cinders from his neck, which the Russki locomotive floated back to him.
And many a time we were moved to bless him when his guns far in our rear
spoke cheeringly to our ears as they sent whining shells curving over us
to fall upon the enemy. It is no discredit to say that many a time the
doughboy's eye was filled with a glistening drop of emotion when his own
artillery had sprung to action and sent that first booming retort. And
some of those moments are bound in memory with the blue-coated figure of
the gallant Commander Young.

The Russian Army of the North was non-existent when the Allies landed.
All the soldiery previously in evidence had moved southward with the
last of the lootings of Archangel and joined the armies of the soviet at
Vologda, or were forming up the rear guard to dispute the entrance of
the Allies to North Russia. The Allied Supreme Command in North Russia,
true to its dream of raising over night a million men opened recruiting
offices in Archangel and various outlying points, thinking that the
population would rally to the banners (and the ration carts) in droves.
But the large number of British officers waited in vain for months and
months for the pupils to arrive to learn all over the arts of war. At
last after six months two thousand five hundred recruits had been
assembled by dint of advertising and coaxing and pressure. They were
called the Slavo-British Allied Legion, S. B. A. L. for short.

These Slavo-Brits as they were called never distinguished themselves
except in the slow goose step--much admired by Colonel Stewart, who
pointed them out to one of his captains as wonders of precision, and
also distinguished themselves in eating. They failed several times under
fire, once they caused a riffle of real excitement in Archangel when
they started a mutiny, and finally they were used chiefly as labor units
and as valets and batmen for officers and horses. They were charged with
having a mutinous spirit and with plotting to go over to the Bolsheviks.
They did in small numbers at times. It is interesting to note that they
were trained under British officers who enlisted them from among
renegades, prisoners and deserters from ranks of the Bolsheviks,
refugees and hungry willies, and, that once enlisted they were not fed
the standard British ration of food or tobacco, the which they held as a
grievance. It never made the American soldier feel comfortable to see
the prisoners he had taken in action