She was a member of the Battalion of Death, this extraordinary woman, of intelligent, almost beautiful appearance. Madame Botchkoreva also had been a member of the Battalion of Death, so named because it chose to die rather than betray Holy Russia. Madame Botchkoreva, who had come with the American soldiers on the transports from America, and had spoken to them on shipboard so eloquently and so movingly of her country and its sacred, unshakable loyalty to the Allied cause, was said to have interceded with President Wilson, urged the sending of American troops to succor afflicted Russia, and prevailed upon the President. American soldiers had already witnessed grotesque inconsistencies in this strange campaign. After the first fight they picked up shell fragments with the letters "U.S.A.," and learned that all, or nearly all, the Bolshevik ammunition was manufactured in their own country. They were told that they had been commissioned to safeguard valuable war supplies, and, coming to Archangel, had seen the great warehouses there destitute of those supplies. Now they were mystified by Lady Olga, who fought against Madame Botchkoreva in this baffling Russian war. Who was the greater patriot? Each a soldier in the uniform of her country, each had plighted her heart to beloved Russia, each had taken solemn oath to defend her country until death; and both now thought they were offering their lives for the defense of that country! In this rear attack, one hundred Soviets were killed, many more wounded, many taken prisoners, a few rejoined their comrades at Upper Toulgas, and the rest faded in the forest and were lost. Weeks afterwards, the villagers at Nitzni Kitsa, fifty miles to the west, told of three Bolshevik soldiers who came to their village in a crazed condition, clad in rags, and half starved, babbling an incoherent story of the frightful battle of Toulgas on Armistice Day, and of hundreds of their comrades, lost in the woods and perishing in the treacherous quagmire of the swamps.