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Updated: May 18, 2025
Meanwhile the Canadian artillery pounded the Bolo reserves in Kodish. The Reds tried to rally at a ridge of ground a verst in front of Kodish but the dreadful trench mortars again showered them at eight hundred yards with this new kind of hell and they were easily dislodged by the infantry and machine gun fire.
On January 4th Donoghue sent "E" Company back to occupy and help strengthen the old position at the river, from where they sent detachments forward to help "K" and "M.G." and trench mortar hold the shell-shattered village of Kodish.
The Red Guards hearing of the American successes on the railway and hearing of the approach of this force from the railroad in their rear went back to Kodish, and on the morning of September 16th "K" Company became a full-fledged member of "D" Force to be better known the world over in the bitterest part of this campaign as the Kodish Force.
Indeed it was seen in the fall by General Poole that a Red column from Plesetskaya up the Kodish road was a wedge between the railroad forces and the river forces, always imperiling the Vaga and Dvina forces with being cut off if the Reds came strong enough. The first movement on Kodish by the Allied troops had been made by "B" force under the command of Col. Hazelden of the British army.
Meanwhile the Russian Officers' Training Corps which was armed with forty Lewis guns and acted rather independently, together with the Royal Scot platoon and a large number of "partisans," anti-Bolshevik volunteers of the area, effected the capture of Shred Makhrenga, Taresevo and other villages, which added to the threat of the Kodish force on Plesetskaya.
Barone of "Hq" Company, who worked constantly, a standing target for the Bolos, near the end of the fight fell with a bullet in his leg. And so the Americans scrapped on. And they did hold Kodish. Seven were killed and thirty-five wounded, two mortally, in this useless fight. Lt. O'Brien of "E" Company was severely wounded and at this writing is still in hospital.
But a new British officer had come into command of the Seletskoe detachment, and perhaps that accounts for the foolhardy order that the doughty old Donoghue received; "Hold what you have got and advance no further south; prepare defenses of Kodish." What an irony of fate. His force had been the only one of the various forces that had actually put any jab into the push on Plesetskaya.
Considerable detail has been given about this march of "I" and "M" because writer was familiar with it, but a similar story might be told of "H" in the swamps on the Onega, or of "K" or "L" and "M. G." at Kodish, or of "A," "B," "C" or "D" on the River Fronts, and with equal praise for the hardihood of the American doughboy hopelessly mired in swamps and lost in the dense forests, baffled in his attempts because of no fault of his own, but ready after an hour's rest to go at it again, as in this case when a volunteer platoon went forward to support the badly suffering line.
Lieut. Ballard's heroic machine gun platoon a few days later was also relieved, by Lieut. O'Callaghan's platoon. So ended the fall campaign on the famous Kodish front.
Morning discovered the force digging in. The odds were all against them. Again they were standing in Kodish where after personal reconnaisance Col. Lucas, their nominal superior officer, commanding Vologda Force, had said no troops should be stationed as it was strategically untenable.
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