The answer to this is that British Headquarters was determined upon an offensive program, and committed itself to a punitive chase of the Bolsheviks, regardless of the nature of such an undertaking, heedless of where it led, blind to consequences. As the Allies pushed into this unknown country, it became apparent that between the two Columns advancing by the Dvina river and by the railway, there stretched a great, unsounded territory, entirely unreconnoitered, and through which by many routes, the enemy could threaten the tenuous unguarded lines of communication with Archangel. It was necessary to put out flanking parties and to keep an eye to the rear. At Kodish, fifty miles east from the Railway and also on the Vaga river, which forms a junction with the Dvina one hundred and fifty miles from Archangel, it was imperative to organize invasions auxiliary to the two main bodies. Likewise, from east and west, threats were made upon the security of the city of Archangel, and it became necessary to establish detached outposts in Pinega Valley, one hundred miles on the left flank, and Onega Valley, about the same distance on the right flank. Also, isolated garrisons were installed in villages in the rear--at Seletskoe on the Emtsa, and at Emetskoe, where this small tributary flowed into the Dvina; at Morjagorskaya, midway between Emetskoe and Bereznik, and Bereznik itself, fifty miles farther south on the Dvina, where there was an important subsidiary base; at Shred Mekrenga, where there was an important road, and at other villages in the interior, little groups of soldiers were stationed, and often lieutenants short from civil life found themselves "Officers Commanding," faced with the problems and responsibilities of Field Officers. By December, the Allied fighting forward stations in Archangel Province were extended in the form of a huge horseshoe, and a line drawn from flank to flank and covering the forward position would have reached out five hundred miles. There were six principal American battlefronts: Pinega, Onega, the Vologda Railway, Kodish, the Vaga River, and the Dvina. Each of these in the war of North Russia formed a distinct episode quite apart from the others. The soldiers on the Dvina were entirely in ignorance of the fate of their companions on the Railway. At other points in the interior many did not even know that there were American outposts at Onega and Pinega; and so the history of the expedition must of necessity be a series of disjointed apparently fragmentary accounts of each separated battleground--in truth a description of six little campaigns with only one point of contact, that all Americans went out from Archangel in the fall of 1918 and in spring the following year those who still lived _quit_ (under orders), from the same quarter.