occupied the city. The Northern Region Government was established by Chaplin and popular revolutionary Nikolai Tchaikovsky. On the Murmansk front, the British 6th Royal Marine Light Infantry Battalion was ordered to seize the village of Koikori on 28 August as part of a wide offensive into East Karelia. The attack on the village was disorganized and resulted in three marines killed and 18 wounded. An attack on Ussuna was also repulsed. The next morning, faced with the prospect of another attack on the village, one Marine company refused to obey orders and withdrew themselves to a nearby friendly village. As a result, 93 men were sentenced to death and others received substantial sentences of hard labour. In December 1919, the government, under pressure from several MPs, revoked the sentence of death and considerably reduced the sentences of all the convicted men. On 4 September 1918 the promised American forces arrived. Three battalions of troops, supported by engineers and under the command of Colonel George Stewart, landed in Archangel. This force numbered 4,500 troops. A British River Force of 11 monitors (HMS M33, HMS Fox and others), minesweepers, and Russian gunboats was formed to use the navigable waters at the juncture of the rivers Vaga and Northern Dvina. Some 30 Bolshevik gunboats, mines, and armed motor launches took their toll on the Allied forces. The 2/10th Royal Scots cleared the triangle between the Dvina and Vaga and took a number of villages and prisoners. By late September, US Marines and 2/10th Royal Scots had reached Nijne-Toimski, which proved too strong for the lightly equipped Allied force. On 27 October, Allied forces were ambushed at Kulika near Topsa, losing at least 27 men killed and dozens wounded, a figure that could have been higher if it had not been for a detachment of Poles who bravely covered the retreat as others panicked. The allied troops were mainly inactive in the winter of 1918, building blockhouses with only winter patrols sent out. On the first occasion that White Russian troops were sent into the line of combat during the North Russian campaign, on 11 December 1918, the White Russian troops mutinied. The ringleaders were ordered to be shot by General Ironside. Within four months the Allied Powers' gains had shrunk by along the Northern Dvina and Lake Onega area as Bolshevik attacks became more sustained. The Bolsheviks launched their largest offensive yet on