Allies take Kodish

On 30 December 1918 American soldiers of the 339th Infantry Regiment took Kodish, a village on the forest road from Seletskoe to Plesetskaya station, about 25 kilometres east of the railway from Archangel to Vologda. The village lay just beyond the Emtsa river, where since November the lines of the Allies and the Red Army had faced each other. The road through Kodish was important to both sides, because it made it possible to bypass the fortifications on the railway and come out in the enemy’s rear at Plesetskaya, from which the Bolsheviks supplied their forces in the north.

The village had already been fought over in the autumn. In mid-October Americans of “K” and “L” Companies of the 339th, supported by Royal Marines and Canadian gunners, crossed the Emtsa, outflanked the Red positions and took Kodish. At the beginning of November the Bolsheviks counter-attacked, cutting off the forward outposts, and on 9 November the Americans withdrew behind the bridge over the river. There they wintered in blockhouses built by engineers of the 310th Regiment. After the armistice in the West the Reds tried to persuade them, with leaflets and speeches from the bridge, that the war was over and there was nothing left to fight for.

At the end of December the Allied command in Archangel planned an offensive on Plesetskaya from several directions at once: from the direction of Onega, along the railway, through the forests on snowshoes, and by the road through Kodish. The attack on the village was commanded by Major Michael Donoghue. He had two infantry companies (“E” and “K”), a machine-gun platoon, a mortar section, engineers and two guns of Canadian field artillery. According to the American history of the regiment, published in 1920 by its officers, this amounted to about 450 men against 2,700 Reds with four guns and 700 in reserve. At six in the morning both companies crossed the Emtsa and advanced on the enemy’s right flank, while seven Stokes mortars fired about a thousand rounds into the Red trenches within a quarter of an hour. The Reds tried to hold a ridge in front of the village, but at about one in the afternoon, after seven hours of fighting, Kodish was in American hands.

They went no further. The Reds dug in at verst 12 of the road, and two platoons that held on in front of the village through the night lost half their men. Among those killed there were two sergeants of “K” Company, and Second Lieutenant Carl Berger of “E” Company died of wounds the next day. According to the regimental history, the Americans lost seven killed and 35 wounded in this fighting, and the frost added many cases of frostbite. Donoghue was ordered to hold the village and not to advance further. The rest of the offensive failed. The British and Russian attack on the road from Tarasevo stalled on 30 December because the soldiers of the Russian Archangel Regiment refused to go forward, and the attack along the railway was called off on 31 December.

The Americans held the ruined, shelled Kodish for a few more days, after which they were relieved by British and Russian units, and soon the Allies returned to the river line. At the beginning of February 1919 they attacked the village again, but after a day-long fight they had to withdraw. The front south of Archangel stood still until the spring, and General Edmund Ironside, who had taken command of the Allied forces in October, had to go over to the defensive.