October 1917 | Petrograd

"The job (ten ofus now) was to set up some semblance of Hut work with the Russian forces at thefront and we were whole-heartedly abetted by the Kerensky government. Passes on the railroad were freely granted and all our mail and supplies and what-not were given military transport. We were made officers in the Russian army and the last state papers that Kerensky signed, so I later found, were our commissions! Luckily, I never got mine in my pocket, nor on my shoulders that of a 'Polkovnik'—or colonel. After Karensky fled from Petrograd in October, and continuing for many months, the most unhealthy thing in that part of the world was to be a Russian officer! They were the mark of suspicion and attack on all hands. I have gone places in a flannel shirt and my overalls where no officer could go because I was an American 'Tovarish.'"
--from "Tovarishi: Jesse Halsey Russia Memoir"