ching stolidly past, each man with but one thought,
to pull his foot out of the mud and put it in a little farther on. We
finally got Babcock up to terra firma, he explained that it had looked
like good walking, nice and smooth, and he had gone down to try it. I
cautioned him that he should never try to take a bath while in
military formation, and he seemed to think the advice was sound."

Now the battalion was needed over on the Vaga river front, the story of
whose advance there is told in another chapter. By barge the Americans
went down the Dvina to its junction with the Vaga and then proceeded up
that river as far as Shenkursk. To the doughboys this upper Vaga area
seemed a veritable land of milk and honey when compared with the
miserable upper Dvina area. Fresh meat and eggs were obtainable. There
were even women there who wore hats and stockings, in place of boots and
shawls. We had comfortable billets. But it was too good to be true. In
less than a week the Bolo's renewed activities on the upper Dvina made
it necessary for one company of the first battalion to go again to that
area. Colonel Corbley saw "B" Company depart on the tug "Retvizan" and
so far as field activities were concerned it was to be part of the
British forces on the Dvina from October till April rather than part of
the first battalion force. The company commander was to be drafted as
"left bank" commander of a mixed force and hold Toulgas those long, long
months. The only help he remembers from Colonel Corbley or Colonel
Stewart in the field operations was a single visit from each, the one to
examine his company fund book, the other to visit the troops on the line
in obedience to orders from Washington and General Ironside. Of this
visit Captain Boyd writes:

"When Col. Stewart made his trip to Toulgas his advent was marked
principally by his losing one of his mittens, which were the ordinary
issue variety. He searched everywhere, and half insinuated that Capt.
Dean, my adjutant, a British officer, had taken it. I could see Dean
getting hot under the collar. Then he told me that my orderly must
have taken it. I knew Adamson was more honest than either myself or
the colonel, and that made me hot. Then he finally found the mitten
where he had dropped it, on the porch, and everything was serene
again.

"Col. Stewart went with me up to one of the forward blockhouses, which
at that time was manned by the Scots. After