never heard of in the ranks. I have heard an American officer of high rank speak very bitterly of the fact that the British never consulted him except to give him orders, and made him feel quite useless.

IV

THE FALL CAMPAIGN

As our ships rode into the mouth of the Dvina River with the first troops of the expedition, and the last train pulled out of Archangel Preestyn bearing the last of the Bolsheviki away to the south, the people of Archangel came out to the river bank and the docks to see the incoming fleet and to welcome their deliverers from Bolshevist proletariat tyranny and prolonged political and industrial unrest. The Russians were tired of war, and as they lined up on the river banks in front of the hundreds of peasant villages bordering a thousand versts of rivers to express their welcome it was Peace and Prosperity that they thought they were welcoming.

In fact, however, it was war, war such as that part of Russia had never known before, and most expensive war.

The expedition had been sent "to guard stores at Archangel." Since these stores had been taken by those whom we assumed to be friends of Germany we must pursue them. We did. We took guns along. We found them, with guns also, at several points about a hundred miles from the city. Their forces were weak. So were ours. But we drove them, or they led us, down the Murmansk railroad past Kem, down the Vologda railroad beyond Obozerskaya, up the Onega River to Chekuevo, up the Pinega River, up the Emtza River, up the Dvina River past Toulgas, and up the Vaga River to Ustpadenga.

We did not capture our enemy nor the stores we had come to guard. The early Russian winter came and found us thrown out to seven points in a form that was like a seven-fingered hand with one finger three hundred miles long and with no lateral communication between the fingers. In driving these lines out there was some fighting, mostly of a guerrilla type. We lost a number of men, but our casualties were comparatively small. We had been on the offensive and had followed lines of not very great resistance. The positions in which winter found us may not have been planned by the Bolsheviki, but I doubt if any English record exists of such a plan or if any officer will confess to having made such a plan. We just happened to be there. We were scattered as far as possible. Each position was practically isolated from all the others. Our lines of communication were weak and inefficient. The only protection to our flanks and our rears was the hoped-for snow which came early and abundantly.

V

THE WINTER CAMPAIGN

The winter was spent on the defensive. The Bolsheviki at first attempted to cut us off at Yemetskoye by using his excellent communication on the Vologda railroad and attacked Kodish and Shredn Makrenga. He was held here by the Americans and Canadians, who did not know when they were defeated and who now fully realized the desperate character of the fight that they were launched upon. He also attacked on the Murmansk railroad, where he was met by seasoned Serbians against whom he shattered himself in vain. He attacked at Pinega and at Chekuevo also without success. We were fighting at Toulgas on Armistice Day, and with Kotlas as his base the Bolshevik managed to keep up his attack here practically all winter while Co. B, 339th Infantry, U.S.A., took the brunt of the work of holding him off.

The American Engineers built scores of block houses like this.
This was our only possible communication with Archangel, 300 miles to the north.

The most serious fighting of the winter, however, was on the Vaga River. Our forward position at Ustpadenga was held by one company of American infantry, one platoon of American engineers, three eighteen-pounder guns manned by Canadians, and occasional units of Russian conscripts. The position had no peculiar advantages, and all the disadvantages of isolation and exposure that could make it a bad choice. It is doubtful whether it had been chosen. We got there and we stayed there. We were there because we were there. So we entrenched and built block houses and strung wire and chopped away a clearing a few hundred feet from our billets and laid in such stores and ammunition as a few ponies could pull down, and waited. This was twenty-seven versts south of Shenkursk, and Shenkursk was one hundred versts south of Bereznik, and Bereznik was three hundred versts south of Archangel.

Shenkursk was our advanced base. Here we had one company of American infantry, one platoon of American engineers, one section of Canadian artillery, American headquarters for 1st battalion, 339th, British headquarters for the Vaga column with all the attendant service units, an American hospital, and miscellaneous units of Russians numbering about a thousand, poorly organized, badly officered, and of doubtful morale. Shenkursk is the second largest city in the Archangel government, having a normal population of about three thousand people, a cathedral, a monastery with two churches, and three other churches. It was something of an educational center and summer resort. We found a number of Petrograd and Moscow people here whose summer vacations had been prolonged by the exigencies of Russian politics. There were many excellent houses here, some mansions, some interesting people, a most comfortable place to spend the winter.

Here we fortified, quite thoroughly, better perhaps than anywhere else in North Russia. To be sure we were outflanked by Kodema, a Bolshevik village on our left and Tarniya, a Bolshevik village on our right, a little to the rear. But otherwise we were quite comfortable. We made several attacks on these villages, but always found it necessary to retire.

On January 19, 1919, the big fight began. The Bolsheviki five thousand strong attacked Ustpadenga. They had three or four times as many guns as we had, including some long-range artillery that was far beyond the reach of our guns. They had perfect observation on our positions and telephone wires clear around to our rear. They picked off every billet, up one side of the street and down the other. We had no secrets. And their infantry came up in excellent form and spirit, covered with perfect white camouflage and supported with machine-guns and pompoms. Our men drove them back and held them off for days until the British command ordered them to fall back to Shenkursk. One platoon of forty men had thirty-two casualties, and every man in that small force had to do the work of ten men throughout that terrible week. Fighting all the way back, Company A, 339th American Infantry, and the Center Section 38th Battery, Canadian Field Artillery, dragged