Around the bend was the other train, Bolos above and below it on the hillside. The Lewis team fired into them like a rough-house gang, mowing down armed men without even needing to aim. It was a blur, bodies scattering with the chaos of billiard balls, the train chuffing along for a glorious several seconds, the whole of the 339th concerned with killing as many of the enemy as possible, until Hugo happened to look straight ahead, with a gasp, as they rammed directly into the last cattle car of the train parked ahead of them.

They were going no faster than a brisk stroll. Still, the impact lifted the Bolos’ last car off its axle boots, and sent the Americans’ locomotive aslant, where it ran senselessly until Hugo fumbled with the emergency full-stop.

The Bolsheviks fell into a nonstrategic retreat. Their train cars emptied, and the men ran as fast as their secondhand boots could carry them. Within minutes, the Americans faced no enemies except the dead who were lying across the hillside. There were also two villagers who’d been machine-gunned to death by Company K.

The Americans felt terrible about this, but at the same time were so happy to be alive, and so excited to have driven back the Bolos, and, further, they were brimming with such confusion about the propriety of meeting villagers, and so nervous about speaking the Russian from their dirty yellow phrase books, that a round of apologies was never quite delivered.

Instead, it was noticed that the village of Tundra was next to a verst marker, number thirty-eight. Out came the Brownie cameras, and then, in groups of five, the men posed around it, holding aloft captured Bolo rifles, cat-fur hats, broken-backed novels in Cyrillic. The enemy ammunition for the Howitzer that had been fired at the 339th caused some consternation—each shell was stamped MADE IN USA. At first, this seemed like some sort of trick. Then it was remembered that the United States had indeed outfitted Russian troops, before the disintegration of the country and the rise of its latest ruling tide.