United States or Liechtenstein ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
American Engineers also withdrew from this front just about the time that the First Battalion and "F" Company were embarking from Beresnik and "K" Company was steaming out of Yemeskoe and Kholmogori for Archangel. Most of the boys of the First Battalion had been up the river for months and had never seen the streets of Archangel.
By rail from Obozerskaya and Bolsheozerki, by barge from Beresnik and Kholmogori and Onega, came the veterans of this late side show of the great world war. With them they had their mascots and their War Brides, their trophies and curios, their hopeful good humor and healthy play spirit. Who will not recall with pleasure the white canvass camp we made on the "policed-up" sawdust field.
They were nearly pickled in pine smoke. And a whole company of soldiers nearly lost their billet in Kholmogori when they started up the sisters' stoves without pulling the plates off the chimney.
This was the last fight for the Americans on the Kodish Front. "K" Company had already looked for the last time on the old battle scenes and at the wooden crosses which marked the graves of their heroic dead, and had gone to Archangel to rest, later to duty on the lines of communication at Kholmogori and Yemetskoe.
The Red success in pushing our forces out of Shenkursk and down the Vaga made the upper Dvina and Vaga roads constantly subject to raiding parties of the Bolsheviki. Early in February "K" Company came up from Archangel and took station at Yemetskoe, one platoon being left at Kholmogori.
"K" Company men at Kholmogori waited with anxiety for the decision, for if Pinega fell then, Red troops would press down the river to threaten Kholmogori, which, though safe from winter attack because of the blockhouses built by American Engineers and doughboys, would be at the mercy of the gunboats the Reds were reported to have rigged up with guns sent over from Kotlas.
Winter blizzards found the outfit broken into trusty detachments scattered all the way from Kholmogori, ninety versts north of Yemetskoe, to Morjegorskaya, fifty-five versts south of company headquarters in Yemetskoe. And it was common occurrence for a sergeant of "F" Company with a "handful of doughboys" to escort a mob of Bolshevik prisoners of war to distant Archangel.
Word Of The Day