The men of Detroit remained in the village nervously, eyeing the bodies, waiting for recriminations that never came. Finally, Hugo, in the same bold spirit that once caused him to stride manfully across the parquet floors of the Grosse Ile debutante ball to ask the exquisite Missy Farmer to dance, approached a small knot of elders. His phrase book was gone. So he was left with his two lines of Russian, one about headquarters. He considered the other phrase for a moment, the one about being soldiers, drop your weapons, and he realized he could bisect it, and then patted his chest. He swept his hand behind him to include the rest of Company K. “My devstvennitsy,” he said, and then modified it, “My devstvennitsy ameri-kanski,” as if announcing that they had an official designation, a respectable nationality, a job description, might explain that they would do no further harm.

In response, a startled silence, as if Hugo had paraded a bright-red calf before them. The village burmistr puffed through his whiskers and tried to catch his constables’ eyes without letting his surprise be seen. It was a very private admission for these foreigners. Then one ancient starosta and another whispered through cracked teeth, hiding mouths behind twisted hands, the babay veiling their words behind their stained summer scarves, that perhaps in America such a thing was discussed openly, as a sign of innocence. Weren’t the starosty proud that their own children were also virgins?

Soon there seemed to be a thaw in relations. The soldiers’ guns were nonetheless stared at, so they couldn’t quite put them down with their packs. Eventually, some of the village girls began to dance with each other, looking over their shoulders to make sure their gaiety was being noticed. A head functionary of the village tentatively asked for permission to salvage the cattle cars, and when he and his friends found food and drink and horses, they were happy enough that they even claimed that, yes indeed, they could use the antiques and spools of copper wire. For the most part, they seemed not to mind their casualties (through a combination of pidgin Russian, Polish, and hand gestures, they indicated that the dead men— two brothers—had been drunks and no one much liked them anyway), and they invited the Americans to help them feast on the remaining roast chicken.

Here ended the first battle between the United States and Russia. Of course, the 339th had to find a way home (they would walk the thirty-eight versts over the course of two days). And eventually they would lay a whole host of curses upon the Russian peasantry, but for now, there was a tentative celebration between two unlikely groups, from Detroit and Tundra. It did not last into the evening, and no one passed a jug of samogon or flung open the doors of a blockhouse to the Americans.