in the background.]
ROZANSKEY
Making "Khleba"--Black Bread

[Illustration: Three soldiers in front of a reinforced log shed, covered
with snow.]
WAGNER
Stout Defense of Kitsa

Needless to say, these troops were at their best when they were in
active work on the lines. Rest camp and security from attack quickly
reduced their morale. And the next time they were sent up to the forward
posts they were likely to prove undependable.

In doing the ordinary drudgery of camp life the Russian soldier as the
doughboy saw him was very unsatisfactory. Many a Yank has itched to get
his hands on the Russian Archangelite soldier, especially some of our
hard old sergeants who wanted to put them on police and scavenger
details to see them work. In this reluctance to work, their refusal
sometimes even when the doughboy pitched into the hateful job and set
them a good example, they were only like the civilian males whose
aversion to certain kinds of work has been mentioned before. When some
extensive piece of work had to be done for the Allies like policing a
town, that is, cleaning it up for sake of health of the soldiers or
smoothing off a landing place for airplanes, it was a problem to get the
labor.

In the erection of large buildings or bridges the Russian man's axe and
saw and mallet and plane worked swiftly and skillfully and unceasingly
and willingly. Those tools were to him as playthings. Not so with an
American-made long-handled shovel in his hands. Then it was necessary to
hire both women and men. The men thought they themselves were earning
their pay, but as the women in Russia do most of the back-breaking,
stooping work anyway, they just caught on to those American shovels and
to the astonishment of the American doughboy who superintended the work
they did twice as much as the men for just half the pay and with half
the bossing.

It is not a matter of false pride on the part of the Slavic male that
keeps him from vying with his better half in doing praiseworthy work. It
is lack of education. He has never learned. He is so constituted that he
cannot learn quickly. He will work himself to exhaustion day after day
in raising a house, cradling grain, playing an accordeon, or performing
a folk dance. His earliest known ancestors did those things with fervor
and it is doubtful if the modus operandi has changed much since the
beginning, since Adam was a Russian.

The "H" Company boys could tell you stories of the Chine