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And while the doughboys on the railroad and Kodish fronts in the fall were occasionally to run up against the hard-fighting Russian sailors who had fled south to Petrograd and volunteered their services to Trotsky to go north and fight the Allied expeditionary forces, these doughboys doing guard duty in Archangel over the remnants of stores and supplies which the Bolo had not already stolen or sunk in the Dvina River, were constantly menaced by these surly, scowling sailors at Solombola and in Archangel.
I do not remember being carried, but if any of my big uncles gave me a lift, I am sure I like them all the more for it. The Dvina River swallowed the Polota many times a day, yet the lesser stream flooded the universe on one occasion.
The advance began in the last days of August, and on 1 September Von Hutier forced the passage of the Dvina at Uexküll, eighteen miles above Riga, which the Russians abandoned on the following day. Friedrichstadt fell next, and the Russians retired from Jacobstadt on the 21st.
So we sped up into the White Sea and into the winding channels of the broad Dvina. For miles and miles we passed along the shores dotted with fishing villages and with great lumber camps. The distant domes of the cathedrals in Archangel came nearer and nearer. At last the water front of that great lumber port of old Peter the Great lay before us strange and picturesque.
It is surrounded by an earthwork fortification, having at one time undergone a siege during the war waged by Charles XII against Peter the Great. The corps commanded by Ney, Murat and Montbrun, in order to get from Drissa to Witepsk, had built a pontoon bridge across the Dvina, opposite Polotsk, which they left for Oudinot's corps, which was going to take the road for St.Petersburg.
Marshal Oudinot had left the army in a perilous state: part of his force driven back to the edge of the river, and the rest scattered amongst the gardens where they were firing at random: an inadequate lay-out of guns on the ramparts: the streets of the town cluttered with wagons, baggage, sutlers and wounded, all in complete confusion, while the troops had no means of retreat, should they be overcome, other than the pontoon bridge across the Dvina, a bridge which was very narrow and in such a bad state that the water was six inches over the planking of its platform.
On the road between Kolomea and Dalatyn the Russians captured the village of Sadzadka at the point of the bayonet. Southeast of Riga and at many points on the front between Postavy and Vishnieff, further partial attacks by the Russians were repulsed on July 5, 1916. On the Dvina front and the Dvinsk position and further south there were also lively artillery engagements at numerous points.
The coming of the troops prevented the counter coup of the Reds. They could only make feeble resistance. The passage up the delta of the Dvina River and the actual landing while exciting to the jackies met with little opposition.
Each man on board was aching to set foot on dry land once more and would gladly have marched to any front in order to avoid the dull monotony aboard ship, with nothing of interest to view but the gleaming spires of the cathedrals or the cold, gray northern sky, but there is an end to all such trials, and late that evening we received word that our battalion was to embark on several river barges to proceed up the Dvina River.
Furthermore, our artillery commanded a good view of the river, which was all important, for as the ice was now moving out we knew that the enemy gunboats would soon come steaming down river with nothing but land batteries to stop them since the mouth of the Dvina and the White Sea would not be free from ice for several weeks to come, thus making it impossible for our gunboats there to get down to these positions.
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