oors.]
LANMAN
Soldiers and Sailors of Six Nations Reverence Dead

[Illustration: Three rough wooden crosses in the foreground. A huge pile
of logs in the background.]
U, S. OFFICIAL PHOTO
Graves of First Three Americans Killed Fighting Bolsheviki--Obozerskaya,
Russia

[Illustration: Parade on a city street.]
LANMAN
Sailors Parade on Memorial Day, Archangel

[Illustration: Ship surrounded by ice.]
LANMAN
Through Ice Floes in Arctic Homeward-Bound

[Illustration: Ship on the left and a spit of land on the right. In the
center the sun is just touching the horizon.]
ROZANSKEY
Out of White Sea into Arctic Under Midnight Sun

XXXIX

HOMEWARD BOUND

"At The Earliest Possible Date"--Work Of Detroit's Own Welfare
Association--"Getting The Troops Out Of Russia"--We Assemble At
Economia--Delousers And Ball Games--War Mascots--War Brides--Remarkable
Memorial Day Service In American Military Cemetery In Archangel--Tribute
To Our Comrades Who Could Not Go Home--Our Honored Dead.

"At the earliest possible moment" was the date set by the War Department
for the withdrawal of the troops from Russia. This was the promise made
the American people during the ice-bound winter, the promise made more
particularly to appease vigorous protests of "The Detroit's Own Welfare
Association," which under the leadership of Mr. D. P. Stafford, had been
untiring in its efforts to move the hand of the War Department.
Congressmen Doremus and Nichols and Townsend had also been very active
in "getting the Americans out of North Russia."

To us wearied veterans of that strange war, the nine months of guerrilla
war, always strenuous and at times taking on large proportions,--to us
the "earliest possible moment" could not arrive a minute too soon. We
had fought a grim fight against terrible odds, we had toiled to make the
defenses more and more impregnable so that those who relieved us might
not be handicapped as we had been. We hated to be thought of as
quitters, we suffered under the reproachful eyes of newly arriving
veteran Scots and Tommies who had been mendaciously deceived into
thinking we were quitters. We suffered from the thought that the
distortion, exaggeration and partisan outcry at home was making use of
half-statements of returned comrades or half-statements from uncensored
letters, in such a way as to make us appear cry-babies and quitters. But
down in our hearts we were conscious that our record, our morale, our
p