ow Worm," a heavily armed river
gunboat, the worries of the Americans in the battle-scarred Vaga column
were at an end.

With the gunboats now at their disposal the morale of all ranks was
greatly improved and it was thereupon decided to retake the position at
Ignatavskaya immediately across the river from Kitsa, which position was
held by the enemy, giving him the opportunity of sheltering thousands of
his troops there with his artillery on the opposite side of the river to
further protect them.

On the morning of May 19th several strong patrols went forward into the
woods in the direction of the enemy and quickly succeeded in gaining
contact with his outposts. The Bolo must have sensed some activity for
at 10:30 a. m. he commenced a violent artillery bombardment. Shortly
thereafter his airplanes came flying over our lines and machine-gunned
our trenches. The men had long since become so accustomed to this little
by-play that they gave it little consideration other than keeping well
under cover. Others even gave it less regard, as the following amusing
incident indicates:

During the shelling of that morning a great number of enemy shells
exploded in the river and these explosions immediately brought large
numbers of fish to the surface. The company cook, seeing such a splendid
opportunity to replenish the company larder, crawled down to the edge of
the river, jumped into a rowboat and soon was occupied in filling his
boat with fish, utterly disregardful of the intermittent shelling and
sniping. That evening, needless to say, the cook was the most popular
man in his company.

At 9:30 p. m. the boats brought down battalion after battalion of fresh
Russian troops from Zaboria who were landed near our positions under
cover preparatory to the attack on Ignatavskaya. It might be well to
mention here that at this time of the year the Arctic sun was
practically shining the entire twenty-four hours, only about midnight
barely disappearing below the rim of the horizon, making it dark enough
in the woods in the dull twilight to advance without observation. At
midnight the infantry pushed forward along the road toward the Bolo
outpost positions. American infantry also covered the opposite bank of
the river.

Our guns on the river in conjunction with the land batteries immediately
opened up with a terrific bombardment, shelling the Bolo positions for
twenty minutes until the infantry had gained the outposts of the village
a