By night of the 26th we reached Shagavari, having made forty versts on a single track sled road, walking two abreast and stretched out for miles. Here nearly every one snatched a little sleep, as we found two platoons of Company D who held off the vanguard of the pursuit which had begun to catch up to us. The civilian column, swelled now to thousands, poured out into the road ahead of us, a long winding snake-like trail of black in a white world, making for somewhere north. We evacuated Shagavari on the afternoon of the 27th and stood for our new front at Vistafka, sixteen versts north, with Kitsa seven versts to the rear as headquarters. During this retreat the temperature had been from thirty-six to ten below zero. We had brought out ninety-seven wounded and sick and these were sent on to Bereznik and Archangel—three hundred miles on pony sleds traveling day and night. The civilian refugees were partly Russians who had conspicuously identified themselves with us and so were afraid of the Bolsheviki, partly those who felt that they would be surer of food behind our lines, there were some personal friends of soldiers, and yet they were mostly peasants whom we had been compelled to put out of their houses for military reasons. Our new front consisted in all of eight villages. At first a barricade of pine branches and snow, then some logs, then some block houses, then some wire, after a while a dug-out or two. The fighting here at Vistafka was the hardest and most continuous of the winter. Every day there was some shelling, and five major attacks were made before March first when we were forced to make Kitsa our forward position. The fighting at Vistafka was done by companies A, C, D, and F, by Royal Scots and Kings Liverpools, by Russians, and by the splendid Canadian artillery units who were fortunately reinforced by a 4.5 howitzer E.F.A. The old artillery supremacy of the Bolsheviki remained unchanged, however, and while seven thousand infantry, having surrounded Vistafka could not take it, the guns did finally reduce it to untenability. From March 1 to April 20, Kitsa was the front line, with Maximofskaya for support on our right, and our guns at Ignatofskaya. These villages lay only one and two versts apart. We were preparing Malobereznik, seven versts in the rear, for defense, and fell back here on Easter Sunday. This stubborn resistance on our part was important because it was absolutely necessary to hold the enemy here or he would cut off the whole Dvina column and take Bereznik where we had accumulated great stores of supplies and munitions. Bereznik was his goal and the Vaga River was his road. He hammered away daily at Toulgas, our Dvina River front, but that was to keep Company B and our other forces there. He could not hope to take it. [Illustration: The "Y" was always on the job. These Canadians fought in France before they went to Russia.]