m
Shenkursk with an ambulance, and a Bolo three-inch shell hurled through
the log wall and decapitated the luckless supply man. In the hasty
retreat the hospital men, like the infantry men, had to abandon
everything but the clothes and equipment on their backs.

During the holding retreat of the 1st Battalion of the Vaga a small
hospital was established temporarily at Kitsa.

Later during the slowing up of the retreat, hospitals were opened at Ust
Vaga and Osinova. Here this section stayed. The other section had been
at Beresnik all the time. During the latter days of the campaign the
field hospital company took over the river front field medical duties so
that the medical detachments of the 339th and the detachments of the
337th Ambulance Company could be assembled for evacuation at Archangel.
And the 337th Field Hospital Company itself was assembled at Archangel
June 13th and sailed June 15th. Their work had for the most part been
under great strain in the long forest and river campaign, always seeing
the seamy side of the war and lacking the frequent changes of scenery
and the blood-stirring combats which the doughboy encountered. It took
strong qualities of heart and nerve to be a field hospital man, or an
ambulance or medical man.

XXVII

SIGNAL PLATOON WINS COMMENDATION

Learning Wireless In A Few Weeks--Sterling Work Of Field Buzzers--With
Assaulting Columns--Wires Repaired Under Shell Fire--General Ironside's
Commendatory Official Citation.

In the North Russian Expedition the doughboy had to learn to do most
anything that was needful. A sergeant, two corporals and four men of the
Headquarters Company Signal Platoon actually in four months time
mastered the mysteries of wireless telegraphy. This is usually a year's
course in any technical school. But these men were forced by necessity
to learn how to receive and to send messages in a few weeks' time.

They were trained at first for a few days at Tundra, the wireless
station used by the British and French for intercepting messages. Later
at Obozerskaya and at Verst 455 they gained experience that made them
expert in picking messages out of the air. At one time the writer was
shown a message which was intercepted passing from London to Bagdad. It
was no uncommon thing for a doughboy to intercept messages from Egypt or
Mesopotamia and other parts of the Mediterranean world, from Red Moscow,
Socialist Berlin, starving Vienna and from London.

At one pe