Here we fortified, quite thoroughly, better perhaps than anywhere else in North Russia. To be sure we were outflanked by Kodema, a Bolshevik village on our left and Tarniya, a Bolshevik village on our right, a little to the rear. But otherwise we were quite comfortable. We made several attacks on these villages, but always found it necessary to retire. On January 19, 1919, the big fight began. The Bolsheviki five thousand strong attacked Ustpadenga. They had three or four times as many guns as we had, including some long-range artillery that was far beyond the reach of our guns. They had perfect observation on our positions and telephone wires clear around to our rear. They picked off every billet, up one side of the street and down the other. We had no secrets. And their infantry came up in excellent form and spirit, covered with perfect white camouflage and supported with machine-guns and pompoms. Our men drove them back and held them off for days until the British command ordered them to fall back to Shenkursk. One platoon of forty men had thirty-two casualties, and every man in that small force had to do the work of ten men throughout that terrible week. Fighting all the way back, Company A, 339th American Infantry, and the Center Section 38th Battery, Canadian Field Artillery, dragged themselves minus two guns into Shenkursk on the night of the 25th. During that day Shenkursk had been bombarded from four sides and we knew that we were completely surrounded, although no Bolshevik infantry had attacked here. There were no reinforcements to be had. Some of our Russian conscripts had gone over to the enemy. There was no hope of relief from the north in case we should be besieged. There was nothing to prevent his big guns reducing Shenkursk to ruins. We had Company C here as well as Company A and felt confident of our ability to hold off the Bolshevik infantry in any numbers, but his artillery had us beaten, because outranged, from the start. So it was decided to evacuate that night by an unused road that we hoped the Bolsheviki had overlooked. By very clever and efficient work on the part of the British command the evacuation of Shenkursk was successfully carried out without the loss of a man, and we were followed by hundreds of civilians, who discovered our movement in the night. The next morning when we were well to the north we heard his guns open up on Shenkursk. He did not know we had escaped him. He had yet to learn that we had left behind for him one hundred days’ rations for two thousand men, great stores of ammunition and ordinance, all our personal kits, and several spiked guns.