enney and Grewe of "K" Company gave their lives that
night in moving courageously among their men. Frost bites cruelly added
to the miseries of those long night hours after the fighting lulled at
eleven o'clock.

Morning discovered the force digging in. The odds were all against them.
Again they were standing in Kodish where after personal reconnaisance
Col. Lucas, their nominal superior officer, commanding Vologda Force,
had said no troops should be stationed as it was strategically
untenable. But a new British officer had come into command of the
Seletskoe detachment, and perhaps that accounts for the foolhardy order
that the doughty old Donoghue received; "Hold what you have got and
advance no further south; prepare defenses of Kodish." What an irony of
fate. His force had been the only one of the various forces that had
actually put any jab into the push on Plesetskaya. Now they were to be
penalized for their very desperately won success.

The casualties had been costly and had been aggravated by the rapid
attacks of the frost upon hands and feet. In temperature way below zero
the men lay in the snow on the outskirts and in that lowly village under
machine gun fire and shrapnel. They undermined the houses to get warmth
and protection in the dugouts thus constructed under them. Barricades
they built; and chipped out shallow trenches in the frozen ground. Again
the trench mortar came into good use. A platoon of "K" and a platoon of
"E" found themselves partly encircled by a strong force of Reds, with a
single mortar near them to support. This mortar although clogged
repeatedly with snow and ice worked off two hundred fifty shells on the
Reds and finally spotted the enemy machine gun positions and silenced
them, contributing greatly to the silencing of the enemy fire and to his
discouragement.

The firer of this mortar, Pvt. Barone of "Hq" Company, who worked
constantly, a standing target for the Bolos, near the end of the fight
fell with a bullet in his leg. And so the Americans scrapped on. And
they did hold Kodish. Seven were killed and thirty-five wounded, two
mortally, in this useless fight. Lt. O'Brien of "E" Company was severely
wounded and at this writing is still in hospital. "The memories of these
brave fellows," says Lt. Jack Commons, "who went as the price exacted,
Lt. Berger of "E" Company, Sgts. Kenney and Grewe and many other steady
and courageous and loyal pals through the months of hardship that had