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Ever hear of the "lost platoon of "D" Company?" Like vagabonds they looked when finally their platoon leader, Lt. Wallace, cut loose from the British officer and reported back to Lieut.-Col. Corbley on the Vaga. But the erratic Reds would not settle down to winter quarters. They had frustrated the great push on Plesetskaya with apparent ease.
And they had been constantly worried by the gallant Russian Couriers du Bois, who fearlessly stayed out in the woods and nipped the Bolo forces in flank or rear. And so they withdrew. There was little more fighting on this front. The Reds were content to let well enough alone. Kodish in ruins was theirs. Plesetskaya was safe from threats on that hard fought road.
Donovan's combination company of two platoons of "G" and "M" who were all set for the smash toward Emtsa and Plesetskaya found their orders suddenly countermanded on December 31st and settled down to the routine winter defensive.
Plesetskaya at that moment was indeed of immense value to the Reds. It was the railroad base of their four columns that were holding up the left front of their Northern Army. But they were discouraged. Our patrols and spies sent into Plesetskaya vicinity reported and stories of deserters and wounded men all indicated that the Reds were getting ready to evacuate Plesetskaya.
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.
The forces of the railroad had been checked near Emtsa, far above Plesetskaya. The other troops on the Dvina had by this time retired to Toulgas and as a consequence the smallest force in the expedition, the Vaga Column, was now in the most advanced position of these three fronts, a very dangerous and poorly chosen military position.
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.
Trotsky's forces could be readily supplied from that city and his forces could be swiftly shifted from front to front to attack the widely dispersed forces of the Allied Expedition. It was seen now clearly that the fall offensive should have been pushed through to Plesetskaya by the converging Onega, Railroad and Kodish Forces.
Meanwhile "K" Company had met the enemy on the Seletskoe-Kodish front as will be related later, and plans were being laid for a converging attack by the Kodish, Onega and Railroad columns upon Plesetskaya. "L" Company was sent to support "K" Company and the Railroad Force marked time till the other two columns could get into position for the joint drive.
"On April 5th we left Plesetskaya, after saying good-bye to the English Chaplain who seemed greatly pleased that he was to get his freedom and had his pockets full of Bolshevik propaganda. We reached Naundoma after a night of terrible cold in the unheated car and during the next two days on the railway journey to Vologda had nothing to eat.
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