mp commandant who roughly stripped us of
all our clothes except our breeches and gave us the Bolshevik underwear
and ragged outer garments that they had discarded. And buddies who have
seen Bolo prisoners come into our lines can imagine how bad a discarded
Bolo coat or undershirt must be. After this we were locked up in a box
car with no fire and three guards over us.

"Next morning, April 3rd, the car door was opened and the Bolshevik
soldiers made angry demonstrations toward us and were kept out only by
our guards' bayonets. We were fed some barley wash and the rye bread
which tasted wonderful after the previous food. I paid a British
two-shilling piece which I had concealed in my shoe to a guard to get me
a tin to put our food in, and we made wooden spoons. That night we were
lined up against the car and asked if we knew that we were going to be
shot. But this event, I am happy to say, never took place. We went by
train to Plesetskaya that day. Father Roach was taken to the
commandant's quarters and we did not see him till the next day, when he
told us he had enjoyed a fine night's sleep and expected to be sent back
across the lines and would take messages to our comrades to let them
know we were alive and on our way to Moscow."

It is interesting to note that the American Sergeant's insistence that
he and his companions be given bath and means to shave, won the respect
and assistance of the guard and the Bolshevik officer. Of course in
making the two day's march in prisoner convoy from Bolsheozerki to Emtsa
there had been severe hardship and privation and painful uncertainty and
mental agony over their possible fate. And they had not stopped long
enough in one place to enable them to make an appeal for fair treatment.

Imagine the three American soldiers and the "Y" man and the two British
soldiers sitting disconsolately in a filthy taplooshka, hands and faces
with three days and nights of grime and dirt, scratching themselves
under their dirty rags, cussing the active cooties that had come with
the shirts, and trying to soothe their itching bewhiskered faces. Here
the resourceful old sergeant keenly picked out the cleanest one of the
guards and approached him with signs and his limited Russki gavareet and
made his protest at being left dirty. He won out. The soldier horoshawed
several times and seechassed away to return a few minutes later with a
long Russian blade and a tiny green cake of soap and a tin of hot wa