The first day’s fight began, on the morning of the last day of March with a surprise attack at the rear, cutting our communications off, ambushing two parties of officers and men, and threatening to capture the two 75’s which were guarded by a single platoon of “M” Company and two Russian machine guns. The artillery officer reversed his guns and gave the enemy direct fire, shrapnel set for muzzle burst. Another platoon reinforced the one and a Lewis gun Corporal distinguished himself by engaging the two Bolo machine guns that had been set in the road to the rear. The guns were held.
Meanwhile under cover of this attack at the rear a heavy assault was delivered against the forward blockhouses and barricades. Fortunately the Reds directed their attack at the points held by the Americans rather than at the four flank positions held by the green Archangel troops. The shooting was good that day for the veteran Yanks and they repulsed all attacks at front and rear with terrible losses to the enemy. Night found the Americans shaking hands with themselves for being in a tightly fortified place and carrying plenty more ammunition to every firing point where the enemy was expected to appear again the next day. According to the prisoners taken this was only a preliminary attack to develop our lines of fire. The next day he would envelop the little force in great numbers.
He did. At day-break, 3:30 a. m., April 1st, he threw his weight into three waves of assault on the front line and attacked later in the rear. The stoutly fortified men did not budge but worked every death dealing weapon with great severity. Rifle grenades came into use as the enemy by sheer weight of masses surged within their 200-yard range. The machine guns faltered only once and then a Yankee Corporal, William Russell, Company “M” 339th Infantry, won for himself a posthumous American citation and D. S. C. for his heroic deed in regaining fire control by engaging the enemy machine gun which crawled up to short range in the thick woods with his Lewis gun. The Russian artillery observer distinguished himself by his accuracy in covering the enemy assaulting lines with shrapnel. As on the preceding day every attacking line of the enemy was repulsed. And darkness closed the scene at 9:00 p. m. with the little force still intact but standing to arms all night, front, flanks and rear.
The cold was severe but the Bolsheviki lying on their arms out in the snow where their assaulting lines faltered and dug in, suffered even more and many crawled in to give themselves up rather than freeze. Back to their camp they could not go for they had been promised the usual machine gun reception if they retired from the fight. That probably accounts for their commanding officer’s riding up on his white horse to his death. He thought his men had won their objective when fire ceased for an hour in the middle of the day, and he rode almost to our barricade.
This was the fiercest fighting. The all night’s vigil did not bring a renewal of the attack till after the Bolo artillery gave the position two thorough rakings which destroyed one of the barricades and drove everyone to shelter behind the pine trees. Then the infantry attack petered out before noon. This was the day that “H” Company and the Yorks again attacked on the other side of Bolsheozerki, with the severe losses mentioned elsewhere. But their attack helped the badly wearied “M” Company who stood bearing the brunt of attack in the Bolo’s road to Obozerskaya. Their artillery vigorously shelled the Reds in Bolsheozerki and felt out his advance lines with patrols but were content mainly to stand fast to their works and congratulate themselves that their losses had been so slight after so terrific a struggle. The horse shoes had again been with that outfit of Americans. Three dead, three missing in action, one wounded and three shell shocked. The Yorks and Russians suffered no casualties. The ground was covered with Bolshevik dead.
On the night of April 4th the American Company was relieved by a company of Yorks and an additional company of Russians, and for a few more days the Bolos occupied Bolsheozerki but they had shot their bolt. They made no more attempts to break through to the railroad and take Obozerskaya. Savagely the Red Guards had three times resisted attempts to dislodge them from Bolsheozerki. Just as stubbornly and with terrible deadliness the little force at Verst 18 had held the Reds in Bolsheozerki when they tried to move upon Obozerskaya. And when the April sun began to soften the winter roads into slush he had to feint an attack on Volshenitsa and escape between two days from Bolsheozerki, returning to Shelaxa.
The Americans had never had such shooting. They knew the enemy losses were great from the numbers of bodies found and from statements of prisoners and deserters. Later accounts of our American soldiers who were ambushed and captured, together with statements that appeared in Bolshevik newspapers placed the losses very high. The old Russian general massed up in all over seven thousand men in this spectacular and well-nigh successful thrust. And his losses from killed in action, wounded, missing and frost-bitten were admitted by the Bolshevik reports to be over two thousand.
It was in this fighting that Bolshevik prisoners were taken in almost frozen condition to the American Y. M. C. A. man’s tent for a drink of hot chocolate which he was serving to the Americans, Yorks, Russians and all during those tight days. And the genial Frank Olmstead was recognized by the prisoners as a “Y” man who had been in the interior of Russia in the days when Russians were not fighting Americans but Germans.
To the doughboy or medic or engineer who stood there at bay those three invincible days, Bolsheozerki means deep snow, bitter cold, cheerless tents, whiz-bangs, high explosive, shrap, rat-tat-tat interminable, roar and crash, and zipp and pop of explosive bullet, with catch-as-catch-can at eats, arms lugged off with cases of ammunition, constant tension, that all ended up with luck to the plucky.