United States or South Sudan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Both times we took Priluk and Zapocha but were held with great losses before Ust Pocha. At the first attempt Pochezero was taken in a flank attack by the Soyla Lake two-company outguard of Soyla. But this emboldened the Reds to try the winter trail also. On January 24th they nearly took our position. News of the Red successes at Shenkursk reached the Pinega Valley.
We were turned off from the Helena road and the rest of the command at the base of the mountains, and are now about ten miles from Helena on our way to the new station, which, we are told, is a wretched little two-company post on the other side of the Big Belt range of mountains.
This youth was spic-and-span from the Military Academy, with a top-dressing of three months' thoughtful travel in Germany. "I was deeply impressed with the modernity of their scientific attitude," he pleasantly remarked to the commanding officer. For Captain Duane, silent usually, talked at this first meal to make the boy welcome in this forlorn two-company post.
That meant new trouble trouble for Major Brown commanding the little two-company station the "tuppenny post," his subaltern, Blake, derisively termed it trouble for Blake, who was officer of the day, and was held on tenterhooks for many a day thereafter trouble for Sergeant Collins, who was directly in command of the guard "Collins né Oolahan," as Freeman wrote him down, it having been discovered that this versatile Celt had served a previous enlistment in the "Lost and Strayed," when four of its companies were pioneering shortly after the war, where even the paymaster couldn't find them.
"He's away up at Washakie, and of course his adjutant general don't want to act or even advise until he knows all about it. You've seen fit to charge Lanier with all manner of things, and I don't wonder headquarters are staggered." "But Bill Riggs to come and overhaul my regiment, when it's notorious he never could command even a two-company camp without having everybody by the ears!
Hayne had spent three or four years in the exile of a little "two-company post" far up in the mountains. Except the officers there stationed, none of his comrades had seen him during that time. No one of them would like to admit that he would care to see him.
"What could you expect," he said in his sweeping way, "of men who have had to spend their lives at a two-company post, where there was nothing to do when off duty but play draw-poker and drink whiskey at the sutler's shop?" This was, of course, meant to be picturesquely extravagant, but it hit the nail on the head, after all.
Word Of The Day