It was (or became) known that the headquarters of the Sixth Bolshevik Army was stationed at the city of Vologda, from which its commander could send troops north along the railway, and assail the Allied frontal position, or detrain, and move his men on roads and trails that took off along this route and led to the Allies' flanks and rear. One of these roads follows down the Onega valley north to the port of Onega. At Chekuevo, it is nearly opposite the Allied advanced railway position, Obozerskaya, and these two villages are joined, fifty miles cross-country, by a good roadway that in winter is capable of supporting artillery carriage. Some fifteen miles west from Obozerskaya, on the same road, Bolshie Ozerki, several groups of moujik huts, lies in sprawling confusion. Late in the winter, a pitiful little outpost of French and friendly Russians, an immolation to this campaign of invincible folly, was destroyed at Bolshie Ozerki in a massed enemy effort that sought to annihilate the whole Expedition. A few platoons of American infantry were stationed at Onega to shield Archangel from the west, and to watch this Onega, Chekuevo, Bolshie Ozerki, Obozerskaya communication line, which linked up Archangel with Murmansk, and, during the frozen months, was the only outlet to the world beyond the Arctic Sea. The main Bolshevik stronghold north of Vologda was at Plesetskaya, some fifty miles south of the furthermost position of the Allies on the railway, from which an Imperial Government highway reached out through Archangel Province northeast as far as Emetskoe, on the Dvina, passing through the villages Kochmas, Avda, Kodish, and Seletskoe, near the Emtsa river. At Kochmas, another road branched east to Tarasovo, thence north through Gora and Shred Mekrenga. From Shred Mekrenga and Seletskoe, the enemy could have access to the lower Dvina, head off all supply convoys for the Dvina and Vaga columns; and hold the Allies trapped far up stream. Therefore, two more auxiliary expeditions were organized, and, instead of two invading "Columns," the Allied forces, woefully insufficient at the outset, were operating in seven columns, separated detachments, advance parties, outguards, outposts, flanking forces, and all along the Dvina, from Kholmogora to Bereznik, a stretch of one hundred miles, were still other detached soldier groups watching the treacherous way from Archangel, a Cossack Post in one village, a squad in another, in still another a platoon, all without communication and completely undefended in case of real attack. There was unlimited chance for rear movements along that tenuous, unprotected, communication line. General Ironside would have massacred the Bolsheviks had positions been reversed. The Germans would have annihilated the Allied North Russian Expedition with half the numbers that the Bolsheviks had.