had made a slight advance to secure a path for egress of the Crimean forces to the north, a tactical and symbolic advance that revived morale among the White troops and the confidence of the people that supported the resistance. With the reorganization of the White forces, on June 1, 1920, the "Black Baron" had an operational army of 40,000, consisting of First Corps under General Alexander Kutepov at Perekop with 7,000 Volunteer Army infantry, 46 guns, 12 tanks, 21 aeroplanes and 500 cavalry; Second Corps under General Yakov Slashchov, organized for a combined naval and military expedition to a port on the Sea of Azov, with 10,000 men in all, 58 guns, 3 aeroplanes, 5 armored motorcars and 400 cavalry; Third Corps under General A. Pisarev at the Sivash Isthmus with 11,000 men total, 19 guns, 9 aeroplanes, 3 armored trains, and 1,960 cavalry; and Fourth Corps, composed of dismounted Kuban cossacks, 14 guns, and about 16,000 men in reserve near Sivash. Wrangel also improved the naval assets of the White forces, with a Black Sea and separate Azov Sea flotilla. Receiving coal shipments from Constantinople in April and May to enable the ships to steam, the Black Sea ships numbered a battleship, three cruisers, ten destroyers and eight gunboats, and in the Azov Sea the Whites had fifteen shallow-draft boats. Morale was also greatly improved, and while for the first time since the spring of 1918, the Cossacks did not figure as the prominent element of the White army, with a corresponding decrease in cavalry superiority, the army was now made up of men who were determined to fight the enemy. As Koehler wrote in his report, "The Cossacks are fighting to get back to their stanitzi in the Don and the Kuban- nor do they see much beyond that. They do not loot now, but resent being deprived of (as they look at it) a well-earned privilege... Russia means nothing to them... They... fight any... power or regime or idea that interferes with their old privileges." Melitopol, June 1920 On April 3, Koehler and McCully reached the Crimean port of Yalta, where Koehler met Baron Wrangel hours after the general had returned from Constantinople to take charge of the remaining men of the White Army, and then headed to Sebastopol. While her husband commanded the White forces in South Russia, Baroness Wrangel remained in Constantinople with her