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Updated: May 18, 2025
This was the force which Major Donoghue had at command when again came the order to take Kodish. This time it was not a great offensive push to jab at the Red Army vitals, but it was a defensive thrust, a desperate operation to divert attention of the Reds from their successful winter operations against the Shred Makrenga front.
"The memories of these brave fellows," says Lt. Jack Commons, "who went as the price exacted, Lt. Berger of "E" Company, Sgts. Kenney and Grewe and many other steady and courageous and loyal pals through the months of hardship that had preceded, made Kodish a place horrible, detested, and unnerving to the small detachment that held it."
On the morning of the fifth of November these Yanks way out at front of Kodish, holding the enemy off desperately from the frontal attack, and endeavoring vainly to frustrate the flank attacks of their enemy in greatly superior numbers, suddenly heard great bursts of machine gun fire way towards the rear in the vicinity of Kodish.
But before he could attack Kodish, Hazelden was ordered to strike across the forest area and attack the Reds in the rear near Obozerskaya where the Bolshevik rear guard with its excellent artillery strategist was stubbornly holding the Allied Force "A." Passing through Seletskoe he left the Russian volunteers to oppose the Reds in Kodish, and guard his rear.
Nugent, of Milwaukee, writes after the first engagement on the Onega front he was obliged to use needle and thread from a doughboys' Red Cross comfort kit to take stitches in six wounded men. Lieut. Lennon of "L" Company reports that during the first action of his Company on the Kodish Front in the fall, there was no medical officer with the unit in action.
It was now an entirely British-Russian front and the American officer who had remained voluntarily to lead in the last big fight because of his complete knowledge of the battle area now went to well-earned rest in Archangel. In closing the story of the Americans on the Kodish Front we turn to the words written us by Lt.
Powers had been mortally wounded by a shell that entered his dressing station at Ust Padenga where he was alone with six enlisted men. His wounds were dressed by a Russian doctor who was with the Russian company supporting "A" Company. Lt. Powers had gone to the railroad front in September, shifted to the Kodish front during severe fighting, and then to the distant Shenkursk front.
Accordingly the next morning, September 26th, "K" Company and two platoons of "L" and the machine gun section moved south toward Kodish to achieve the mission that had been assigned to Col. Hazelden.
John A. Commons: "Thus the Kodish Front was really home to the men of "K" Company, for most of their stay in the northern land. To "E" and "L" and Machine Gun and Trench Mortar "Hq" platoon it was also, but for a shorter period, their only shelter from the rains of the fall and the bite of the winter. "K", however, meant Kodish. There they had their first fight, there their dead were buried.
At 1:00 p. m. after seven hours hard fighting the Americans were again in possession of Kodish. An interesting side incident of this recapture of Kodish was the defeat of a company of Reds occupying a Kodish flank position at the church on the river two versts away. The Reds disputed but Sergeant Masterson and fifteen men of "E" Company dislodged them. But time was valuable.
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