With the way to retreat a mass of smoldering ruins and the way ahead just about to be set afire, and their own arms roughly useless, the Americans fell to bickering. Eventually, it was settled that Hugo was to blame for their situation, because he hadn’t known how to make the train go backward. He wiped his brow with his kerchief, and it came away red. He’d been grazed—by rock debris, by a bullet, it was hard to tell—and when he stared at the blood with some disbelief, that, too, caused grousing. Wodziczko rolled his eyes.

“I’m wounded!”

“You were just pipped. We’re going to die. We hate you.”

The normal soldier’s lament struck at a man’s odor or ancestry; a simple declaration of hatred was startlingly direct. As much as he felt guilty (Wodziczko’s accusations stung worse than the wound to his forehead), Hugo also hated everyone on the train. He reached a terrible conclusion. If he was going to his death, he would take them along. He released the horseshoe brakes, teased the throttle open, and felt the pleasant shudder of the wheels unlocking.

The doughboys were startled, of course—and as a bleeding Hugo smiled at them all, he pointed straight ahead. His face, darkened with dust and blood, looked as if it belonged to some minor bureaucratic demon, a Malebranchist devoted to stirring a shallow pond of fire with a short stick. “We’re going that way,” he hissed.

“Hello!” Lieutenant Gordon cried. “Yes. Yes indeed!”

Hugo looked toward him with confusion—he’d hoped for some recriminations before they died—but even Private Wodziczko was now pumping his rifle in the air.

“Over the Top!” Wodziczko yelled back to the men on the flatcars. “We’re going Over the Top!”

They had no specific war cry, so all they did was bellow whatever guttural noise came first and best, a few of them crying the marines’ E-EE-YAH-YIP! Hugo, surrendering to the madness, managed to yell his single aggressive phrase, “Pozhaluysta, nie streliayte—my devstvennitsy!”

The Bolsheviks, for their part, pricked up their ears. Then they had trouble believing their eyes. The train was coming toward them? Toward the burning hay bales? Toward two hundred troops and heavy artillery? For the first time, they began to wonder who exactly was running this train. Not the French. Perhaps the British? Impossible.

With no concern for the steam-valve pressure, Hugo brought the train to a full and majestic roar. As it passed over the bridge, Bolsheviks were flying outward like ripples across a pond. Several clung to the bridge’s superstructure, and the men of the 339th fired their rifles through the smoke, perhaps in some cases actually hitting Bolos, for there were sudden cries and hard-to-place clattering sounds.