New Britain herald., 1919-06-14
STRATEGY SAVED
 ALLIED MISSION
British Naval Officers Bluff" With Useless Gun Saved Fleet

1 Archangel May 28. (Correspond- ence of The Associated Press. )--A . was largely due to the bluff of
 young Russian naval officer in command of one of the little AIIiAd steamers or the Dvina river that the
 original Allied expedition up that . river from Archangel was not wiped out by the BoIsheviki in the early
 phases of the Northern Russia cam paign.
 The Dvina expedition, 133 strong, went pol1ing it's way noncha1antIy up i the broad river aboard two or three funny looking river steamers, on which field pieces and machine guns had been mounted. The Bolsheviki had taken the best boats, Mississippi , type of paddle-wheelers, with them in their flight.
 The famous 133 reached Beresniki. nearly POO miles south of Archansel. at the junction of the vaga river with the Dvina, without firing a shot. One night, all of a sudden, three or four Bolshevik side-wheelers mounting big guns came around a bend in the river and started trouble. When we fired
 our cannon, they fell through the
 thin decks into the state rooms of
 our steamers.
 A young Russian naval officer, in
 command of one of our little ships
 with his own gun out of action, stood
 pat, with the useless muzzle turned
 toward the biggest of the enemy's
 ships, and barred the channel while
 our other ships retreated.
 Then our river expedition got the
 glad news that a British monitor, sent all the way from the Belgian coast. was on the way to help them. The monitor crawled along the sand bars and got to Beresniki. The colonel in command of the river land forces told me about it, a few weeks later, when I went up to his sector of the front. It was something of a tragedy this first episode of the monitor, but the colonel couldn't help laughing about it.
 Tho monitor steamed ID" the colonel said, and it's captain was rowed over to my headquarters ship The navy was on the job and SO na- turally, ale was over He didn't want to stop a minute.
 Where he shouted, is the enemy fleet. and which is the way to Kot- lass?'
 And then the monitor chugged off in the direction of the Boshevik ship around the bend in the river. Ii didn't find the enemy fleet, and it cer- tainly was a long way from Kotlass, when BoIshevik land battery, masked in the wood on the river bank, dropped big shell into the monitor, putting it out of commits sion and sending it back to Beres- niki."
 It was in this episode of the mon itor that young British naval sur geon performed one of the feats of bravery and self-denial that are con- tinually taking place in this war. With one eye shot out and with blood near ly binding the other. this young sur eeon calmly and successfully attend ad to the monitors wounded until he fell exhausted.
 On the river our forces had reached on the railroad a little of French had battled it's way nearly one hundred miles to OboserSkaya, and, in the swampy tundra between the railroad and the river another party, including some of the American sailors, was lost in the mud, when endorsements, in the shape of three transports loaded with American infantrymen and en- yineers steamed into Archangel har- DOT