CAMPAIGNING IN THE ARCTIC CIRCLE

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 173, 16 April 1919, Page 7

CAMPAIGNING IN THE ARCTIC CIRCLE

A COLD AND COMFORTLESS FRONT

THE AMERICAN LINE IN NORTH RUSSIA

One night, spent in field headquarters of the American command holding the Emtsa Kiver front, near Kadish (since abandoned) illustrated the difficulties which thu troops faced in this desolate, region in nn Arctic winter (writes the Associated Press correspondent in a midwinter dispatch). Field headquarters were in a tiny rough-hewn log cabin, thatched with a roof of spruce boughs and heated by a home-made stove Outside, in the forest, the troops sheltered only by lean-tos of boughs, shivered around'civmp fires in the snow. Inside the hut were a few cots, a Tough talfe, and a telephone. ~„,..' , ~ The .-old wind whistled throudi the chinks in the logs, and came up through cracks in the floor. The officers: turned in" early, wrapped in all the blankets and overcoats they could get. _ Down along the banks of the ice-filled Emtsa River, a hundred yards from the BoMievik lines. American outpost patrols stamped their hoots on the frozen swamp wound in the brush, unable to bmlrt fire* for fear of snipers. "Bzz-bzz-bzz." went the field telephone iu headquarters hut. . The orderly called the machine-gun officer. Froni the conversation, it appeared that the water in the j-oohn? chambers of the "emma-gees (the soldier's pet name for machine-guns) in the front line had frozen and that the recoil would not work. Because there was no alcohol or glycerine handy, mm had been mixed as an anti-freezing fluid, with the water in the cooling chambers. Hie officer said he would send down some new Tiuiß. He went out to find that every"gun in the Dlace was in the same fix. A long row of them was brought inside the hut and stacked near the stove to thaw out. , "Hereafter," ordered the machine-gun officer, "sleep with the guns. Wrap them up in the same blankets with yourselves." 11 i Meanwhile some one filled up the stove to hasten the thawing-ont process d the guns nearbv. The hut got so hot that an officer turned and tossed nervously m his sleep. Then a soldier rushed in to s»out that the hut had been set on fire from the overheated chimney. •Vll turned out in th* snow to empty canteens—the only unfrozen water at hand-on the roof to extinguish Hie rye. Then, the officers went back into the hut to shiver, for in saving the hut the fire in the stove had been extinguished.