American Soldiers Fighting In Russia Are Sheltering in Boxcars, Jan. 24, 1919

From The Commonwealth, Scotland Neck, N.C., Jan. 24, 1919

Soldiers Live on Box Cars

By the Associated Press

With the American forces on the Vologda Railway, Jan. 24—When operating through this thinly populated forest and tundra region along the railway leading from Archangel to Vologda, the American troops fighting the Bolsheviki in the North Russian front are living, when free from trenches and blockhouse duty in tiny Russian freight cars.

In this they are imitating the Russian soldiers, who, since the revolution have commandeered freight cars wherever they found them and remodeled them for dwellings.

When the box cars are fitted up with stoves, they are known as “toplkuchkas.” They’re not particularly warm in zero degree weather but a welcome change from the cold trenches in the snow.

The forests here are dotted with small blockhouses, built almost on the model of the blockhouse forts of the old American wars with the Indians, but have the added advantage of being fairly shrapnel proof.