s strung out along the Kodish-Avda road.

In the afternoon of November 1st the enemy drove in our cossack post of
"K" men at verst seventeen, began shelling us with his artillery and for
several days kept raiding Ballard heavier and heavier. Meanwhile Captain
Donoghue sent out from Kodish every available man to strengthen the
line. Night and day the men labored to erect additional defenses, with
scarcely time to close an eye in sleep, patrolling all the trails on
their flanks. On the fourth of November, the day the Reds were massed in
such numbers on the railroad, they succeeded in forcing Ballard from his
trenches at the sixteenth verst pole. He fell back to the new defenses
at the fifteenth verst. It is related by his men that he passed between
Bolo forces who lined the road but permitted the Americans to escape.

Lieut. Gardner was now reinforced at the twelfth verst pole, for a
patrol had lost a man somewhere on the river flank and it was thought
that the enemy was preparing to pass by the flank and bag this body of
American fighters by taking the newly constructed bridge on the Emtsa in
the rear of Donoghue's small force. This bridge was their "only way
home."

Their worst fears came true. On the morning of the fifth of November
these Yanks way out at front of Kodish, holding the enemy off
desperately from the frontal attack, and endeavoring vainly to frustrate
the flank attacks of their enemy in greatly superior numbers, suddenly
heard great bursts of machine gun fire way towards the rear in the
vicinity of Kodish. Instantly they knew that Reds had worked down the
river by the flank from Avda or even from Emtsa on the railroad and were
attacking in force three miles to their rear. That made the situation
desperate. But the Yanks who had in the beginning of the campaign been
looked down upon by the Red Capped British High Command because of their
greenness, now showed their fineness of fighting stuff by fighting on
with undiminished vigor and effectiveness. Nowhere did they give way.
Day and night they were on the alert. Attacks from the front, sly raids
from the woods on each side of the road, heart chilling assaults upon
the cluster of houses in Kodish way in their rear, and steady progress
of the Red Guards toward the bridge on the Emtsa, their only way out of
the bag in which the worn and depleted company was being trapped,
brought the prolonged struggle to a crisis in the middle of the
afternoon of the eight