[...] From honest dealers in Helsinki we would buy excellent weapons, Mauser pistols in wooden cases which were delivered to us on a quiet sector of the front (quiet because of this minor traffic) fifty or so kilometers from Leningrad. To pay for these useful commodities, we printed whole casefuls of beautiful 500-ruble notes, watery in appearance, with the image of Catherine the Great and the signature of a bank director as dead as his bank, his social order, and the Empress Catherine. Case for case, the exchange was made silently in a wood of somber firs—it was really the maddest commercial transaction imaginable. Obviously the recipients of the Imperial banknotes were taking out a mortgage on our deaths, at the same time furnishing us with the means for our defense.