A narrow threadlike swath trailed through the stunted starveling forest to the lowering gloom of dull, laden skies, and the hearts of the fresh, battle eager soldiers swelled big as they gazed far down the gleaming rails to the murky mystery of No Man's Land.
There was in the air a peculiar, dispiriting quality, a brooding, pensive, Russian note that cannot be made known except to those who have felt it. Stillness, heavy almost to the point of suffocation, the shroud of skies that hover mourning on the trees, and the shadow of unlifted gloom that reaches out from the forest and bears down upon the spirit with deep intangible melancholy.
Suddenly the quiet was broken by the distant boom of a heavy gun. Then an ominous whine circled from the ground, approached snarling stridently high in air, and fell with a crumbling roar seemingly very near the new soldiers, who, on command, scampered to cover from their erect column of twos on the naked embankment.
A cordon of strongpoints had been constructed around the village, Obozerskaya, and these the Americans took over, tensed for the impending battle.
But inexplicable days passed, and the Bolo did not come. There was not even a feint of attack, and the Allied Command, with short memory for the hazardous nature of its extended position, the apprehension it had felt only a little while before, began to chafe for action, became impatient; again the military fetish of an "offensive campaign" grew, waxed strong, became assertive once more, and again the ambitious vision arose to take Vologda before the snow.
"All patrols must be aggressive," directed a secret order of the officer in command, "and it must be impressed on all ranks that we are fighting an offensive war and not a defensive one."
So American officers, directed by ranking British officers, moved their companies forward to the "offensive war," and four miles beyond Obozerskaya, where a post on the railway bore the Russian characters "Verst Four Sixty Six," they closed with the Bolos and drove them beyond the bridge at Verst Four Sixty Four.
In the counter-attack that soon followed, one platoon of the Americans, separated in the swamps of the woods, was nearly enveloped. It fought until all ammunition was exhausted, and then the officer, Lieutenant Gordon Reese, had no thought of submission. After the last cartridge was gone, the bayonets still remained, and after the bayonet, came doubled fists. At word of command, the platoon fixed bayonets, went forward with a yelling charge, broke down the Bolsheviks by their sheer courage and impetuosity, and the endangered men were able to join the main body of their comrades, repulsing the attack.
Before Verst Four Fifty Eight, Allied aggressive operations were resumed when one of the French companies came back from Archangel to assist in moving against the strong enemy works. There was a bridge at Verst Four Fifty Eight. If this was destroyed, it would take a long time to rebuild and seriously impede the "offensive war" down the Railway. It was, therefore, intended to drive the Bolos back so violently that they would have no chance to detonate the important bridge.
The plan of attack was for a three-fold movement: front, right flank and rear. The French company, supported by the artillery of the armored train, an American machine gun section, and twenty-one Americans, with three Stokes mortars (who were not entirely sure of the use of these weapons) were to hit out at front. The rest of the Americans, two infantry companies, were to form as many detachments and rush the enemy from his east flank and rear at his furthermost trench back at Verst Four Fifty Five.