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Updated: May 16, 2025
Many a doughboy in Archangel, Kholmogora, Yemetskoe, Onega or Pinega, at one time or another during the long winter, got a chance to ride with the Russian Eskimo and his reindeer.
Mention has already been made of the work of "G" and "M" Company platoons on the isolated Pinega Valley lines and of "H" Company guarding the very important Onega-Obozerskaya road, over which passed the mails and reinforcements from the outside world. The cluster of villages called Bolsheozerki was on this road.
And here at the beginning of winter we leave this handful of Americans holding the left sector of the great horseshoe line against a gathering force, the mutterings of whose Red mobs was already being heard and which was preparing a series of dreadful surprises for the Allied forces on the Pinega as well as on other winter fronts.
In such conditions as those prevailing in Russia, unless the greatest care is taken of the men, they lose health and heart and are consequently no good for the job for which they are here. When the Americans left the Pinega sector of defense in March, they carried with them the good wishes of the citizens and the Russian soldiers of that area.
Americans here at Pinega, like the vastly more desperate and shattered American forces on the Vaga and at Kodish at the same time, had seen their fate impending and then seen the Reds unaccountably withhold the final blow.
The writer travelled alone the full length of the lower Pinega Valley after his troops had passed through, finding everywhere the only word necessary to gain accommodations and service was the simple sentence uttered in broken Russian, Yah Amerikanski Kapitan, Kammandant Pinega.
"Other decorations were awarded to Ernest Rand on the Pinega sector and to "Dad" Albertson on the Dvina front, both of them receiving the St. George Cross. The British military medal was to have been given Albertson, but technicalities made it impossible. Several other secretaries were mentioned in despatches by the American and British commands, all of them for service at the fighting front.
One of the most memorable events in the history of a company of Americans in Russia was the march from Archangel to Pinega, one hundred and fifty miles in dead of winter. The first and fourth platoons made the forced march December 18th to 27th inclusive, hurrying to the relief of two platoons of another company with its back to the wall.
Here the American officer was to command the area, organize its defense and cooperate with the Russian civil authorities in raising local volunteers for the defense of the city of Pinega, which, situated at the apex of a great inverted "V" in the river, appeared to be the key point to the military and political situation.
The writer recalls having seen in Pinega in February men who had left their Petchora homes eight months before to go to Archangel for the precious flour provided by the American Red Cross. The civil war had made transportation slow and extremely hazardous. Expeditions were constantly sent out from Archangel to various points with supplies of food, clothing, and medicaments.
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