exhausted and
beaten before they were anywhere near Emtsa. American Machine Gun men at
Verst 445 front reported that S. B. A. L. deserters had gone over to the
Bolo lines. The Reds on December 29th and 30th became very active with
their artillery. Reports came in of the failure of the Russian-British
force that was to attack Tarsevo, and of the counter attack of the Reds
in the Onega Valley. So the Liverpools and the French company and
Winslow's "I" Company and Lt. Donovan's combination company of two
platoons of "G" and "M" who were all set for the smash toward Emtsa and
Plesetskaya found their orders suddenly countermanded on December 31st
and settled down to the routine winter defensive.

In order to facilitate troop movements and to make command more compact,
the French Colonel in command of the railroad force arranged that the
Americans should man the sectors of defense during the month of February
all alone and that the French battalion should occupy in March. This
worked out fairly satisfactory. "L" Company and half of "E" Company,
after rest at Archangel from their desperate work at Kodish, joined "I"
Company and half of "G" Company on the railroad under Major Nichols,
where an uneventful but busy month was passed in patrolling, instruction
and so forth.

Every sector of the railroad front was made practically impregnable to
infantry attack by the energetic work of "A" and "B" Company engineers
and the Pioneer platoon of Headquarters Company. And the dugouts which
they constructed at Verst 445 proved during the intermittent artillery
shelling of January-March to be proof against the biggest H. E. the Bolo
threw. Major Nichols sure drove the job of fortification through with
thoroughness and secured a very formidable array of all sorts of weapons
of defense. A great naval gun that could shoot twenty versts was mounted
on an American flat car and taken to his popular field headquarters at
Verst 455, where it was the pet of the crew of Russian sailors. And
constant instruction and practice with the various weapons of the
British, French and Russian types, which were in the hands of the
Americans gave them occupation during the many days of tension on this
winter front, where they daily expected the same thing to happen that
was overpowering their comrades on the River Fronts. And when at the
very end of the winter and the break of spring, the Reds did come in
great force the defenses were so strong and well manne