y. Corporal Downs lost his
eye, and showed extreme grit in the hard march back through the swamp,
never complaining. I saw, after returning to the States, an interview
with Col. Josselyn, at that time in command of the Dvina force, in which
he mentioned Downs, and commended him very highly."

The ensuing week we spent in Seltso, the Bolos occupying trenches around
the upper part of our defenses. They had gunboats and naval guns on
rafts, and made it quite uncomfortable for us with their shelling,
although the only American casualties were in the detachment of 310th
Engineers. Our victory was short lived, however, for in a few days our
river monitor was forced to return to Archangel on account of the
rapidly receding river, which gave the enemy the opportunity of moving
up their 9.2 inch naval guns, with double the range of our land
batteries, making our further occupation of Seltso impossible.

On the afternoon of October 14, the second and third platoons of Company
"B" were occupying the blockhouses when the Bolos made an attack, which
was easily repelled. As we were under artillery fire with no means of
replying, the British commander decided to evacuate that night. It was
impossible to get supplies out owing to the lack of transportation
facilities. That part of Company "B" in the village left at midnight,
followed by the force in the blockhouses at 3:00 a. m. After a very hard
march we reached Toulgas and established a position there.

Our position at Toulgas in the beginning was very unfavorable, being a
long narrow string of villages along the Dvina which was bordered with
thick underbrush extending a few hundred yards to the woods. We had a
string of machine gun posts scattered through the brush, and when our
line of defense was occupied there was less than two platoons left as a
reserve. With us at this time we had Company "A" of the 2nd Tenth Royal
Scots (British) under Captain Shute, and a section of Canadian
artillery.

The Bolos followed us here and after several days shelling, to which
because of being outranged we were unable to reply, they attacked late
in the afternoon of October 23rd. Our outposts held, and we immediately
counter attacked. The enemy was repulsed in disorder, losing some
machine guns, and having about one hundred casualties, while we came out
Scot free.

It was during the shelling incidental to this that Edvinson, the Viking,
did his stunt. He was in a machine gun emplacement which