United States or Bulgaria ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Hazelden had gone back to headquarters. Captain Donoghue now acted with his usual decisiveness. The Americanskis had slipped out of the bag before the Red string was tied. And in the morning of the 9th of November the good old Vickers guns and Lewis guns were peeking from their old concealed strongholds on the American side of the Emtsa.
Donovan's combination company of two platoons of "G" and "M" who were all set for the smash toward Emtsa and Plesetskaya found their orders suddenly countermanded on December 31st and settled down to the routine winter defensive.
The trail junction point Volshenitsa, between Seletskoe and Obozerskaya, was fitted up with quarters for soldiers and vigilantly guarded against surprise attacks by the Reds from 443, or Emtsa. Sometimes it was held by British and Russians from Seletskoe and sometimes by Americans from Obozerskaya. It sounds easy to say "Guarding lines of communication."
Captain Donoghue set up his headquarters in Kodish and sent detachments out to follow the Reds and to threaten the Red Shred Makhrenga and Taresevo forces. During this fight, or rather after it, the Canadians taught our boys their first lesson in looting the persons of the dead. Our men had been rather respectful and gentle with the Bolo dead who were quite numerous on the Emtsa River battlefield.
After patrolling the forest five days and finding the trail to Emtsa impassable during the wet season, "K" Company received both the welcome reinforcements of Lieut. Gardner and the twenty men who had been left at Lewis gun School at Bakaritza, and orders to proceed on to Seletskoe.
An armed reconnaissance by the whole force at Chekuevo moving forward on both sides of the Onega River on October 19th, which was two days after the Americans on the railroad had carried Four Hundred and Forty-five by storm and the Bolo had "got up his wind" and retired to Emtsa.
The forces of the railroad had been checked near Emtsa, far above Plesetskaya. The other troops on the Dvina had by this time retired to Toulgas and as a consequence the smallest force in the expedition, the Vaga Column, was now in the most advanced position of these three fronts, a very dangerous and poorly chosen military position.
CORP. ROBERT M. PRATT, "M" Co., 339th Inf., for gallantry in action, October 17th, 1918, Verst 445, near Emtsa, Russia. PVT. VICTOR STIER, "A" Co., 339th Inf., for gallantry in action, January 19th, 1919, Ust Padenga, Russia. PVT. LAWRENCE B. KILROY, 337th Ambulance Company, for gallantry in action, Kodish, Russia.
Attacks from the front, sly raids from the woods on each side of the road, heart chilling assaults upon the cluster of houses in Kodish way in their rear, and steady progress of the Red Guards toward the bridge on the Emtsa, their only way out of the bag in which the worn and depleted company was being trapped, brought the prolonged struggle to a crisis in the middle of the afternoon of the eighth of November.
Shipments were made from this base to the secretaries at Seletskoe, who did their best to make the winter less monotonous and miserable for the second battalion men stationed on that front. The "Y" opened a hut in Pinega in early November, and by the middle of December had established a point for the "H" Company men west of Emtsa on, the Onega River line.
Word Of The Day