and out among the beams and shafts, now glowing, now fading. It may be
low in the north or spread over more than half the heavens. It may shift
from east to western quarter of the northern heaven. Never twice the
same, never repeating the delicate pattern, nor staying a minute for the
admirer, it brightens or glimmers, advances or retreats, dies out
gradually or vanishes quickly. Always a phenomenon of wonder to the
soldier who never found a zero night too cold for him to go and see, was
the Aurora Borealis.

XV

MOURNFUL KODISH

Donoghue Brings Valuable Reinforcements--Bolshevik Orator On Emtsa
Bridge--Conditions Detrimental To Morale--Preparations For Attack On
Kodish--Savage Fighting Blade To Blade--Bolsheviks Would Not Give
Way--Desperately Bitter Struggle--We Hold Kodish At Awful Cost--Under
Constant And Severe Barrage--Half-Burned Shell-Gashed Houses Mark Scene
Of Struggle--We Retire From Kodish--Again We Capture Kodish But Can Not
Advance--Death Of Ballard--Counter Attack Of Reds Is Barely
Stemmed--Both Sides See Futility Of Fighting For Kodish--"K" Means
Kodish Where Heroic Blood Of Two Continents Stained Snows Richly.

We left "K" Company and Ballard's platoon of machine gun men, heroes of
the fall fighting at Kodish, resting in Archangel. We have seen that the
early winter was devoted to building defenses against the Reds who
showed a disposition to mass up forces for an attack. "K" Company had
come back to the force in December and with "L" Company gone to reserve
in Seletskoe. Captain Donoghue had become "Major Mike" for all time and
Lt. Jahns commanded the old company. Donoghue had taken back to the
Kodish Force valuable reinforcements in the shape of Smith's and
Tessin's trench mortar sections of "Hq" Company.

It had been in the early weeks of winter during the time that Captain
Heil with "E" Company and the first platoon machine gunners were holding
the Emtsa bridge line, that the Bolsheviki almost daily tried out their
post-armistice propaganda. The Bolo commander sent his pamphlets in
great profusion; he raised a great bulletin board where the American
troops and the Canadian artillery forward observers could read from
their side of the river his messages in good old I. W. W. style and
content; he sent an orator to stand on the bridge at midnight and
harangue the Americans by the light of the Aurora Borealis.

He even went so far as to bring out to the bridge two prisoners whom the
Bolos ha