Flesh and blood can stand only so much. Terrible was the strain. No wonder that on the seventh day of this hell a lieutenant with a single platoon holding the village after receiving magnified reports from his patrols of strong Bolo flanking forces, imagined a general attack on Kodish. The French Colonel, V. O. C. O., had said Kodish should not be held. And in the night he set fire to the ill-fated village and retreated to the river. Swift came the command from the fiery old Donoghue: “Back to that village with me, the Reds shall not have it.” And his men reoccupied it before dawn. But no one but they can ever know how they suffered. The cold twenty below zero stung them in the village half burned. Their beloved old commander’s words stung them. Hateful to them was the certainty that he was grimly carrying out a written order superior indeed to the French Colonel’s V. O. but which was not based on a true knowledge of the situation by the far-distant British officer who went over Col. Lucas’ head and ordered Kodish held. Could they hold on? They did, with a display of fortitude that became known to the world and which makes every soldier who was in the expedition thrill with honest pride and admiration for them. The Americans held it till they were relieved by a company of veteran fighters, the King’s Liverpools, supported by a half company of “Dyer’s Battalion” of Russians.
In passing let it be remarked that the English officer, Captain Smerdon, soon succeeded in convincing the British O. C. Seletskoe that Kodish was no place for any body of soldiers to hold. He gallantly held it but only temporarily, for soon he and the Canadians and trench mortar and machine gun men and the Dyer’s Battalion men were back under Major Donoghue holding the old Emtsa river line and its two supporting blockhouse lines.
Our badly shattered “E” Company and “K” Company went to reserve in Seletskoe. The former company in the middle of January went to Archangel for a ten day rest, and will be heard of later in the winter on another desperate front. Old “K” Company was glad to just find warm bunks in Seletskoe and regain their old fighting pep that had been exhausted in the New Year’s period of protracted fighting under desperate odds. Here let us insert the story of a two-man detachment of those redoubtable trench mortar men who rivaled their comrades’ exploits with rifle and bayonet or machine gun. Corp. Andriks and Pvt. Forthe of “Hq” Company trench mortar platoon were loaned for a few days to the British officer at Shred Makrenga to instruct his Russian troops in the use of the Stokes mortars. But the two Yanks in the two months they were on that hard-beset front spent most of their time in actually fighting their guns rather than in teaching the Russians. This is only one of many cases of the sort, where small detachments of American soldiers sent off temporarily on a mission, were kept by the British officers on active duty. They did such sterling service.
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. They had the Allied warriors now ill at ease and nervous.
The trench mortar men and the machine gun men can tell many an interesting story of those January days on the Kodish Front serving there with the mixed command of Canadians and King’s Liverpools and Dyer’s Battalion of Russians. These latter were an uncertain lot of change-of heart Bolshevik prisoners and deserters and accused spies and so forth, together with Russian youths from the streets of Archangel, who for the uniform with its brass buttons and the near-British rations of food and tobacco had volunteered to “help save Russia.” By the rugged old veteran, Dyer, they had been licked into a semblance of fighting trim. This was the force which Major Donoghue had at command when again came the order to take Kodish. This time it was not a great offensive push to jab at the Red Army vitals, but it was a defensive thrust, a desperate operation to divert attention of the Reds from their successful winter operations against the Shred Makrenga front. Two platoons of Couriers du Bois, the well trained Russian White Guards under French tutelage, and those same Royal Marines that had been with him the first time Kodish was taken in the bloody fight in the fall. And Lt. Ballard’s gallant platoon of machine gun men came to relieve the first “M. G.” platoon and to join the drive. They had an old score to settle with the Bolos, too.
Again the American officer led the attack on Kodish and this time easily took the village, for the Reds were wise enough not to try to hold it. Their first lines beyond the village yielded to his forces after stiff fighting, but the old 12th Verst Pole position held three times against the assaults of the Allied troops.
Meanwhile the courageous “French-Russians” had marched fourteen miles through the woods, encircling the Bolo flank, and fell upon his artillery position, captured the guns and turned them upon the Red reserves at Avda. But the other forces could not budge the Reds from Verst 12 and so the Couriers du Bois, after holding their position against counter attack all the afternoon, blew up the Red field pieces and retreated in the face of a fresh Bolo battalion from Avda.
And during the afternoon the Americans who were engaged in this fight lost an officer whose consummate courage and wonderful cheerfulness had won him the adoration of his men and the respect and love of the officers who worked with him.
Brave, energetic, cheerful old Ballard’s death filled the Machine Gun Company and the whole regiment with mingled feelings of sorrow and pride. Over and beyond the call of duty he went to his death while striving to save the fortune of the day that was going against his doughty old leader Donoghue. He did not know that the Liverpool Company had left a hole in the line by finding a trail to the rear after their second gallant but fruitless assault, and he went forward of his own initiative, with a Russian Lewis gun squad to find position where he could plant one of his machine guns to help the S. B. A. L. platoons and Liverpools whom old Donoghue was coming up to lead in another charge on the Bolo position.
Lt. Ballard ran into the exposed hole in the line and pushed forward to a place where his whole squad was ambushed and the Russian Lewis gunner was the only one to get out. He returned with his gun and dropped among the Americanski machine gunners, telling of the death of Ballard and the Russian soldiers at the point of the Bolshevik bayonets. Lt. Commons of “K” Company declares that Ballard met his death at that place by getting into the hole in the line which he supposed was held by English and Russians and by being caught in a cross fire of Bolo Colt machine guns. Whichever way it was, his body was never seen nor recovered. Hope that he might have been taken as a wounded prisoner by the Reds still lived in the hearts of his comrades. And all officers and men of the American forces who came into Detroit the following July vainly wished to believe with the girl who piteously scanned every group that landed, that Ballard might yet be heard from as a prisoner in Russia. No doubt he was killed.