So Kotlas, which had been the original objective of the River Column, became the objective once more. The Admiralty dispatched to Archangel a flotilla of gunboats, monitors, mine sweepers and many other craft for the transportation of troops and supplies to act as auxiliaries for the infantry, and again the Dvina became a scene of skeltering preparations for war.
On the 20th June, the disengaging offensive began; the British and Archangel troops attacked across the river from the Allied position at Toulgas, and gained complete victory, capturing two hundred prisoners, many machine guns and three field guns. But now word came from the south that the Bolsheviks there had concentrated in great forces against Kolchak and had utterly routed him, that he was fleeing east, had already retired as far as Yetakerinburg, and all hope would have to be given up of effecting a junction with the Siberian army.
So the importance of taking Kotlas waned, but even if Kolchak had not failed the advance could have gone little further, for it was found that due to the light snowfall of the previous winter, the waters of Dvina were low, beyond all precedent, and the British flotilla could follow no farther upstream.
Most discouraging of all, treachery broke out in all quarters from the allied Russian troops. On the 7th July a battalion held in reserve on the river mutinied in the night and murdered three British and four Russian officers as they slept; four other officers were seriously wounded. On the 22nd July the whole Onega detachment went over to the Bolsheviks, and the safety of Archangel became seriously jeopardized from this west port. Nearly at the same time British firing squads suppressed a revolt on the Railway front before the Russian mutineers gained the upper hand.
Many of the British officers had passed through all the harrowing fires of France, but here was a form of peril new in the experience of the most hardened ones—base betrayal by the sentinel who kept the black watches of the night, and treachery in the heart of the citadel from hands stretched forth in friendship. The brave man, standing on his feet and facing the end, does not fear advancing death; but now it lurked in hiding, it descended in the night and struck from the dark upon unconscious sleep, so that tired soldiers dared not rest, and the strain snapped nerves of steel.
A few weeks before these outrages, Toulgas was given over to a defense that was entirely Russian. Shortly afterward, in the uncertain light of early morning, on the 25th April, there was a wild commotion, and, following interminable confused firing that sounded from all quarters of the village streets, a lamp message flashed across the Dvina to the Allied position at Kurgoman: "We are completely surrounded; the Bolos are attacking in five places." Shortly thereafter, through a fusillade of bullets, a Russian officer, with two men, effected a passage of the river in a small boat, and told the shameful story of how nine officers had been murdered as they slept and bloody Toulgas delivered by faithless Russian soldiers to the waiting Bolsheviks in the woods. Through a prodigy of bravery by a handful of loyal artillery men, the guns were pulled back to Shusiga, ten miles downstream, but it was not until the middle of May that Toulgas was retaken, and while it stayed in enemy hands, the Allied position was alarmingly critical with the right flank over the Dvina completely turned.
Major-General Sir William E. Ironside
Thus, with mutiny breaking out in all quarters, the virulent propaganda of the Bolsheviks bore malignant fruit beyond their most sanguine hopes, and the situation was menacing enough to alarm the most conservative in Allied Councils. Had it not been for the two splendid reinforcing brigades, the often imperiled life of the Expedition would have been destroyed at last. The British War Office for once became thoroughly apprehensive. General, Lord Rawlinson was sent to preside over the leavetaking, and fresh reinforcements, two battalions of infantry, two machine gun companies, two batteries of Royal Field Artillery, one engineer company, and five tanks were rushed to Archangel from England.