of much needed troops.

Sharp on the hour of midnight April 19th "F" Company silently withdrew
from the front line positions and started across the river, the ice of
which was already beginning to move. As they marched through the inky
darkness of the woods the dummy guns began discharging which kept the
enemy deceived as to our movements.

As the last man crossed the river a rocket went up as a signal to the
Engineers that "F" Company and the other infantry units had arrived
safely at Ignatavskaya. The following moment the entire surrounding
country shook to a series of terrific explosions both at Kitsa and
Maximovskaya and then a great red glare emblazoned the sky as the two
oil soaked villages burst into flame. The engineers quickly joined the
party and from then on until the following morning they continued in a
forced march back to prepared positions at Mala-Beresnik and Nizhni
Kitsa on opposite sides of the river about eight versts in rear of
Kitsa.

The positions here were a godsend after our experience of the past two
months in the open and exposed positions further up the river. Here for
more than two months hundreds of Russian laborers had been busily
engaged in stringing mile after mile of barbed wire about the positions
and constructed practically bomb-proof shelters. Furthermore, our
artillery commanded a good view of the river, which was all important,
for as the ice was now moving out we knew that the enemy gunboats would
soon come steaming down river with nothing but land batteries to stop
them since the mouth of the Dvina and the White Sea would not be free
from ice for several weeks to come, thus making it impossible for our
gunboats there to get down to these positions.

And the ice went out of the upper river with a crunching roar. The Reds
came on with their water attacks, but with little success. The Canadian
artillery was well prepared and so well manned that it beat the Red
flotilla badly. Fortunately the Bolo gunners were not as accurate as on
former occasions. So losses from this source were comparatively few.

The lower Dvina was unusually rapid in clearing this spring. The 310th
Engineers had assisted by use of dynamite. The Red army command had
counted on three weeks to press his water attacks. But by May tenth
gunboats had gone up the Dvina to help batter Toulgas into submission.
And when on May seventeenth Commander Worlsley of Antarctic fame went
steaming up the Vaga on board the "Gl