And this was good. During the nine weeks of this successful defense of the city the Russian White Guards stood all the casualties, and they were heavy. Not an American soldier was hit. Yankee doughboys supported the artillery and stood in reserves and manned blockhouses but not one was wounded. Three hospitals were filled with the wounded White Guards. American soldiers in platoon strength or less were seen constantly on the move from one threatened spot to another, but always, by fate it seemed, it was the Russian ally who was attacked or took the assaulting line in making our advances on the enemy.
On January 8th and again on January 29th and 30th we tried the enemy’s works at Ust Pocha. Both times we took Priluk and Zapocha but were held with great losses before Ust Pocha. At the first attempt Pochezero was taken in a flank attack by the Soyla Lake two-company outguard of Soyla. But this emboldened the Reds to try the winter trail also. On January 24th they nearly took our position.
News of the Red successes at Shenkursk reached the Pinega Valley. We knew the Reds were now about to strike directly at the city. Capt. Akutin’s volunteer force, although but one-third the size of the enemy, was ready to beat the Reds to the attack. With two platoons of Americans and seven hundred White Guards the American commander moved against the advancing Reds. Two other platoons of Americans were on the line of communications and one at Soyla Lake ready for counter-attack. Only one platoon remained in Pinega. It was a ticklish situation, for the Red agitators had raised their heads again and an officer had been assassinated in a nearby village. The mayor was boarding in the American guardhouse and stern retaliation had been meted out to the Red spies.
The Reds stopped our force after we had pushed them back into their fortifications and we had to retire to Peligora, where barbed wire, barricades, trenches and fortified log houses had been prepared for this rather expected last stand before the city of Pinega. For weeks it had looked dubious for the city. Enemy artillery would empty the city of inhabitants, although his infantry would find it difficult to penetrate the wire and other fortifications erected by the Americans and Russians under the able direction of a British officer, Lieut. Augustine of a Canadian engineer unit. Think of chopping holes in the ice and frozen ground, pouring in water and freezing posts in for wire supports! Then came the unexpected. After six days of steady fighting which added many occupants to our hospital and heavy losses to the enemy, he suddenly retreated one night, burning the village of Priluk which we had twice used as field base for our attack on him.
From Pinega we looked at the faint smoke column across the forest deep with snow and breathed easier than we had for many anxious weeks. Our pursuing forces came back with forty loads of enemy supplies they left behind in the various villages we had captured from his forces. Why? Was it operations in his rear of our forces from Soyla, or the American platoon that worried his flank near his artillery, or Shaponsnikoff in the Mezen area threatening his flank, or was it a false story of the arrival of the forces of Kolchak at Kotlas in his rear? Americans here at Pinega, like the vastly more desperate and shattered American forces on the Vaga and at Kodish at the same time, had seen their fate impending and then seen the Reds unaccountably withhold the final blow.
The withdrawal of the Reds to their stronghold at Trufanagora in the second week in February disappointed their sympathizers in Pinega and the Red Leunova area, and from that time on the occupation of the Pinega Valley by the Americans was marked by the cordial co-operation of the whole area. During the critical time when the Reds stood almost at the gates of the city, the Pinega government had yielded to the demands of the volunteer troops that all citizens be drafted for military service. This was done even before the Archangel authorities put its decree forth. Every male citizen between ages of eighteen and forty-five was drafted, called for examination and assigned to recruit drill or to service of supply or transportation. There was enthusiastic response of the people.
The square opposite the cathedral resounded daily to the Russki recruit sergeant’s commands and American platoons drilling, too, for effect on the Russians, saw the strange new way of turning from line to column and heard with mingled respect and amusement the weird marching song of the Russian soldier. And one day six hundred of those recruits, in obedience to order from Archangel, went off by sleigh to Kholmogora to be outfitted and assigned to units of the new army of the Archangel Republic. Among these recruits was a young man, heir-apparent to the million roubles of the old merchant prince of Pinega, whose mansion was occupied by the Americans for command headquarters and billets for all the American officers engaged in the defense of the city. This young man had tried in the old Russian way to evade the local government official’s draft. He had tried again at Capt. Akutin’s headquarters to be exempted but that democratic officer, who understood the real meaning of the revolution to the Russian people and who had their confidence, would not forfeit it by favoring the rich man’s son. And when he came to American headquarters to argue that he was needed more in the officers’ training camp at Archangel than in the ranks of recruits, he was told that revolutionary Russia would surely recognize his merit and give him a chance if he displayed marked ability along military lines, and wished good luck. He drilled in the ranks. And Pinega saw it.
The Americans had finished their mission in Pinega. In place of the three hundred dispirited White Guards was a well trained regiment of local Russian troops which, together with recruits, numbered over two thousand. Under the instruction of Lieut. Wright of “M” Company, who had been trained as an American machine gun officer, the at first half-hearted Russians had developed an eight-gun machine gun unit of fine spirit, which later distinguished itself in action, standing between the city and the Bolsheviks in March when the Americans had left to fight on another front. Also under the instruction of a veteran Russian artillery officer the two field-pieces, Russian 75’s, had been manned largely by peasant volunteers who had served in the old Russian artillery units. In addition, a scouting unit had been developed by a former soldier who had been a regimental scout under the old Russian Government. Pinega was quiet and able to defend itself.
Compared with the winter story of wonderful stamina in enduring hardships at Shenkursk and Kodish and the sanguine fighting of those fronts, this defense of Pinega looks tame. Between the lines of the story must be read the things that made this a shining page that shows the marked ability of Americans to secure the co-operation of the Russian local government in service of supply and transportation and billeting and even in taking up arms and assuming the burdens of fighting their own battles.
Those local companies of well-trained troops were not semi-British but truly Russian. They never failed their dobra Amerikanski soldats, whose close order drill on the streets of Pinega was a source of inspiration to the Russian recruits.