men who were a danger to the Army and to the Cause. I warn you should the necessity arise I would not hesitate to increase the number by one, and that one would be you." During the Russian Civil War, many White generals and a number of the Bolshevist leaders developed a great propensity for cruelty and summary executions. They came to believe in violence for the sake of violence, to send a strong message to the enemy. It likely was counterproductive, as it only alienated and frightened the silent majority of citizens, while firming the enemy's resolve. Leaving Melitopol, Koehler went to Feodorovka and visited the headquarters of General Pisarev, Commander of Third Corps. As Koehler sardonically described the meeting, "He reviewed the military situation and seemed confident of success of his encircling movement, begun some two days before with the object of breaking through in rear of the advancing Red column and then surrounding it. Present tactics, both Bolshevik and Russian, represent nothing so much as a giant game of cross-tag: each side attempts to cut in behind the other, then to outflank the other's flanking column, then again to outflank this outflanking, flanking column-- and so on..." Koehler described the front line he visited in August 1920, "Whenever I arrived on the fighting line, I found the division commander and his chief of staff in the front line or ahead of it, instead of in their classic post two miles in the rear. I noted a general of artillery with a rifle wound in his leg and a saber cut in the head, certainly a most unorthodox proceeding, but here the artillery is immediately behind the infantry if not on the line with it.... Under cover of machine gun fire, the entire Russian line now took up the advance, moving in echelon at good speed... We now gained a slight eminence from which we had an excellent view of the entire movement, including the retreat of the Reds. [The Whites] were outnumbered about 3 to 1, but in actual battle the Red superiority in numbers really had comparatively little consequence on this front; they had encountered some single regiments that were worth more than other entire divisions. However, in maneuvering and the possibility of exerting a general pressure all along the line, numbers were of course, very valuable. The general said that regiments composed entirely of Communists