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Updated: May 18, 2025
With the Vaga and Dvina Rivers now so well protected by the naval forces of the Allies, the Bolo drives up the Kodish-Seletskoe road were now no longer of much strategic importance to them. In the latter part of the winter they had hopes of themselves controlling the water. Then they had put on drives at Shred Mekhrenga and at the Kodish front but with severe losses and no gains.
Donoghue's battle order that day called for his force to take Kodish and its defenses, Avda and its defenses and to occupy Kochmas. Only a matter of twenty miles of deep snow and hard fighting. So the enemy was attacked again vigorously at one of the old fighting spots of the fall campaign, at Verst 12.
As in the previous fighting the Red Guards, realizing the strategic value of this road fought tenaciously for every verst of it. They had been prepared for the loss of Kodish village itself; it was untenable. But they refused to budge from Verst 12. The trench mortars could not reach their dugout line.
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.
A diary of an American sailor and the memoranda of a British officer, broken off suddenly on the 30th of August, that were picked up told of the adventures of the handful of men we were going to hunt. More explanations of the genesis of this Kodish front is now in order. Consideration of the map will show that Kodish was of great strategic Importance.
What soldier will ever forget the ride up to the old three-hundred-year-old monastery and the simple feed that the monks set out for them. Or who will forget the dark night at Kodish when the orator called out to the Americans and they joshed him back with great merriment. Often the soldier on the great line of communication duty whiled away an hour helping some native with her chores.
A Bolo reconnaissance patrol surprised and caught him. He was the American soldier who was shown to the comrades at Kodish on the river bridge after Armistice Day. He was afterward sent on to Moscow and went out with others to freedom.
About a hundred English marines, a section of machine gunners, a platoon of Royal Scots, and some Russian artillery, all enroute to Archangel from their chase of the Reds up the Dvina, were ordered off their barges at Sisskoe, were christened "D" Force, and, under the command of Captain Scott, British officer, were given the task of preventing the Reds from Kodish from cutting off the river communications.
LIEUT. CHARLES F. CHAPPEL, "K" Co., 339th Inf., for gallantry in action, Sept. 27th, 1918, Kodish, Russia. SGT. MATHEW G. GRAHEK, "M" Co., 339th Inf., for gallantry in action, Sept. 29th, 1918, at Verst 458, Obozerskaya, Russia. SGT. CORNELIUS T. MAHONEY, "K" Co., 339th Inf., for gallantry in action, October 16th, 1918, Kodish, Russia.
Tommie and Scot were often found at Kodish and Toulgas and on the Onega sharing privations and meagre luxuries of tobacco and food with their recently made friends among the Yanks. And in the winter the Yorks at several places stood shoulder to shoulder with doughboys on hard-fought lines.
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