The battle continued. Finally the withdrawal of the Couriers du Bois and the coming through of the Avda Battalion of the Reds, together with Red reinforcements from Kodlozerskaya-Pustin, reduced Donoghue’s force to a stern defensive and he retreated at five o’clock in good order to the old lines on the river.
The half-burned and scarred buildings of Kodish mournfully reminded the soldier of the losses that had decimated the ranks of the forces that fought and refought over the village. Into their old strongholds they retired, keeping a sharp lookout for the expected retaliation of the Reds. It came two days later. And it nearly accounted for the entire force, although that was not so remarkable, Lt. Commons, the Major’s adjutant, says, because so many even of the shorter engagements on this and other fronts had been equally narrow squeaks for the Americans and their Allies.
The Reds in this fight reached the second line of defense with their flanking forces, and bombarded it with new guns brought up from Plesetskaya. Meanwhile, all along the front they attacked in great force and succeeded in taking one blockhouse, killing the seven gallant Liverpool lads who fought up all their ammunition and defied the Bolo steel to steel. But the remainder of the front held, largely through the effective work of the American trench mortar and the deadly machine gunners shooting for revenge of the death of Ballard, their nervy leader, held fast their strongholds.
At last the Reds found their losses too severe to continue the attack. 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.
This was the last fight for the Americans on the Kodish Front. “K” Company had already looked for the last time on the old battle scenes and at the wooden crosses which marked the graves of their heroic dead, and had gone to Archangel to rest, later to duty on the lines of communication at Kholmogori and Yemetskoe. Now the trench mortar platoon and “M. G.” platoon went to the railroad front, and Major Donoghue was the last one to leave the famous Kodish Front, where he had won distinction. It was now an entirely British-Russian front and the American officer who had remained voluntarily to lead in the last big fight because of his complete knowledge of the battle area now went to well-earned rest in Archangel.
In closing the story of the Americans on the Kodish Front we turn to the words written us by Lt. John A. Commons:
“Thus the Kodish Front was really home to the men of “K” Company, for most of their stay in the northern land. To “E” and “L” and Machine Gun and Trench Mortar “Hq” platoon it was also, but for a shorter period, their only shelter from the rains of the fall and the bite of the winter. “K”, however, meant Kodish. There they had their first fight, there their dead were buried. There they had their last battle. And there their memories long will return, mostly disagreeable to be sure, but still representing very definitely their part, performed with honesty, courage and distinction, in the big work that was given the Yankee doughboys to do ‘on the other side.’
“The scraps mentioned here were the tougher part of the actions at the front. In between the line should be read first the cold as it was felt only out in the Arctic woods, away from the villages and their warm houses. Then, too, everything was one ceaseless and endless repetition of patrolling and scouting. Many were the miles covered by these lads from Detroit and other cities and towns of America among the soft snow and the evergreens. Many a time did these small parties have their own little battles way out in the woods. Much has been said here and there of the influence of Bolshevik propaganda upon the American forces. It is true that these soldiers got a lot of it, and it is true that these soldiers read nearly all that they got. But it is true also that there was not a single incident of the whole campaign which could with honesty be attributed to this propaganda. On the Kodish Front it is quite safe to say that there was more of this ludicrous literature—not ludicrous to the Russian peasant, but very much so to the average American—taken in than on any other. Scarce a patrol went out which did not bring back something with which to while away a free hour or so, or with which to start a fire. It was always welcome.
“But it was seriously treated in the same spirit that moved a corporal of Ballard’s machine gun platoon who felt strongly the discrepancy between the remarks of the Bolshevik speaker on the bridge to the effect that his fellows were moved by brotherly love for the Yanks and the FACT that nine out of every ten Bolshevik cartridges captured had the bullets clipped. The corporal reciprocated later with a machine gun, not for the love but for the bullets.
“So they stuck and fought, suffering through the bitter months of winter just below the Arctic Circle, where the winter day is in minutes and the night seems a week. And there is not one who is not proud that he was once a “side kicker” and a “buddy” to some of those fine fellows of the various units who unselfishly and gladly gave the last that a man has to give for any cause at all.”