chevroned Scots who
had remained on the lines with the new Archangel troops of uncertain
morale and recalled the looks in their eyes, we sensed a trace of bitter
in our cup of joy. Why if the job had been worth doing at all had it not
been worth while for our country to do it wholeheartedly with adequate
force and with determination to see it through to the desired end. We
thought of the many officers and men who had given their lives in this
now abandoned cause. And again arose the old question persistent,
demanding an answer: Why had we come at all? Was it just one of those
blunders military-political that are bound to happen in every great war?
The thought troubled us even as we embarked for home.

That night scene with the lowering sun near midnight gleaming gold upon
the forest-shaded stretches of the Dvina River and casting its mellow,
melancholy light upon the wrecked church of a village, is an
ineffaceable picture of North Russia. For this is our Russia--a church;
a little cluster of log houses, encompassed by unending forests of
moaning spruce and pine; low brooding, sorrowful skies; and over all
oppressive stillness, sad, profound, mysterious, yet strangely lovable
to our memory.

Near the shell-gashed and mutilated church are two rows of unadorned
wooden crosses, simple memorials of a soldier burial ground. Come
vividly back into the scene the winter funerals in that yard of our
buddies, brave men who, loving life, had been laid away there, having
died soldier-like for a cause they had only dimly understood. And the
crosses now rise up, mute, eloquent testimony to the cost of this
strange, inexplicable war of North Russia.

We cast off from the dirty quay and steamed out to sea. On the deck was
many a reminiscent one who looked back bare-headed on the paling shores,
in his heart a tribute to those who, in the battle field's burial spot
or in the little Russian churchyards stayed behind while we departed
homeward bound.

This closes our narrative. It is imperfectly told. We could wish we had
time to add another volume of anecdotes and stories of heroic deeds. For
errors and omissions we beg the indulgence of our comrades. We trust
that the main facts have been clearly told. Here by way of further
dedication of this book to our honored dead, whose names appear at the
head of our lengthy casualty list of five hundred sixty-three, let us
add a few simple verses of sentiment, the first two of which were
writt