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It was well known that the snows would melt and ice would loosen on the distant southern river valley heights and as customary the river from Kotlas to Toulgas would be open to the Red gunboats several days before the ice would be released in the lower river stretches, necessary to permit the Allied fleets of gunboats to come in from the Arctic Ocean and go up to help defend the advanced positions on the Dvina and Vaga upper river fronts.
In making their getaway from Archangel and vicinity at the time the Allies landed in Archangel, the Reds looted and robbed and carried off by rail and by steamer much stores of furs, and clothing and food, as well as the munitions and military equipment. What they did not carry by rail to Vologda they took by river to Kotlas.
This Monitor, by the way, was much feared by the Russians, but was very temperamental, and if it was sadly needed, as it was later at Toulgas when we were badly outranged, it reposed calmly at Beresnik. When the Monitor first made its advent on the Dvina she steamed into Beresnik, and her commander inquired loftily, "Where are the bloody Bolsheviks, and which is the way to Kotlas?"
Truth to tell, the wily Bolsheviks had for many weeks seen the trend of affairs, and, expecting a very much larger expedition, had sent or prepared for hasty sending south by rail toward Vologda or by river to Kotlas of all the military supplies and munitions and movable equipment as well as large stores of loot and plunder from the city of Archangel and suburbs.
Later Allied gunboats ascended the Pinega River and that area was once more restored to safety. Spring thaw-up severed the Red communications with Kotlas, which was on the Dvina. The Bolsheviki in the upper Pinega could no longer maintain an offensive operation. Archangel was relieved from the menace on its left.
Upon being informed she steamed boldly up the Dvina on the road to Kotlas, found the Bolo, who promptly slapped a shell into their internal workings, killing several men and putting the Monitor temporarily hors de combat. After that the Monitor was very prudent and displayed no especial longing to visit Kotlas.
In the spring of 1918, the Bolsheviks, anticipating the Allies landing, moved out to Vologda and Kotlas as much as they could rush out by the railway and river, and on the arrival of the first troops here not more than five per cent of the military material still remained. The materials of most use to the engineers, which still remained, were forty thousand reels of barb wire and cable.
Up the railroad he had seen his third battalion, under command of Major C. G. Young, go with General Finlayson whom General Poole had ordered to take Vologda, four hundred miles to the south. His first battalion, under Lieutenant Colonel Corbley he had seen hurried off up the Dvina River under another British Brigadier-General to take Kotlas hundreds of miles up the river.
A poor man attaches himself to the kotla of a rich one, and is considered a child of the latter. An under-chief has a number of these circles around his; and the collection of kotlas around the great one in the middle of the whole, that of the principal chief, constitutes the town.
We are prepared to say, 'You build this, or give us that, and we will give you the right to take so much timber for yourselves. And so on. And concessions of other kinds also. As a matter of fact negotiations are now proceeding with a foreign firm for the building of a railway from the Obi to Kotlas." "But part of that district is not in your hands.
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