In a paternal response, Command asked what had happened to the troops he had already been given. In addition to 5,900 Americans, he had 2,500 Royal Scots; 900 mumbling French; 350 Serbs who had scurvy; some Italians, and, of course, the Slavo-British Legion.

Poole explained he had a victory plan, and that the Allies were currently spreading out from Archangel, along railway lines, in five columns, “like the fingers of a mighty fist.”

Perhaps it was as simple as that metaphor. It was decided that, for the safety of all, Poole needed an assistant. The War Office surveyed the available talent this late in the shredder and alit upon Edmund Ironside.

As soon as his name was mentioned, a faint dawn light crept up. Perhaps there was still a hero or two left. At the age of thirty-eight, Ironside had earned the C.M.G., the D.S.O., the Croix de Guerre with Palms, had received the Queen’s Medal with three clasps, and was an officer of the Legion of Honor. He spoke German, French, Swedish, Dutch, Italian, and had learned enough Russian, he said, to get his face slapped, an improbability considering that he was in love with his wife.

He was rumored to have strangled a Boer soldier to death with his two bare hands. This wasn’t quite true—he had done it with one hand. His nickname was “Tiny.”

And where exactly was Ironside? A stride toward the walls of the War Office, where gray-and-green topographical maps were spread across the cork walls, and then out came the ledgers to cross-reference troop locations, and then a finger fell upon a pushpin, mauve, driven into the Marécage Gris sector. Here he was. Call him home.

7

Lee Duncan’s job was to maintain the machine guns for a DH 4 airplane called Lenore. The observer seat had a pair of Lewises mounted on a Scarff ring that allowed them to swing up, down, and approximately 270 degrees. Unfortunately, their arc of fire included the empennage, the plane’s own tailpiece. DH 4s could shake off the enemy, only to shoot themselves down. For the pilot, there was a pair of Marlin.30-calibers, which fired through the arc of the propeller via the amazingly precise harmonics of Constantinesco synchronizing hydraulic gear. It was Lee’s duty to ensure, every morning, that the hydraulics were intact; otherwise, the pilot, Lieutenant Ripley, could turn his own propeller into splinters. On most rainy mornings, or even mornings with a spot of dew to them, the hydraulics were a wreck.

Lieutenant Ripley had shipped out illegally and underage to fly with the French Escadrille. He had once flown pursuit, and had shot down several Germans, though he never mentioned this. He had coarse black hair, and a mustache unique among officers in that it wasn’t cultivated in the British manner. Instead, he looked as if he had once been the marshal of a recently subdued mining town.