The Kodish force was in the strategic position now to force the Reds to give up Emtsa and Plesetskaya. But Trotsky’s northern army commander evidently well understood that situation, for he gave strict attention to this Kodish force of Americans and at the fifteenth verst pole on the main road his Red Guards held the Americans all day. Again the next day he made Donoghue’s Yanks strive all day. Just at night successful flanking movements caused the enemy to evacuate his formidable position. It was here that Sgt. Cromberger, one of Ballard’s machine gun men, distinguished himself by going single-handed into the Bolo lines to reconnoiter. The converging advances upon Plesetskaya by the three columns, up the Onega Valley, on the railroad and on the Kodish-Plesetskaya-Petrograd highway now seemed about to succeed. Hard fighting by all three columns had broken the Bolshevik’s confidence somewhat. Of course at this time of writing it can be seen better than it could then. He did not make a stand at Avda. He was found by our patrols way back at Kochmas, only a few miles from the railroad. Meanwhile the Russian Officers’ Training Corps which was armed with forty Lewis guns and acted rather independently, together with the Royal Scot platoon and a large number of “partisans,” anti-Bolshevik volunteers of the area, effected the capture of Shred Makhrenga, Taresevo and other villages, which added to the threat of the Kodish force on Plesetskaya. Plesetskaya at that moment was indeed of immense value to the Reds. It was the railroad base of their four columns that were holding up the left front of their Northern Army. But they were discouraged. Our patrols and spies sent into Plesetskaya vicinity reported and stories of deserters and wounded men all indicated that the Reds were getting ready to evacuate Plesetskaya. A determined smash of the three Allied columns would have won the coveted position. But the Kodish force now received the same strange order from far-off Archangel that was received on the other fronts: “To hold on and dig in.” No further advances were to be made. Thinking of their eleven comrades killed in this advance and of the thirty-one wounded and of the many sick from exposure, the Americans on the Kodish force as well as the English marines and Scots who also had lost severely, were loath to stop with so easy a victory in sight.