Battle of Lodz
The retreat was not to be easy; due to a sudden warm spell, the permafrost had turned into quicksand, causing wagons to overturn in the deep ruts, and for supplies and
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troops to sink forever into the bog swamps. The Allies, using broad wooden planks as a type of snowshoe for traversing mud, were able to catch the Russians and deprive them of their borscht and vodka.
During the Allied thievery, a young Nikita Kruschev gained his first taste of Western capitalism when he was forced to sell his Kalshinikov rifle for twenty francs to a French soldier in order to buy back his favorite vodka fluski (or flask), a family heirloom that had originally been owned by Peter the Great. Kruschev, waist deep in mud, vowed revenge on the west, shouting, "Though I am sinking in mud now, someday we will bury you! We will bury you!" to the drunken onlooking troops laughing uproariously at the misfortune of the Russian infantrymen.


