pletely. Machine gun beginning begot cruel offspring of
provisional courts of justice and sword-revised soviets of the people so
that packed soviets and Lenine-picked delegates and Trotsky-ridden
ministers made the actual soviet government as much resemble the ideal
soviet government as a wild-cat mining stock board of directors
resembles a municipal board of public works. And the world knows now, if
it did not in 1918-19, that the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet
Republic was, and is, a highly centralized tyranny, frankly called by
its own leaders "The Dictatorship of the Proletariat." The Russian
people prayed for "a fish and received a serpent."

VI

ON THE FAMOUS KODISH FRONT IN THE FALL

"K" Company Hurries To Save Force "B"--Importance Of Kodish
Front--Hazelden's Force Destroyed--First Fight At Seletskoe--Both Sides
Burn Bridges--Desperate Fighting At Emtsa River--Capture Of
Kodish--Digging In--We Lose Village After Days Of Hard
Fighting--Trenches And Blockhouses.

Nowhere did the Yanks in North Russia find the fighting fiercer than did
those who were battling their way toward Plesetskaya on the famous
Kodish front. Woven into their story is that of the most picturesque
American fighter and doughtiest soldier of the many dauntless officers
and men who struggled and bled in that strange campaign. This man was
Captain Michael Donoghue, commanding officer of "K" Company, 339th
Infantry. He afterward was promoted in the field to rank of major and
his old outfit of Detroit boys proudly remember that "K" stands for
Kodish where they and their commander earned the plaudits of the
regiment.

It will be remembered that the third battalion was hurried from
troopship to troop train and steamed south as fast as the rickety Russki
locomotives of the 1880 type could wobble, and it will be remembered
that Captain Donoghue, the senior captain of that battalion, was chosen
to go with half of his "K" Company to the relief of a mixed force of
American sailors and British Royal Scots and French infantry who had
been surrounded, it was rumored, and were in imminent danger of
annihilation.

With his little force of one hundred and twenty men, including a medical
officer with eight enlisted medical men, transporting his rations and
extra munitions on the dumpy little Russki droskie, the American officer
led out of Obozerskaya at three o'clock in the afternoon, bivouacked for
the night somewhere on the trail in a cold drizz