On January 19, 1919, the big fight began. The Bolsheviki five thousand strong attacked Ustpadenga. They had three or four times as many guns as we had, including some long-range artillery that was far beyond the reach of our guns. They had perfect observation on our positions and telephone wires clear around to our rear. They picked off every billet, up one side of the street and down the other. We had no secrets. And their infantry came up in excellent form and spirit, covered with perfect white camouflage and supported with machine-guns and pompoms. Our men drove them back and held them off for days until the British command ordered them to fall back to Shenkursk. One platoon of forty men had thirty-two casualties, and every man in that small force had to do the work of ten men throughout that terrible week. Fighting all the way back, Company A, 339th American Infantry, and the Center Section 38th Battery, Canadian Field Artillery, dragged themselves minus two guns into Shenkursk on the night of the 25th. During that day Shenkursk had been bombarded from four sides and we knew that we were completely surrounded, although no Bolshevik infantry had attacked here. There were no reinforcements to be had. Some of our Russian conscripts had gone over to the enemy. There was no hope of relief from the north in case we should be besieged. There was nothing to prevent his big guns reducing Shenkursk to ruins. We had Company C here as well as Company A and felt confident of our ability to hold off the Bolshevik infantry in any numbers, but his artillery had us beaten, because outranged, from the start.
So it was decided to evacuate that night by an unused road that we hoped the Bolsheviki had overlooked. By very clever and efficient work on the part of the British command the evacuation of Shenkursk was successfully carried out without the loss of a man, and we were followed by hundreds of civilians, who discovered our movement in the night. The next morning when we were well to the north we heard his guns open up on Shenkursk. He did not know we had escaped him. He had yet to learn that we had left behind for him one hundred days' rations for two thousand men, great stores of ammunition and ordinance, all our personal kits, and several spiked guns.
By night of the 26th we reached Shagavari, having made forty versts on a single track sled road, walking two abreast and stretched out for miles. Here nearly every one snatched a little sleep, as we found two platoons of Company D who held off the vanguard of the pursuit which had begun to catch up to us. The civilian column, swelled now to thousands, poured out into the road ahead of us, a long winding snake-like trail of black in a white world, making for somewhere north. We evacuated Shagavari on the afternoon of the 27th and stood for our new front at Vistafka, sixteen versts north, with Kitsa seven versts to the rear as headquarters.
During this retreat the temperature had been from thirty-six to ten below zero. We had brought out ninety-seven wounded and sick and these were sent on to Bereznik and Archangel—three hundred miles on pony sleds traveling day and night. The civilian refugees were partly Russians who had conspicuously identified themselves with us and so were afraid of the Bolsheviki, partly those who felt that they would be surer of food behind our lines, there were some personal friends of soldiers, and yet they were mostly peasants whom we had been compelled to put out of their houses for military reasons.
Our new front consisted in all of eight villages. At first a barricade of pine branches and snow, then some logs, then some block houses, then some wire, after a while a dug-out or two. The fighting here at Vistafka was the hardest and most continuous of the winter. Every day there was some shelling, and five major attacks were made before March first when we were forced to make Kitsa our forward position. The fighting at Vistafka was done by companies A, C, D, and F, by Royal Scots and Kings Liverpools, by Russians, and by the splendid Canadian artillery units who were fortunately reinforced by a 4.5 howitzer E.F.A. The old artillery supremacy of the Bolsheviki remained unchanged, however, and while seven thousand infantry, having surrounded Vistafka could not take it, the guns did finally reduce it to untenability.
From March 1 to April 20, Kitsa was the front line, with Maximofskaya for support on our right, and our guns at Ignatofskaya. These villages lay only one and two versts apart. We were preparing Malobereznik, seven versts in the rear, for defense, and fell back here on Easter Sunday. This stubborn resistance on our part was important because it was absolutely necessary to hold the enemy here or he would cut off the whole Dvina column and take Bereznik where we had accumulated great stores of supplies and munitions. Bereznik was his goal and the Vaga River was his road. He hammered away daily at Toulgas, our Dvina River front, but that was to keep Company B and our other forces there. He could not hope to take it.
The "Y" was always on the job.
These Canadians fought in France before they went to Russia.
On May first, the international labor holiday, he opened up on every front, making the supreme effort of the year. His heaviest blow fell on Malobereznik. The ice had begun to run out of the Vaga and the upper Dvina enabling him to mount guns on barges while our gunboats were still frozen in at Archangel. When he had put five thousand shells into Malobereznik and burned down every house, his infantry came on only to be fearfully cut up and sent back, again and again. He was deeply disappointed. The thing was inexplicable. So on May fifth he came again. This time with eight thousand shells as a prelude. And when the last futile wave of his infantry had gone to pieces under our fire and we had taken prisoner hundreds of his men who had been sent to surround us, we knew that he had done his worst, and the winter campaign was practically at an end.
VI