American and Allied forces were somewhere beset by the
Bolsheviki, or we turned our eyes northward and westward wh