On the forest flank the ground has been cleared for a space, varying from three hundred to less than sixty yards. This clearance is greatest opposite the upper village. In the lower village it narrows, until in rear the trees close in on the road that leads back to Bereznik and Archangel, affording excellent opportunity of concealment and surprise attack for an enemy that would have the endurance and the hardihood and the courageous daring to march through the deep swamps of the woods. On the left the Dvina spreads out in a wide expanse, two miles. Opposite the rear and center villages the river banks are high and steep, nearly precipitous, but at the forward village on the flat ground the level is only a few feet above that of the water. Across the river there is not the slightest sign of cover as far as the distant embankment on the opposite shore. The chances for surprise from this quarter are practically none, and without surprise, infantry advancing over the waist-deep snow against machine guns, would have to be possessed of fanatical courage and be in overwhelming strength. The river could be nearly neglected as a source of danger. To defend the three Toulgas villages we had: One company of American infantry; one company of Royal Scots infantry, and one section of Field Artillery, manned by fifty-seven Canadians. In command of this force was Robert P. Boyd, an American civilian, who, scarcely a year before, had graduated with the rank of captain of infantry from a three months' officers' training school at Fort Sheridan, Illinois. Shortly after occupation of Toulgas, ice choked off navigation of the lower river, and replenishments of supplies and ammunition had to be brought by small one pony sleighs from Bereznik. The distance was some fifty miles, and the journey by Russian pony was usually two days, but when the snow was deepest, the weather bitterly cold, and the days had but few hours of light, it took three days. There was a field hospital at Bereznik, vicariously supplied, and attended by a medical personnel of changing nationality, British, Russian and American by turns. We converted one of the huts of Lower Toulgas village into a dressing station, where first aid was given the wounded; but we had no facilities, no operating equipment, or surgeons, or surgical instruments to care for the serious cases. If a soldier was hard hit and lived, he had to be brought to Bereznik.