Produced by Al Haines.
[Illustration: The Area of the Archangel Campaign.]
FIGHTING WITHOUT
A WAR
_An Account of Military Intervention
in North Russia_
BY
RALPH ALBERTSON
ILLUSTRATED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
NEW YORK
HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE
1920
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY
HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE, INC.
THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY
RAHWAY, N. J.
TO THE AMERICAN, BRITISH AND
CANADIAN MEN WHO LAID DOWN
THEIR LIVES IN NORTH RUSSIA THIS
BOOK IS REVERENTLY DEDICATED
*PREFACE*
The writer of this book went to North Russia as a Y.M.C.A. secretary
assigned to work with the army, landing at Murmansk just before
Thanksgiving, 1918. I reached Archangel December first and was sent at
once to Shenkursk and Ustpadenga, the southernmost points of the
expedition. I was in charge of the Y.M.C.A. work for the Vaga column
until June first when I went to Yemetskoye and later to Archangel with
the departing American troops. As the British Y.M.C.A. was not prepared
to take over all the work at that time several Americans remained with
the British and Russian armies. As one of these I returned south to
Berezniki July first. On August first I was made responsible for the
evacuation of the entire Allied Y.M.C.A. personnel, supplies, and
equipment from the forward Dvina and Vaga areas. This enabled me to be
the last American to leave. I returned to Archangel August thirtieth
and sailed with the last of the embassies, consulates, military
missions, etc., on September second.
This book does not assume to tell the whole story of that expedition. I
did not see all of it. No man did. In addition to what I saw, however,
I had the advantage of meeting constantly men who had seen and been in
the various other fights and locations. Under the overstimulating
circumstances of army life the very air seems full of wild rumors. This
was particularly true in the isolations of the Russian fighting. I have
felt the necessity therefore of exercising great care not to accept as
true uncorroborated army rumors. The matters of chief interest in this
book, moreover, are matters of my own personal observation and
knowledge.
The various censorships imposed by the American and British governments
have prevented the publication of so much important and significant news
of this expedition that no number of books that may be published now
could cover the whole story. Most of it, moreover, has ceased to be
news. However, those censorships accompanied by the official propaganda
have left the country in a state of gross misinformation regarding the
expedition. Mistakes were made, abuses suffered, heroisms performed, and
tragedies enacted which it is the right of the American and British
people to know about. In respect of the mistakes and abuses the
publication of this account has devolved upon me as a not altogether
pleasant duty.
While I have been compelled to criticize the attitude and actions of
British officers as a class in order to tell the truth of what happened
in North Russia I should regret to have my words taken as applying
equally to all of them. I wish also to say that some who fall most
squarely under the criticisms of this book were among my warmest friends
and I cherish for them a genuine personal regard. To certain British
and Canadian officers I undoubtedly owe my life and they gave me
(especially the Canadians) the utmost cooeperation and courtesy
throughout the entire campaign.
As to the Yanks, God bless them, it wasn't their show.
E.A.
*CONTENTS*
CHAPTER
I. THE EXPEDITION
II. THE ARCHANGEL GOVERNMENT
III. MANAGEMENT
IV. THE FALL CAMPAIGN
V. THE WINTER CAMPAIGN
VI. KITSA
VII. FIGHTING WITHOUT A FLAG
VIII. "AMERICA DOBRA"
IX. AMERICA EXIT
X. THE NEW BRITISH ARMY
XI. THE NEW RUSSIAN ARMY
XII. MAKING BOLSHEVIKI
XIII. THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN
XIV. ATROCITIES
XV. THE MUTINIES
XVI. THE DEBACLE
XVII. MILITARY INTERVENTION FINANCE
XVIII. PROPAGANDA
XIX. CONCERNING MILITARY INTERVENTION
XX. CONCERNING RUSSIAN PEASANTS
*ILLUSTRATIONS*
Map showing area of the Archangel Campaign . . . _Frontispiece_
Archangel has many excellent and substantial buildings
The Archangel water-front has miles of good docking facilities
The American engineers built scores of block houses like this
This was our only possible communication with Archangel, 300 miles to
the north
The "Y" was always on the job
These Canadians fought in France before they went to Russia
The Canadian artillery got there every time
This Russian gun crew on the railroad front enjoys warmer weather
The church at Yemetskoye is visible for many miles up the Dvina
Shenkursk is a quiet and romantic spot on the Vaga River
The new British army entered Archangel in June with great pomp and
ceremony
The Duma building at Archangel was decorated in honor of the new army
that came to finish the Bolsheviki
Canadian soldiers with two captives, having changed caps
Bringing Bolsheviki prisoners into Malobereznik
The women work in the fields with the men
Russians love their homes and their villages devotedly
*FIGHTING WITHOUT A WAR*
*I*
*THE EXPEDITION*
The North Russian Expeditionary Force consisted of men from America,
England, Canada, France, Italy, and Serbia. England sent the largest
number of men, America the second largest, the other countries being
represented by only a few companies each.
The expedition was under the command of the British War Office, which
sent out a large number of unattached British officers to take charge of
the Russian armies that were to be formed and to supervise all American
and other officers that had been attached to the expedition.
The first landing of troops of the North Russian Expeditionary Force was
in August, 1918. The German armistice was signed November 11. Fighting
continued all winter. The American troops were withdrawn in June, 1919.
A much larger British army landed in June. Our Russian conscripts
mutinied against the English in July, making it impossible for the
English to remain. The last man of the North Russian Expeditionary
Force was withdrawn in September, 1919. The "washout" was complete.
England had spent five hundred million dollars and lost thousands of
men. The cost to America and the other countries had been less in men
and money, but considerable in other ways. The cost to Russia in every
way had been incalculable.
When this expedition was sent to Russia the Allies were at war with
Germany. Russia was not. She had signed the Brest-Litovsk treaty. We
did not declare war on Russia, nor on any section of Russians. We went,
it was reasonable to suppose, to guard the military stores we had
shipped to Archangel and save them from falling into German hands, and
to prevent the Germans from establishing a submarine base at Murmansk.
When we got there, however, the Bolshevik Russians, viewing the
expedition as one of enmity to them, had removed practically all of the
millions of dollars' worth of stores to points far south of Archangel
and had themselves left for points of from one to two hundred miles
south. We pursued them and war began,--war with the de facto government
of Russia, whom indeed we had not recognized and against whom we had
made no declaration.
There was no war technically speaking in North Russia. There surely was
no legal basis of war. But there was plenty of fighting. News of this
fighting does not seem to have reached America very freely. The double
English and American censorship was very effective.
First we had declared we would not engage in a military intervention in
Russia, then having gotten into it we declared we were not doing it,
then we depended on the censorship.
No mention was made of this expedition in the armistice of November.
Hence it had in some subtle way ceased to be a part of our war against
Germany. It had become a new war, a war against Bolshevik Russia, an
unlegalized war, and this it continued to be as long as the expedition
lasted. Yet no declaration was forthcoming, either of war or of peace.
Particularly wanting was a declaration of purpose. Weary months of
stubborn fighting for our men were unrelieved by any single word of
definition of the fight from their government.
There consequently was antagonism to the campaign on the part of the
soldiers. I do not say loss of morale, because the term would be
misunderstood. Our men fought. Our infantry never lost a foot of
ground. But they hated the fight, they resented fighting without a
cause.
I made a trip in December, speaking to the men in their billets and the
Y.M.C.A. huts over a stretch of five hundred versts. Everywhere, on
every occasion, I was asked persistently and importunately, "What are we
here for?"
"The armistice is signed. Why are we fighting?"
"Did they forget about us in Paris?"
"We don't want Russia. What have we against the Bolsheviki?"
Of course I tried to answer these questions, but I found it easier to
convince myself than I did to convince these men. They were not
convinced that I knew. The American and Canadian troops were
particularly outspoken in their resentment at being at war in a futile
fight against nobody and for nothing in particular when the rest of the
world had stopped fighting.
A real cause of this grand debacle therefore was the silence of our
governments. I could not answer their questions. Nobody who came to
them could answer their questions. Their governments would not.
*II*
*THE ARCHANGEL GOVERNMENT*
When our governments sent out this expedition the government of
Archangel as of all Russia was Bolshevik. It was not a strong
government, that is, it did not have a strong and dependable army and
navy. It had not been regularly instituted by the people, nor had it
been recognized by other governments than those with whom we were at
war. We had no dealings with it, except the undeclared war of this
expedition. We negotiated with certain individual Russians in London,
took them to Archangel with us, and there set up a government to our own
taste.
[Illustration: Archangel has many excellent and substantial buildings.
The Archangel water-front has miles of good docking facilities.]
This was a military job. Even the military, however, find it necessary
to consider popular opinion to some extent. So this new government was
composed of democratic men. Tschaikowsky was made President. The people
knew him and trusted him. His government failed to realize at first
that it was only the creature of foreign military authority and began to
function sincerely. It was kidnaped for discipline and put on an island
for a few days of meditation. The allied military did not come to
Archangel to set up a pure democracy nor to encourage socialism nor to
listen to theories. They came to fight the plans of Germany, to fight
the Bolsheviki, to guard stores, to teach Russia to fight. Beyond this
the military mind goeth not. So the venerable Tschaikowsky was
gradually put aside and ignored and before long sent to London on an
important mission, never to return, but still a valuable figurehead,
while a Russian military government grew up under the aegis of the
British army, composed of monarchists and military men of the old
school. The head of this government was General Miller (Mueller) a
militarist and monarchist who is without popular Russian support and
whose position is entirely due to his standing with the British military
establishment.
*III*
*MANAGEMENT*
It was a British show. The British were in absolute command. Whole
shiploads of British officers were sent there to perform all possible
functions of management and to cover all possible needs. The Americans,
Russians, French, Italians, and Serbians all obeyed the British
officers, and found British officers duplicating their own at every
juncture. Even at that there was a surplus, and I have had several of
them, from a colonel down, tell me that they were hanging around
Archangel waiting for something to do.
It was British responsibility to decide where we should stand, when we
should move, and who should do what. They never neglected this
responsibility in any detail. If they could avoid it, they never
delegated any detail of authority to any officer of any other
nationality. If they took counsel with their associates of other
nationalities it was never heard of in the ranks. I have heard an
American officer of high rank speak very bitterly of the fact that the
British never consulted him except to give him orders, and made him feel
quite useless.
*IV*
*THE FALL CAMPAIGN*
As our ships rode into the mouth of the Dvina River with the first
troops of the expedition, and the last train pulled out of Archangel
Preestyn bearing the last of the Bolsheviki away to the south, the
people of Archangel came out to the river bank and the docks to see the
incoming fleet and to welcome their deliverers from Bolshevist
proletariat tyranny and prolonged political and industrial unrest. The
Russians were tired of war, and as they lined up on the river banks in
front of the hundreds of peasant villages bordering a thousand versts of
rivers to express their welcome it was Peace and Prosperity that they
thought they were welcoming.
In fact, however, it was war, war such as that part of Russia had never
known before, and most expensive war.
The expedition had been sent "to guard stores at Archangel." Since
these stores had been taken by those whom we assumed to be friends of
Germany we must pursue them. We did. We took guns along. We found
them, with guns also, at several points about a hundred miles from the
city. Their forces were weak. So were ours. But we drove them, or
they led us, down the Murmansk railroad past Kem, down the Vologda
railroad beyond Obozerskaya, up the Onega River to Chekuevo, up the
Pinega River, up the Emtza River, up the Dvina River past Toulgas, and
up the Vaga River to Ustpadenga.
We did not capture our enemy nor the stores we had come to guard. The
early Russian winter came and found us thrown out to seven points in a
form that was like a seven-fingered hand with one finger three hundred
miles long and with no lateral communication between the fingers. In
driving these lines out there was some fighting, mostly of a guerrilla
type. We lost a number of men, but our casualties were comparatively
small. We had been on the offensive and had followed lines of not very
great resistance. The positions in which winter found us may not have
been planned by the Bolsheviki, but I doubt if any English record exists
of such a plan or if any officer will confess to having made such a
plan. We just happened to be there. We were scattered as far as
possible. Each position was practically isolated from all the others.
Our lines of communication were weak and inefficient. The only
protection to our flanks and our rears was the hoped-for snow which came
early and abundantly.
*V*
*THE WINTER CAMPAIGN*
The winter was spent on the defensive. The Bolsheviki at first
attempted to cut us off at Yemetskoye by using his excellent
communication on the Vologda railroad and attacked Kodish and Shredn
Makrenga. He was held here by the Americans and Canadians, who did not
know when they were defeated and who now fully realized the desperate
character of the fight that they were launched upon. He also attacked
on the Murmansk railroad, where he was met by seasoned Serbians against
whom he shattered himself in vain. He attacked at Pinega and at
Chekuevo also without success. We were fighting at Toulgas on Armistice
Day, and with Kotlas as his base the Bolshevik managed to keep up his
attack here practically all winter while Co. B, 339th Infantry, U.S.A.,
took the brunt of the work of holding him off.
[Illustration: The American Engineers built scores of block houses like
this.
This was our only possible communication with Archangel, 300 miles to
the north.]
The most serious fighting of the winter, however, was on the Vaga River.
Our forward position at Ustpadenga was held by one company of American
infantry, one platoon of American engineers, three eighteen-pounder guns
manned by Canadians, and occasional units of Russian conscripts. The
position had no peculiar advantages, and all the disadvantages of
isolation and exposure that could make it a bad choice. It is doubtful
whether it had been chosen. We got there and we stayed there. We were
there because we were there. So we entrenched and built block houses
and strung wire and chopped away a clearing a few hundred feet from our
billets and laid in such stores and ammunition as a few ponies could
pull down, and waited. This was twenty-seven versts south of Shenkursk,
and Shenkursk was one hundred versts south of Bereznik, and Bereznik was
three hundred versts south of Archangel.
Shenkursk was our advanced base. Here we had one company of American
infantry, one platoon of American engineers, one section of Canadian
artillery, American headquarters for 1st battalion, 339th, British
headquarters for the Vaga column with all the attendant service units,
an American hospital, and miscellaneous units of Russians numbering
about a thousand, poorly organized, badly officered, and of doubtful
morale. Shenkursk is the second largest city in the Archangel
government, having a normal population of about three thousand people, a
cathedral, a monastery with two churches, and three other churches. It
was something of an educational center and summer resort. We found a
number of Petrograd and Moscow people here whose summer vacations had
been prolonged by the exigencies of Russian politics. There were many
excellent houses here, some mansions, some interesting people, a most
comfortable place to spend the winter.
Here we fortified, quite thoroughly, better perhaps than anywhere else
in North Russia. To be sure we were outflanked by Kodema, a Bolshevik
village on our left and Tarniya, a Bolshevik village on our right, a
little to the rear. But otherwise we were quite comfortable. We made
several attacks on these villages, but always found it necessary to
retire.
On January 19, 1919, the big fight began. The Bolsheviki five thousand
strong attacked Ustpadenga. They had three or four times as many guns
as we had, including some long-range artillery that was far beyond the
reach of our guns. They had perfect observation on our positions and
telephone wires clear around to our rear. They picked off every billet,
up one side of the street and down the other. We had no secrets. And
their infantry came up in excellent form and spirit, covered with
perfect white camouflage and supported with machine-guns and pompoms.
Our men drove them back and held them off for days until the British
command ordered them to fall back to Shenkursk. One platoon of forty
men had thirty-two casualties, and every man in that small force had to
do the work of ten men throughout that terrible week. Fighting all the
way back, Company A, 339th American Infantry, and the Center Section
38th Battery, Canadian Field Artillery, dragged themselves minus two
guns into Shenkursk on the night of the 25th. During that day Shenkursk
had been bombarded from four sides and we knew that we were completely
surrounded, although no Bolshevik infantry had attacked here. There
were no reinforcements to be had. Some of our Russian conscripts had
gone over to the enemy. There was no hope of relief from the north in
case we should be besieged. There was nothing to prevent his big guns
reducing Shenkursk to ruins. We had Company C here as well as Company A
and felt confident of our ability to hold off the Bolshevik infantry in
any numbers, but his artillery had us beaten, because outranged, from
the start.
So it was decided to evacuate that night by an unused road that we hoped
the Bolsheviki had overlooked. By very clever and efficient work on the
part of the British command the evacuation of Shenkursk was successfully
carried out without the loss of a man, and we were followed by hundreds
of civilians, who discovered our movement in the night. The next
morning when we were well to the north we heard his guns open up on
Shenkursk. He did not know we had escaped him. He had yet to learn
that we had left behind for him one hundred days' rations for two
thousand men, great stores of ammunition and ordinance, all our personal
kits, and several spiked guns.
By night of the 26th we reached Shagavari, having made forty versts on a
single track sled road, walking two abreast and stretched out for miles.
Here nearly every one snatched a little sleep, as we found two platoons
of Company D who held off the vanguard of the pursuit which had begun to
catch up to us. The civilian column, swelled now to thousands, poured
out into the road ahead of us, a long winding snake-like trail of black
in a white world, making for somewhere north. We evacuated Shagavari on
the afternoon of the 27th and stood for our new front at Vistafka,
sixteen versts north, with Kitsa seven versts to the rear as
headquarters.
During this retreat the temperature had been from thirty-six to ten
below zero. We had brought out ninety-seven wounded and sick and these
were sent on to Bereznik and Archangel--three hundred miles on pony
sleds traveling day and night. The civilian refugees were partly
Russians who had conspicuously identified themselves with us and so were
afraid of the Bolsheviki, partly those who felt that they would be surer
of food behind our lines, there were some personal friends of soldiers,
and yet they were mostly peasants whom we had been compelled to put out
of their houses for military reasons.
Our new front consisted in all of eight villages. At first a barricade
of pine branches and snow, then some logs, then some block houses, then
some wire, after a while a dug-out or two. The fighting here at Vistafka
was the hardest and most continuous of the winter. Every day there was
some shelling, and five major attacks were made before March first when
we were forced to make Kitsa our forward position. The fighting at
Vistafka was done by companies A, C, D, and F, by Royal Scots and Kings
Liverpools, by Russians, and by the splendid Canadian artillery units
who were fortunately reinforced by a 4.5 howitzer E.F.A. The old
artillery supremacy of the Bolsheviki remained unchanged, however, and
while seven thousand infantry, having surrounded Vistafka could not take
it, the guns did finally reduce it to untenability.
From March 1 to April 20, Kitsa was the front line, with Maximofskaya
for support on our right, and our guns at Ignatofskaya. These villages
lay only one and two versts apart. We were preparing Malobereznik,
seven versts in the rear, for defense, and fell back here on Easter
Sunday. This stubborn resistance on our part was important because it
was absolutely necessary to hold the enemy here or he would cut off the
whole Dvina column and take Bereznik where we had accumulated great
stores of supplies and munitions. Bereznik was his goal and the Vaga
River was his road. He hammered away daily at Toulgas, our Dvina River
front, but that was to keep Company B and our other forces there. He
could not hope to take it.
[Illustration: The "Y" was always on the job.
These Canadians fought in France before they went to Russia.]
On May first, the international labor holiday, he opened up on every
front, making the supreme effort of the year. His heaviest blow fell on
Malobereznik. The ice had begun to run out of the Vaga and the upper
Dvina enabling him to mount guns on barges while our gunboats were still
frozen in at Archangel. When he had put five thousand shells into
Malobereznik and burned down every house, his infantry came on only to
be fearfully cut up and sent back, again and again. He was deeply
disappointed. The thing was inexplicable. So on May fifth he came
again. This time with eight thousand shells as a prelude. And when the
last futile wave of his infantry had gone to pieces under our fire and
we had taken prisoner hundreds of his men who had been sent to surround
us, we knew that he had done his worst, and the winter campaign was
practically at an end.
*VI*
*KITSA*
Kitsa is a church village of about fifty long, low Russian timber houses
situated in a great bend of the Vaga River with only the outer curve of
the river bank for a landscape and with a dense wall of pine woods in
the rear. This level country is so painfully level that you always have
a desire to look over the edge of the nearby horizon to see
something--but you never can. When you first pass through Kitsa, which
you never would have done in a million years had it not been for this
war, you think it is the sorriest of all the sorry places on the river.
It might at least have been located on the high bank and so gained the
only thirty feet of vantage that nature had provided. Yet Kitsa has one
striking distinction. The road makes a right angle in the midst of the
houses, and the churches are in the angle and in the west. The West!
Russia does not need landscapes because she has skies. Kitsa to me is
that wonderful western sky cloven in the midst by the Byzantine spires
in pea green and gold, and based flat on the black ridge of pine, and
fixed forever in permanent and infinite pastels in my memory.
Kitsa was not a Bolshevist town nor Royalist. It was Constitutionalist
Socialist Democratic. It was founded by refugees from Novgorod who had
rebelled against certain imperial church decrees. There was still a
little mound where these glorious ancestors had erected a hill of
freedom. And the freedom itself had been retained intact, so the oldest
inhabitant told me, it having been a matter of the text and type of the
holy book read in the church.
I rode through Kitsa once when there was one platoon of American
soldiers quartered there and the civilian population was about normally
occupied with its own life. And then I came in with the refugees from
Shenkursk on the night of January twenty-seventh. First it was Brackett
Lewis and Ivan Taroslaftseff serving hot coffee and biscuits to the
exhausted soldiers in the building that the people had built and used
for a public school but the Allied military had commandeered, not to
store whisky in, as at Bereznik, but to run a canteen in. Then it was
caring for the ninety-seven wounded, then back to the men and civilian
refugees, until the full daylight, and the column was all in. We took
the three best houses in town for the hospital that night. Then the
British officers took the next best. Then the American officers. And
that following day we billeted troops in every house, and the Russian
people made room for us, welcomed us, waited on us, made nothing of
themselves, moved into their bath houses, then out again if we wanted
them; gave us all the room there was, gladly, believed in us. I shall
always remember a poor woman who came into an officer's room and opened
a table drawer to look for two hundred silver roubles she had left
there. The lock had been forced. The roubles were gone. Silver
roubles were very precious. The woman's tearful face did not express so
much grief as surprise. She had discovered something most unwelcome
about our soldiers--perhaps officers. Other Russians were learning to
hate the military for other reasons. In three days they were utterly
bewildered. They do not take disillusionment in our offhand, familiar
way. They are a serious people. Their illusions are genuine. No
literature and no sophistication, but great sincerity. So completely
did these Kitsaites give way to us that when the order for their
evacuation went forth we gained no room for we already had it all.
One pretty girl came to us in despair one morning, because one of us
could talk Russian, and told us that the Cossacks had broken into her
stores in the night and stolen everything. We found they had left much.
It is remarkable how effectively and cleverly these people can secrete
their goods. But she knew that they would get the rest in time so she
begged us to take it from her as a gift. We learned she was the
daughter of the merchant who was presumably the richest man in the town.
Her parents had gone to Archangel. She had refused to go. Her brothers
were in Bolshevist territory. She had attended school in Moscow. She
was now something of a socialist and utterly out of sympathy with her
family. We bought all her goods. Some hand-woven skirt material. Some
food stuff. Some oats and flour. She went to work at British
headquarters as a scullery maid and was glad of the chance. And I do
think she was irritated considerably by the attentions paid her because
she was a pretty girl. They were of course most unartful and blatant as
well as general.
A week after the peasants were evacuated the engineers who were cutting
machine-gun holes in the bath houses found the frozen body of an old
woman who had hidden herself in a bath house and died there rather than
go away from the village where she had spent all her life. The body lay
untouched for a week. Bodies froze like ice or iron when the
temperature was below zero.
[Illustration: The Canadian artillery got there every time.
This Russian gun crew on the railroad front enjoys warmer weather.]
One awful night when we had been horribly shelled and the evacuation of
the town was hourly imminent there were nine frozen bodies laid side by
side in the wood-shed behind the hospital. We should have to leave them
there just as we had left others at Shenkursk and Shagavari. I had
known all these boys--five Americans, two Englishmen and two
Russians--and as I stood out there in the cold, dark, snowy night, I
knew war. But there were other nights as bad. Nights when we sat by
them as they were dying and waiting for the operating table. God! what
nights! And we had to pack them off in the cold at once to a safer town
to the north. Then there came a night that nearly made me forget all
the others. Our forward position and only protection was demolished
utterly. We were forced to abandon it, and our men and guns all crawled
into Kitsa and across the river back of Kitsa to Ignatofskaya. We were
done. We had put up such a fight however that the enemy was done too,
but we did not know this. And the wounded came in that awful night, and
the dead. We did not sleep a wink. When the sun rose on Kitsa, Kitsa
too was dead. The order was for everybody to "stand to," and the
streetful stood to all day long, waiting, and nothing happened. After
the continuous thunder of the days before not a gun was fired. But
Kitsa was dead. And the engineers were going about setting every house
and building with kerosene inside and out for burning. Every kit was
packed. Not a thing but cinders was to be left. Kitsa was a thing of
the past. And although nothing did happen--and weary men could not
stand to forever--and everybody crawled inside and slept--Kitsa was
dead.
For weeks afterward we lived and worked most of the time in Kitsa. The
Bolsheviki had come back, at first feebly, then with real guns. He had
put up a show at fighting. His shells had burned some of our buildings.
He had killed and wounded some of our men. But we had new men now. And
they had the new point of view. But the piles of straw in the corners
of buildings were kept soaked with kerosene. We were now holding Kitsa
to keep the enemy on the east side of the river until after the ice
should break up. And as I stood on the bluff and looked down on the
snow-covered roofs of the town I imagined what the fire would look
like--and wanted to see it.
One day I went to the cemetery where our men had been buried in unmarked
graves, and for the most part identified the places; and then visited
the little chapel which had been looted, and the churches. The Bibles
were printed from hand-cut plates. The silver ornaments on the Bibles
and the elaborate candelabra, were all hand made in every detail of
construction and decoration. The soldiers had left them because of
their size. All little things had been taken. All Kitsa was just like
the cemetery and the churches. But the tragedy had passed over for the
moment. It was peaceful death. Not even the paltry dozen shells sent
over by the Bolsheviki to remind us that the war was still on made any
difference to this peace.
During the very last days of our tenure of Kitsa the friction between
the British command and the Americans at the front became quite serious.
The command wanted certain risks taken and sacrifices made that in the
judgment of the Americans were without sufficient purpose and
justification. The American officers were unwilling to make what they
deemed useless sacrifice of their men. So bitter did this feeling
become that at one time the British commanding officer gave certain
orders to the Canadian Field Artillery which the Canadians undoubtedly
would not have obeyed. The British command had its troubles with them
also. In spite of all this, however, Kitsa was held against the enemy
until the river ice actually broke under the men as they came out,
leaving more desolation and ruin to the slowly conquering Bolsheviki.
*VII*
*FIGHTING WITHOUT A FLAG*
The American soldier who was sent to Northern Russia for his part in the
great war had an experience which in several respects was novel in the
vast field of experience which the war imposed on Americans. One of
these was that he had to fight without his flag. Not only was the flag
absent from the front lines in accord with the best practices of modern
warfare, but the flag as a symbol and the consciousness of what it
symbolizes were equally absent for the most part from his billet, his
conversation, his mess kit, and the whole campaign.
He was fed with foreign food, clothed in part with foreign clothes,
invading a foreign country, given orders by foreign officers, and
fighting a war that was foreign to all he had ever thought of America.
He had gone into the army to fight Germany, and here he found himself
after the armistice fighting an unknown foe with whom the United States
was not at war, and quite as much out of sympathy with the officers of
another nationality whom he had to obey, as with the men whom he was
trying to kill.
His government had not told him why he was here, what grievances it had
against his enemies, what arrangements it had with its allies in this
expedition, nor what it hoped to accomplish if successful in the
enterprise for which he daily must offer his life. His officers could
not tell him. They had never been told. They wanted to know. What
they did know was that at every turn, in every position, on every piece
of work, in every detail of responsibility, an English officer stood
over them telling them what to do. Sometimes he was a very young English
officer. Sometimes a strain was necessary to get adequate rank to him.
Sometimes he was utterly inexperienced.
The method of the British control of the Allied expedition to North
Russia is a subject for study and an example for warning that the League
of Nations may well heed. If thousands of Americans have gone home
thoroughly detesting the name and memory of everything English and if
other thousands of Englishmen are telling each other and being told that
Americans are cowards and in the same breath that they are insolent and
unmanageable, it is chiefly to be blamed on the British method of
managing an allied campaign.
It might be supposed that the British, being appropriately and properly
in supreme command, would have given their orders, as far as they
applied solely to the operations of purely American units, to the
responsible American officers, leaving these officers without petty
interference to get the work accomplished. But it was not so. British
colonels did not give their orders to American colonels to be passed
down the line. In fact, they had very little use for American colonels.
They went to the captains, the lieutenants, and even the sergeants and
corporals and the men themselves. They ignored American officers most
noticeably. They set their own petty officers upon the Americans in a
manner that was most irritating to American national self-esteem and
bitterly resented. And since all necessary things are reasonable to the
military mind it was the greatest tact to explain that "the Americans
know nothing about military matters, you know."
I do not feel that the Americans had a grievance necessarily because Old
Glory did not wave above them in North Russia. I can imagine that they
could have fought with excellent morale in France if they had not had
their colors with them. The case consists of the aggravating
circumstances. The men were made to feel most unnecessarily and quite
contrary to the facts that they had been handed to England and
forgotten, that their government was wholly unmindful of them, and that
for the time at least they were deprived of the protection and divorced
from the ideals of which the Stars and Stripes had always stood as a
symbol in their minds.
I did see the flag once in American headquarters at Shenkursk, but it
was inside and inconspicuous, and few soldiers go in at headquarters. I
saw one flying on a Y.M.C.A. building, but it was of course ordered down
for perfectly good and adequate reasons. I read in a soldier's letter
to his sweetheart once: "For God's sake send me a little flag in your
next letter. I haven't seen one since I came to this awful country."
One soldier had a barishna make him a little flag from old bunting with
embroidered stars. And I have seen more than one lonely American pull a
little flag out of his pocket and kiss it.
At Shenkursk we were invited to hold our Christmas exercises in the
monastery church. This was probably the greatest innovation ever
ventured by the ecclesiastical establishment of that town. Seats were
provided, the icons covered, the Abbess and nuns safely ensconced in the
gallery to appease their curiosity, and the forces marched in--American
soldiers and officers, a few Canadian artillerists, and British
headquarters staff. Americans greatly predominated in numbers. A
British chaplain read the service, concluding naturally with "God save
the King." As we filed out an American private was heard to remark:
"Who ever heard of the Star Spangled Banner anyhow?"
I shall not hope that academicians, business men, politicians, and
sensible people generally will see anything in this but a thin
sentimentalism. I should not have appreciated it had I not lived with
men who were daily facing death for a cause unknown, without patriotic
background or personal interest, and under the insistent domination of
officers of another nation who looked down upon them, and talked about
them discreditably.
"If we had British soldiers here we should drive the Bolos out in short
order. But what can be done with these miserable Americans and
Russians!"
The antipathy that British officers felt toward Yankees was acquired
early in the campaign and increased in intensity toward the end. In some
measure it was the Yankees' fault and to some extent the product of
facts and forces that are beyond the control of individuals. There was
disapproval and jealousy of the over-prominence America had too easily
acquired in the great war. There was resentment of the favoritism of
the Russians for the Americans. There was the inheritance of pride in
the military achievements of the Empire. There was utter ignorance of
the motives and purposes of the present English government. But there
was also the independence and "insolence" of the Yankees, their free and
easy attitude toward British official dignity, their insistence upon
reasons why, and their assumption of knowledge and ability quite beyond
anything their experience in military matters justified.
And these little irritations grew and were magnified in little minds
until the manner of the Yankee salute itself became a mote in the
British eye.
I have heard the most caustic and untrue criticism of American soldiers
from the lips of English officers whose rank should in itself have been
guaranty that they would not descend to this. I have heard it hinted at
a score of times by petty officers who out of consideration for my
presence did not pursue the subject to its commonplace ends. And
repeatedly members of the new British army that had never seen the Yanks
at all said to me in all friendliness: "What a pity that your men out
here were not real Americans, that they were foreigners, and that they
gave America such a black eye by their conduct."
This was a direct echo of the campaign of vilification of the American
soldier which was carried on within their own circles by certain British
officers of the North Russian Expeditionary Force.
I overheard some English soldiers singing a parody of "Over There," of
which I can only remember "The Yanks are running, the Yanks are running
everywhere," and the last line "And they didn't do a damn thing about it
over there." This was in Archangel. There were no Yankee soldiers
about. They were at the front. The singing which had been in a subdued
tone was stopped immediately when my presence was observed and when we
had finished a little conversation the Tommies sang "Over There," and
they sang it straight. There was no anti-Yank feeling in these men. They
had genuine admiration for the Yankee soldiers. They had picked up the
little seeds of antipathy from some of their officers.
As a matter of fact the American soldier in North Russia fought well.
He drove the Bolsheviki 427 versts south of Archangel before winter set
in, and then took up winter quarters and prepared for defense. Constant
patrolling had to be done, and expeditions had to be made against the
Bolshevik villages that flanked us on both sides and constantly
threatened our rear. All this was for the most part true of seven
fronts between which there was no connection or communication except by
going back to the base.
Captain Odyard of Company A was decorated by the British government, and
the company was praised for its gallant work at Ustpadenga and Vistafka,
and yet the British Tommies of the new army asked me in July: "Why was
it that the Yanks turned tail at Ustpadenga?"
The charges made by the British that the American soldiers were
unreliable and mutinous were founded correctly on the mental attitude of
the American soldier and upon the things he said. He hated the
expedition and its management. But those charges were not fairly
founded upon anything that the American soldier did. There was an
instance of one company refusing at one time to go to the front. It was
but a temporary refusal. They went. There were several parallel
instances when British and Canadian and French soldiers resorted to
similar semi-mutiny. It was always momentary. They always eventually
went forward with the unequal fight despite the inhuman conditions. The
dissatisfied and unhappy soldier was not yellow. He may have had some
sympathy for the Bolsheviki whose country he was unwillingly invading.
He certainly felt that the invasion was a crime. But he was not
yellow.[#] He obeyed orders. He fought splendidly. He went to his
death. He held his post. He cursed the British and did his duty. He
killed Bolsheviki, plenty of them, not knowing why.
[#] The report of the Judge Advocate General gives a number of cases of
American soldiers who were convicted by court-martial of having been
guilty of self-inflicted wounds. The number accused of this was
lamentably large. Even if larger in proportion, however, than in any
other army in the world war, the reflective mind is forced to ask the
question: Why?
*VIII*
*"AMERICA DOBRA"*
There was one thing in North Russia that touched every American where
every normal man is sentimental. There was a passion for America. In
every log house there was love for America. In the hearts of the people
in every village there was moving what Benjamin Kidd calls "the emotion
of the ideal."
We could not understand it at first. Every peasant greeted us with
"America dobra," which is not good Russian, but a sort of slang phrase
meaning that America is all right. And now and then one would step up a
little nearer and in a more subdued tone say that some other country was
not all right.
We suspected at first that he was playing a double game. We remembered
the man who walks like a bear. We smiled cynically and handed him a
cigarette. But we did him an injustice.
[Illustration: The church at Yemetskoye is visible for many miles up the
Dvina.
Shenkursk is a quiet and romantic spot on the Vaga River.]
One heavily whiskered old peasant of Kitsa made me see this injustice.
We had crawled into Kitsa on the second night after the evacuation of
Shenkursk, with the weather about twenty below zero and bringing with us
ninety-seven wounded on sleds. The senior medical officer had selected
the best houses in Kitsa for hospital purposes, and one could never
forget how cheerfully on ten minutes' notice those peasant people got
themselves and their things out of the way and helped to get the
patients in and warm and fed. Two of these houses belonged to my
bewhiskered friend. He was something of a magnate in Kitsa. And it
turned out that we were to use his houses for hospital purposes for
months after that night, sending him and his on their northward way, for
safety in the company of refugees from seven other villages. His
property interests in Kitsa, however, were too important in his old life
to be ignored and in a few days he was back with a sled convoy as a
common driver, a labor which he persisted in as long as the fortunes of
war permitted for the sake of the opportunity it gave him to look things
over. Knowing that the hospital was an American affair the old man was
quite delighted that his houses had been chosen for this purpose.
"America dobra," he said to me exultantly.
One day I happened to discover that in both houses the private rooms in
which the precious family possessions had been stored and secured by
heavy padlocks had been broken open and the contents looted and
despoiled. Most of the fabrics and silverware and family gods pulled
out of trunks and bureaus were of no use or interest to soldiers and had
been thrown on the floor and trampled underfoot. It was wanton and
heartless, and believing that our boys had at least had a hand in it I
was ashamed and chagrined. It was painful to remember the gleam of
faith in the old Mongolian eyes when he said "America dobra."
When he came again and I saw him the gloom on his face was terrible. He
had seen the wreck. Apologetically I offered my condolences: "America
ne dobra." "No," he said slowly in Russian, "no, war is at fault. War
is not good. America dobra."
So I had to think again. I hadn't seen far enough into the soul behind
this bushy face. And I didn't smile cynically as I handed him the
cigarette.
After a while we learned to discriminate between "Amerikanski" and
"Amerika." The peasants often handed us personal compliments, but we
learned that when they praised America they were not talking about us
but about an idea, an ideal, a dream--would I could say a fact!
These Russian peasants have not read American history. They do not know
American politics. Most of them probably have not read five hundred
words about America in all their lives. But they have heard and talked
about America some, and thought about America more. Perhaps there are
many well-read Americans who could profitably think about America more,
even at a loss of time to read. And now the moujik of North Russia and
his wife and children have all of them seen Americans--real live
ones--and liked them.
How much the Russian peasant liked the American soldier it is a little
difficult for me to convey without seeming to exaggerate. I was
skeptical about it for months. It might be bear love. He was always
begging for cigarettes, and one could easily see through his cupidity
and simple craft. But I saw American soldiers billeted in Russian homes
and mixing with the Russians so much that I am sure that I know the true
sentiments in this case. I have been asked by English soldiers more
than once: "Why is it that the Russians like the Yankees so much better
than they do us?"
I asked this question, without the comparison, of an intelligent looking
Russian soldier: "Why do you Russians like the Yanks so well?" "Because
they shake hands like men," he answered thoughtfully. "Because they
treat us as equals. Because they are good to the Russian people," and
the next day when we were talking about the same subject he said: "It is
because they represent America to us that we like the Yankee soldiers."