The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki
by Joel R. Moore and Harry H. Mead and Lewis E. Jahns
[Transcriber’s Notes]
Here are the definitions of several unfamiliar (to me) words.
batmen: Soldier assigned to an officer as a servant.
batushka: Village priest.
drosky: Cart
felcher: Second-rate medical student or anyone with some medical
knowledge.
hors de combat: Out of the fight; disabled; not able to fight.
junker: Aristocratic Prussian landholder devoted to militarism and
authoritarianism, providing the German military forces with many of its
officers.
knout: Whip with a lash of leather thongs, formerly used in Russia for
flogging criminals. To flog with the knout.
mashie nib: Mashie-Niblick (mah-she nib-lik)—Wood shafted golf club
with about the same loft and length as today’s seven iron.
poilus: French common soldier, especially in World War I.
verst: Russian measure of distance; 3500 feet, 0.6629 mile, 1.067 km.
viand: Choice or delicate food.
volplane: Glide in an airplane without power.
I (Don Kostuch) am the son of John Kostuch, then from Detroit, who was
a Mechanic in the 339th, Company M. He saw some action in the fall of
1918 but due to flu, exposure and a dislocated joint, was evacuated to
England on December 1, 1918 before the gruesome winter described in the
book. {sources: “M” Company 339th records and Golden C. Bahr papers,
1918–1919.}
[Illustration]
Fort Snelling, Minnesota The following text is copied from a newspaper
clipping in the book. The Declaration of War is on one side and an
incomplete local news item is on the other side.
From The Indianapolis News, Monday, April 9, 1917
U. S. Declaration of War
Sixty-fifth Congress of the United States of America
At the First Session
Begun and held at the City of Washington on Monday, the second day of
April, one thousand nine hundred and seventeen
JOINT RESOLUTION
Declaring that a state of war exists between the Imperial German
Government and the Government of the people of the United States and
making provision to the same.
Whereas the Imperial German Government has committed repeated acts of
war against the Government and the people of the United States of
America, Therefore be it
_Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United
States_ _of America in Congress assembled_, That the state of war
between the United States and the Imperial German Government which has
thus been thrust upon the United States is hereby formally declared;
and that the President be, and he is hereby, authorized and directed to
employ the entire naval and military forces of the United States and
the resources of the Government to carry on war against the Imperial
German Government; and to bring the conflict to a successful
termination all of the resources of the country are hereby pledged by
the Congress of the United States.
?? Speaker of the House of Representatives
Thomas R. Marshall
Vice President of the United States and President of the Senate
Approved 6 April, 1917
Woodrow Wilson
From The Indianapolis News, Monday, April 9, 1917
COUNTY PLEDGES AID FOR FOOD MOVEMENT
RESOLUTIONS ADOPTED, AT COURTHOUSE MEETING.
APPEAL MADE TO PEOPLE
The movement to make the state of Indiana economically and
agriculturally prepared for war, as recommended by Governor James P,
Goodrich, had its beginning in Marion county at a meeting of farmers
and those interested in soil cultivation held Saturday afternoon in the
criminal courtroom.
The necessity for the efficient utilization of all the soil resources
of Indiana were emphasized in addresses at the meeting, which was the
beginning of a plan to create a county-wide interest in the movement.
Another Meeting Monday.
The general idea of the need for greater food production, as outlined
at the meeting, will be crystallized into definite plans for meeting
the situation at a meeting called for Monday night, to be held in the
criminal court room. Representatives of commercial, labor and civic
bodies and organizations of all kinds are invited and requested to
attend the meeting Monday night and assist in the work.
Stirring appeals to the people of Indianapolis and the county to
respond to the agricultural need which this country faces in the
present war period were made by speakers, including: Charles V.
Fairbanks, formerly Vice-president of the United States; the Rev. Frank
L. Loveland, pastor of the Meridian Street M. E. Church; H. Orme,
president of the Better Farming Association, and Ralph M. Gilbert,
county agricultural agent.
Resolutions Adopted.
Resolutions were adopted at the meeting pledging the support of the
citizens of Marion county in all measures taken for the defense of the
nation and urging the people to respond to the resolutions prepared for
greater and efficient food production. The resolutions prepared by a
committee composed of Mord Gardner, Ralph C. Avery, Fred L., Smock,
John E. Shearer, C. C. Osborn, Grace May Stutsman, Charles P. Wright
and Leo Fesler were as follows:
“Whereas, By joint resolution of congress and the proclamation of the
President, war has been declared on Germany, and
“‘Whereas, The President has earnestly appealed to all citizens to
support the government in every possible way, and our Governor has
called, for meetings in each county to plan preparedness in every
occupation. “Resolved, That we, the citizens of Marion county,
assembled in meetings at the courthouse do loyally pledge the
support... [torn]
The following map was provide by Mike Grobbel (http://grobbel.org) who
photographed it from the Frederick C. O’Dell Map Collection, Folder
Number 9, Map Number 1, Bentley Historical Library, University of
Michigan. Mr. Grobbel is the grandson of “CORP. C. A. GROBBELL, “I”
Co.” mentioned on page 284 as a recipient of the French _Croix de
Guerre._ The correct spelling is “Grobbel”.
Corp. Grobbel received the Distinguished Service Cross, not mentioned
in this book.
[Illustration: Sketch Showing Location of
FORTIFIED AREAS]
[End of Transcriber’s notes]
[Illustration: Hundreds of Miles Through Solid Forests of Pine and
Spruce.]
The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki
_Campaigning in North Russia
1918–1919_
_Compiled and Edited by_
CAPT. JOEL R. MOORE, 339th U. S. Infantry
LIEUT. HARRY H. MEAD, 339th U. S. Infantry
LIEUT. LEWIS E. JAHNS, 339th U. S. Infantry
_Published by_
The Polar Bear Publishing Co.
Detroit, Mich.
COPYRIGHT 1920
BY
JOEL R. MOORE
PRESS OF
TOPPING-SANDERS COMPANY
DETROIT
To the men who in North Russia died in battle and of wounds, or of
sickness due directly to hardship and exposure, this book is reverently
dedicated.
To Our Comrades and Friends
To our comrades and friends we address these prefatory words. The book
is about to go to the printers and binders. Constantly while writing
the historical account of the American expedition, which fought the
Bolsheviki in North Russia, we have had our comrades in mind. You are
the ones most interested in getting a complete historical account. It
is a wonderful story of your own fighting and hardships, of your own
fortitude and valor. It is a story that will make the eyes of the home
folks shine with pride.
Probably you never could have known how remarkably good is the record
of your outfits in that strange campaign if you had not commissioned
three of your comrades to write the book for you. In the national army,
we happened to be officers; in civil life we are respectively, college
professor, lawyer, and public accountant, in the order in which our
names appear on the title page. But we prefer to come to you now with
the finished product merely as comrades who request you to take the
book at its actual value to you—a faithful description of our part in
the great world war. We are proud of the record the Americans made in
the expedition.
We think that nothing of importance has been omitted. Some sources of
information were not open to us—will be to no one for years. But from
some copies of official reports, from company and individual diaries,
and from special contributions written for us, we have been able to
write a complete narrative of the expedition. In all cases except a few
where the modesty of the writer impelled him to ask us not to mention
his name, we have referred to individuals who have contributed to the
book. To these contributors all, we here make acknowledgment of our
debt to them for their cordial co-operation. For the wealth of
photo-engravures which the book carries, we have given acknowledgment
along with each individual engraving, for furnishing us with the
photographic views of the war scenes and folk scenes of North Russia.
Most of them are, of course, from the official United States Signal
Corps war pictures.
When we started the book, we had no idea that it would develop into the
big book it is, a _de luxe_ edition, of fine materials and fine
workmanship. We have not been able to risk a large edition. Only two
thousand copies are being printed. They are made especially for the
boys who were up there under the Arctic Circle, made as nice as we
could get them made. Of many of the comrades we have lost track, but we
trust that somehow they will hear of this book and become one of the
proud possessors of a copy. To our comrades and friends, we offer this
volume with the expectation that you will be pleased with it and that
after you have read it, you will glow with pride when you pass it over
to a relative or friend to read.
Detroit, Michigan,
September, 1920
JOEL R. MOORE
HARRY H. MEAD
LEWIS E. JAHNS
Table of Contents
Index to Photo-Engravures
Introduction
U. S. A. Medical Units on the Arctic Ocean
Fall Offensive on the Railroad
River Push for Kotlas
Doughboys on Guard in Archangel
Why American Troops Were Sent to Russia
On the Famous Kodish Front in the Fall
Penetrating to Ust Padenga
Peasantry of the Archangel Province
“H” Company Pushes Up the Onega Valley
“G” Company Far Up the Pinega River
With Wounded and Sick
Armistice Day with Americans in North Russia
Winter Defense of Toulgas
Great White Reaches
Mournful Kodish
Ust Padenga
The Retreat from Shenkursk
Defense of Pinega
The Land and the People
Holding the Onega Valley
Ice-Bound Archangel
Winter on the Railroad
Bolsheozerki
Letting Go the Tail-Holt
The 310th Engineers
“Come Get Your Pills”
Signal Platoon Wins Commendation
The Doughboy’s Money in Archangel
Propaganda and Propaganda and—
Real Facts about Alleged Mutiny
Our Allies, French, British and Russian
Felchers, Priests and Icons
Bolshevism
Y. M. C. A. and Y. W. C. A. with Troops
“Dobra” Convalescent Hospital
American Red Cross in North Russia
Captive Doughboys in Bolshevikdom
Military Decorations
Homeward Bound
In Russia’s Fields (Poem)
Our Roll of Honored Dead
Map of the Archangel Fighting Area
Index of Photo-Engravures
Hundreds of Miles Through Solid Forests
Surgical Operation, Receiving Hospital, Archangel
Old Glory Protects Our Hospital
Used as 53rd Stationary Hospital
“Olympia” Sailors Fought Reds
After 17-Hour March in Forest
Loading a Drosky at Obozerskaya
Wireless Operators-Signal Platoon
A Shell Screeched Over This Burial Scene
Vickers Machine Gun Helping Hold Lines
Our Armored Train
First Battalion Hurries Up River
Lonely Post in Dense Forest
Statue of Peter the Great and Public Buildings, Archangel
Drawing Rations, Verst 455
List Honors to a Soldier
Olga Barracks
Street Car Strike in Archangel
American Hospitals
“Supply” Co. Canteen “Accommodates” Boys
Red Cross Ambulances, Archangel
“Cootie Mill” Operating at Smolny Annex
Single Flat Strip of Iron on Plow Point
Thankful for What at Home We Feed Pigs
Artillery “O. P.” Kodish
Mill for Grinding Grain
Pioneer Platoon Clearing Fire Lane
Testing Vickers Machine Gun
Doughboy Observing Bolo in Pagosta, near Ust Padenga
Cossack Receiving First Aid
Ready for Day’s Work
Flax Hung Up to Dry
310th Engineers at Beresnik
Joe Chinzi and Russian Bride
Watching Her Weave Cloth
Doughboy Attends Spinning Bee
Doughboy in Best Bed—On Stove
Defiance to Bolo Advance
337th Hospital at Beresnik
Onega
Y. M. C. A., Obozerskaya
Trench Mortar Crew, Chekuevo—Hand Artillery
Wounded and Sick—Over a Thousand in All
Bolo Killed in Action—For Russia or Trotsky?
Monastery at Pinega
Russian 75’s Bound for Pinega
“G” Men near Pinega
Lewis Gun Protects Mess Hall
Something Like Selective Draft
Canadian Artillery, Kurgomin
Watch Tower, Verst 455
Toulgas Outpost
One of a Bolo Patrol
Patrolling
By Reindeer Jitney to Bakaritza
Russian Eskimos at Home near Pinega
Fortified House, Toulgas
To Bolsheozerki
Colonel Morris, at Right
Russian Eskimo Idol
Ambulance Men
Practising Rifle and Pistol Fire, on Onega Front
French Machine Gun Men at Kodish
Allied Plane Carrying Bombs
Dance at Convalescent Hospital—Nurses and “Y” Girls
Subornya Cathedral
Building a Blockhouse
Market Scene, Yemetskoe
Old Russian Prison—Annex to British Hospital
Wash Day—Rinsing in River
Archangel Cab-Men
Minstrels of “I” Company Repeat Program in Y. M. C. A
Archangel Girls Filling Christmas Stockings
Y. M. C. A. Rest Room, Archangel
Russian Masonry Stove—American Convalescent Hospital
Comrade Allikas Finds His Mother in Archangel
Printing “The American Sentinel”
Flashlight of a Doughboy Outpost at Verst 455
Bolo Commander’s Sword Taken in Battle of Bolsheozerki
Eight Days without a Shave, near Bolsheozerki
Woodpile Strong-Point, Verst 445
Verst 455—“Fort Nichols”
Back from Patrol
Our Shell Bursts near the Bolo Skirmish Line
Blockhouse at Shred Makrenga
Hot Summer Day at Pinega before the World War
Dvina River Ice Jam in April
Bare Mejinovsky—Near Kodish
Bolo General under Flag Truce at 445, April, 1919
After Prisoner Exchange Parley
Pioneer Platoon Has Fire
310th Engineers Under Canvas near Bolsheozerki with “M” Co
Hospital “K. P.’s”
Red Cross Nurses
Bartering
Mascots
Colonel Dupont (French) at 455 Bestows Many _Croix de Guerre_ Medals on Americans
Polish Artillery and Mascot
Russian Artillery, Verst 18
Canadian Artillery—Americans Were Strong for Them
Making _Khleba_—Black Bread
Stout Defense of Kitsa
Christmas Dinner, Convalescent Hospital, Archangel
“Come and Get It” at 455
Doughboys Drubbed Sailors
Yank and Scot Guarding Bolo Prisoners, Beresnik
View of Archangel in Summer
General Ironside Inspecting Doughboys
Burial of Lt. Clifford Phillips, American Cemetery, Archangel
Major J. Brooks Nichols in his Railway Detachment Field Hq
Ready to Head Memorial Day Parade, Archangel, 1919
American Cemetery, Archangel
Soldiers and Sailors of Six Nations Reverence Dead
Graves of First Three Americans Killed, Obozerskaya, Russia
Sailors Parade on Memorial Day
Through Ice Floes in Arctic Homeward Bound
Out of White Sea into Arctic, under Midnight Sun
INTRODUCTION
The troopships “Somali,” “Tydeus,” and “Nagoya” rubbed the Bakaritza
and Smolny quays sullenly and listed heavily to port. The American
doughboys grimly marched down the gangplanks and set their feet on the
soil of Russia, September 5th, 1918. The dark waters of the Dvina River
were beaten into fury by the opposing north wind and ocean tide. And
the lowering clouds of the Arctic sky added their dismal bit to this
introduction to the dreadful conflict which these American sons of
liberty were to wage with the Bolsheviki during the year’s campaign.
In the rainy fall season by their dash and valor they were to expel the
Red Guards from the cities and villages of the state of Archangel,
pursuing the enemy vigorously up the Dvina, the Vaga, the Onega and the
Pinega Rivers, and up the Archangel-Vologda Railway and the
Kodish-Plesetskaya-Petrograd state highway. They were to plant their
entrenched outposts in a great irregular horseshoe line, one cork at
Chekuevo, the toe at Ust-Padenga, the other cork of the shoe at
Karpagorskaya. They were to run out from the city of Archangel long,
long lines of communication, spread wide like the fingers of a great
hand that sought seemingly to cover as much of North Russia as possible
with Allied military protection.
In the winter, in the long, long nights and black, howling forests and
frozen trenches, with ever-deepening snows and sinking thermometer,
with the rivers and the White Sea and the Arctic Ocean solid ice
fifteen feet thick, these same soldiers now seen disembarking from the
troopships, were to find their enemy greatly increasing his forces
every month at all points on the Allied line. Stern defense everywhere
on that far-flung trench and blockhouse and fortified-village battle
line. They were to feel the overwhelming pressure of superior artillery
and superior equipment and transportation controlled by the enemy and
especially the crushing odds of four to ten times the number of men on
the battle lines. And with it they were to feel the dogged sense of the
grim necessity of fighting for every verst of frozen ground. Their very
lives were to depend upon the stubbornness of their holding retreat.
There could be no retreating beyond Archangel, for the ships were
frozen in the harbor. Indeed a retreat to the city of Archangel itself
was dangerous. It might lead to revulsion of temper among the populace
and enable the Red Guards to secure aid from within the lines so as to
carry out Trotsky’s threat of pushing the foreign bayonets all under
the ice of the White Sea. And in that remarkable winter defense these
American soldiers were to make history for American arms, exhibiting
courage and fortitude and heroism, the stories of which are to
embellish the annals of American martial exploits. They were destined,
a handful of them here, a handful there, to successfully baffle the
Bolshevik hordes in their savage drives.
In the spring the great ice crunching up in the rivers and the sea was
to behold those same veteran Yanks still fighting the Red Guard armies
and doing their bit to keep the state of Archangel, the North Russian
Republic, safe, and their own skins whole. The warming sun and bursting
green were to see the olive-drab uniform, tattered and torn as it was,
covering a wearied and hungry and homesick but nevertheless fearless
and valiant American soldier. With deadly effect they were to meet the
onrushing swarms of Bolos on all fronts and slaughter them on their
wire with rifle and machine gun fire and smash up their reserves with
artillery fire. With desperation they were to dispute the overwhelming
columns of infantry who were hurled by no less a renowned old Russian
General than Kuropatkin, and at Malo Bereznik and Bolsheozerki, in
particular, to send them reeling back in bloody disaster. They were to
fight the Bolshevik to a standstill so that they could make their
guarded getaway.
Summer was to see these Americans at last handing over the defenses to
Russian Northern Republic soldiers who had been trained during the
winter at Archangel and gradually during the spring broken in for duty
alongside the American and British troops and later were to hold the
lines in some places by themselves and in others to share the lines
with the new British troops coming in twenty thousand strong “to finish
the bloody show.” Gaily decorated Archangel was to bid the Americanski
_dasvedanhnia_ and God-speed in June. Blue rippling waters were to meet
the ocean-bound prows. Music from the Cruiser “Des Moines” (come to see
us out) was to blow fainter and fainter in the distance as they cheered
us out of the Dvina River for home.
Now the troops are hurrying off the transport. They are just facing the
strange, terrible campaign faintly outlined. It is now our duty to
faithfully tell the detailed story of it—“The History of the American
North Russian Expedition,” to try to do justice in this short volume to
the gripping story of the American soldiers “Campaigning in North
Russia, 1918–1919.”
The American North Russian Expeditionary Force consisted of the 339th
Infantry, which had been known at Camp Custer as “Detroit’s Own,” one
battalion of the 310th Engineers, the 337th Ambulance Company, and the
337th Field Hospital Company. The force was under the command of Col.
George E. Stewart, 339th Infantry, who was a veteran of the Philippines
and of Alaska. The force numbered in all, with the replacements who
came later, about five thousand five hundred men.
These units had been detached from the 85th Division, the Custer
Division, while it was enroute to France, and had been assembled in
southern England, there re-outfitted for the climate and warfare of the
North of Russia. On August the 25th, the American forces embarked at
Newcastle-on-Tyne in three British troopships, the “Somali,” the
“Tydeus” and the “Nagoya” and set sail for Archangel, Russia. A fourth
transport, the “Czar,” carried Italian troops who travelled as far as
the Murmansk with our convoy.
The voyage up the North Sea and across the Arctic Ocean, zig-zagging
day and night for fear of the submarines, rounding the North Cape far
toward the pole where the summer sun at midnight scarcely set below the
northwestern horizon, was uneventful save for the occasional alarm of a
floating mine and for the dreadful outbreak of Spanish “flu” on board
the ships. On board one of the ships the supply of yeast ran out and
breadless days stared the soldiers in the face till a resourceful army
cook cudgelled up recollections of seeing his mother use drainings from
the potato kettle in making her bread. Then he put the lightening once
more into the dough. And the boys will remember also the frigid breezes
of the Arctic that made them wish for their overcoats which by order
had been packed in their barrack bags, stowed deep down in the hold of
the ships. And this suffering from the cold as they crossed the Arctic
circle was a foretaste of what they were to be up against in the long
months to come in North Russia.
We had thought to touch the Murmansk coast on our way to Archangel, but
as we zig-zagged through the white-capped Arctic waves we picked up a
wireless from the authorities in command at Archangel which ordered the
American troopships to hasten on at full speed. The handful of American
sailors from the “Olympia,” the crippled category men from England and
the little battalion of French troops, which had boldly driven the Red
Guards from Archangel and pursued them up the Dvina and up the
Archangel-Vologda Railway, were threatened with extermination. The Reds
had gathered forces and turned savagely upon them.
So we sped up into the White Sea and into the winding channels of the
broad Dvina. For miles and miles we passed along the shores dotted with
fishing villages and with great lumber camps. The distant domes of the
cathedrals in Archangel came nearer and nearer. At last the water front
of that great lumber port of old Peter the Great lay before us strange
and picturesque. We dropped anchor at 10:00 a. m. on the fourth day of
September, 1918. The anchor chains ran out with a cautious rattle. We
swung on the swift current of the Dvina, studied the shoreline and the
skyline of the city of Archangel, saw the Allied cruisers, bulldogs of
the sea, and turned our eyes southward toward the boundless pine forest
where our American and Allied forces were somewhere beset by the
Bolsheviki, or we turned our eyes northward and westward whence we had
come and wondered what the folks back home would say to hear of our
fighting in North Russia.
I
U. S. A. MEDICAL UNITS ON THE ARCTIC OCEAN
Someone Blunders About Medicine Stores—Spanish Influenza At Sea And No
Medicine—Improvised Hospitals At Time Of Landing—Getting Results In
Spite Of Red Tape—Raising Stars And Stripes To Hold The Hospital—Aid Of
American Red Cross—Doughboys Dislike British Hospital—Starting American
Receiving Hospital—Blessings On The Medical Men.
At Stoney Castle camp in England, inquiry by the Americans had elicited
statement from the British authorities that each ship would be well
supplied with medicines and hospital equipment for the long voyage into
the frigid Arctic. But it happened that none were put on the boat and
all that the medical officers had to use were three or four boxes of
medical supplies that they had clung to all the way from Camp Custer.
Before half the perilous and tedious voyage was completed, the dreaded
Spanish influenza broke out on three of the ships. On the “Somali,”
which is typical of the three ships, every available bed was full on
the fifth day out at sea. Congestion was so bad that men with a
temperature of only 101 or 102 degrees were not put into the hospital
but lay in their hammocks or on the decks. To make matters worse, on
the eighth day out all the “flu” medicines were exhausted.
It was a frantic medical detachment that paced the decks of those three
ships for two days and nights after the ships arrived in the harbor of
Archangel while preparations were being made for the improvisation of
hospitals.
On the 6th of September they debarked in the rain at Bakaritza. About
thirty men could be accommodated in the old Russian Red Cross Hospital,
such as it was, dirt and all. The remainder were temporarily put into
old barracks. What “flu”-weakened soldier will ever forget those double
decked pine board beds, sans mattress, sans linen, sans pillows? If
lucky, a man had two blankets. He could not take off his clothes. Death
stalked gauntly through and many a man died with his boots on in bed.
The glory of dying in France to lie under a field of poppies had come
to this drear mystery of dying in Russia under a dread disease in a
strange and unlovely place. Nearly a hundred of them died and the
wonder is that more men did not die. What stamina and courage the
American soldier showed, to recover in those first dreadful weeks!
No attempt is made to fasten blame for this upon the American medical
officers, nor upon the British for that matter. Many a soldier, though,
was wont to wish that Major Longley had not himself been nearly dead of
the disease when the ships arrived. To the credit of Adjutant Kiley,
Captains Hall, Kinyon, Martin and Greenleaf and Lieutenants Lowenstein
and Danzinger and the enlisted medical men, let it be said that they
performed prodigies of labor trying to serve the sick men who were
crowded into the five hastily improvised hospitals.
The big American Red Cross Hospital, receiving hospital at the base,
was started at Archangel November 22nd by Captain Pyle under orders of
Major Longley. The latter had been striving for quite a while to start
a separate receiving hospital for American wounded, but had been
blocked by the British medical authorities in Archangel. They declared
that it was not feasible as the Americans had no equipment, supplies or
medical personnel.
However, the officer in charge of the American Red Cross force in
Archangel offered to supply the needed things, either by purchasing
them from the stores of British medical supplies in Archangel or by
sending back to England for them. It is said that the repeated letters
of Major Longley to SOS in England somehow were always tangled in the
British and American red tape, in going through military channels.
At last Major Longley took the bull by the horns and accepted the aid
of the Red Cross and selected and trained a personnel to run the
hospital from among the officers and men who had been wounded and were
recovered or partially recovered and were not fit for further heavy
duty on the fighting line. He had the valuable assistance also of the
two American Red Cross nurses, Miss Foerster and Miss Gosling, the
former later being one of five American women who, for services in the
World War, were awarded the Florence Nightingale Medal.
On September 10th, we opened the first Red Cross Hospital which was
also used in connection with the Russian Red Cross Hospital and was
served by Russian Red Cross nurses. Captain Hall and Lieutenant Kiley
were in charge of the hospital.
A few days later an infirmary was opened for the machine gunners and
Company “C” of the engineers at Solombola.
A good story goes in connection with this piece of history of the
little Red Cross hospital on Troitsky near Olga barracks. There had
been rumor and more or less open declaration of the British medical
authorities that the Americans would not be permitted to start a
hospital of their own in Archangel. The Russian sisters who owned the
building were interested observers as to the outcome of this clash in
authority. It was settled one morning about ten o’clock in a
spectacular manner much to the satisfaction of the Americans and
Russians. Captain Wynn of the American Red Cross came to the assistance
of Captain Hall, supplying the American flag and helping raise it over
the building and dared the British to take it down. Then he supplied
the hospital with beds and linen and other supplies and comfort bags
for the men, dishes, etc. This little hospital is a haven of rest that
appears in the dreams today of many a doughboy who went through those
dismal days of the first month in Archangel. There they got American
treatment and as far as possible food cooked in American style.
In October the number of sick and wounded men was so large that another
hospital for the exclusive use of convalescents was opened in an old
Russian sailor’s home in the near vicinity of American Headquarters.
[Illustration: RED CROSS PHOTO
_Surgical Operation American Receiving Hospital, Archangel, 1918._]
[Illustration: U. S. OFFICIAL PHOTO
_Old Glory Protects Our Hospital._]
[Illustration: U. S. OFFICIAL PHOTO
_Used as 53rd Stationary Hospital._]
[Illustration: U. S OFFICIAL PHOTO
_Sailors from “Olympia” Fought Reds._]
[Illustration: U. S. OFFICIAL PHOTO
_After 17-Hour March in Forest._]
[Illustration: U.S. Official Photo
_Loading a Drosky at Obozerskaya_]
[Illustration: U.S. Official Photo
_Wireless operators—Signal Platoon_]
During this controversy with the British medical authorities, the head
American medical officer was always handicapped, as indeed was many a
fighting line officer, by the fact that the British medical officer
outranked him. Let it be understood right here that many a British
officer was decorated with insignia of high rank but drew pay of low
rank. It was actually done over and over again to give the British
officer ranking authority over the American officers.
What American doughboy who ever went through the old 53rd Stationary
hospital will ever forget his homesickness and feeling of outrage at
the treatment by the perhaps well-meaning but nevertheless callous and
coarse British personnel. Think of tea, jam and bread for sick and
wounded men. An American medical sergeant who has often eaten with the
British sergeants at that hospital, Sergeant Glenn Winslow, who made
out the medical record for every wounded and sick man of the Americans
who went through the various hospitals at Archangel, and who was
frequently present at the British sergeant’s mess at the hospital,
relates that there were plenty of fine foods and delicacies and drink
for the sergeant’s messes, corroborated by Mess Sgt. Vincent of. “F”
Company. And a similar story was told by an American medical officer
who was invalided home in charge of over fifty wounded Americans. He
had often heard that the comforts and delicacies among the British
hospital supplies went to the British officers’ messes. Captain Pyle
was in command on the icebreaker “Canada” and saw to it that the
limited supply of delicacies went to the wounded men most in need of
it. There were several British officers on the icebreaker enroute to
Murmansk who set up a pitiful cry that they had seen none of the extras
to which they were accustomed, thinking doubtless that the American
officer was holding back on them. Captain Pyle on the big ship out of
Murmansk took occasion to request of the British skipper that the
American wounded on board the ship be given more food and more
palatable food. He was asked if he expected more for the doughboy than
was given to the Tommie. The American officer’s reply was
characteristic of the difference between the attitude of British and
American officers toward the enlisted man:
“No, sir, it is not a question of different treatment as between Tommie
and doughboy. It is difference in the feeding of the wounded and sick
American officers and the feeding of wounded and sick American enlisted
men. My government makes no such great difference. I demand that my
American wounded men be fed more like the way in which the officers on
this ship are fed.”
Lest we forget, this same medical officer in charge at one time of a
temporary hospital at a key point in the field, was over-ranked and put
under a British medical officer who brought about the American
officer’s recall to the base because he refused to put the limited
American medical personnel of enlisted men to digging latrines for the
British officers’ quarters.
Many a man discharged from the British 53rd Stationary Hospital as fit
for duty, was examined by American medical officers and put either into
our own Red Cross Hospital or into the American Convalescent Hospital
for proper treatment and nourishment back to fighting condition. It was
openly charged by the Americans that several Americans in the British
hospital were neglected till they were bedsore and their lives
endangered. Sick and wounded men were required to do orderly work. When
a sturdy American corporal refused to do work or to supervise work of
that nature in the hospital, he was court-martialed by order of the
American colonel commanding the American forces in North Russia. Of
course it must needs be said that there were many fine men among the
British medical officers and enlisted personnel. But what they did to
serve the American doughboys was overborne by the mistreatment of the
others.
Finally no more wounded Americans were sent to the British hospital and
no sick except those sick under G. O. 45. These latter found themselves
cooped up in an old Russian prison, partially cleaned up for a hospital
ward. This was a real chamber of horrors to many an unfortunate soldier
who was buffetted from hospital to Major Young’s summary court to
hospital or back to the guardhouse, all the while worrying about the
ineffectiveness of his treatment.
So the American soldiers at last got their own receiving hospital and
their own convalescent hospital. Of course at the fighting fronts they
were nearly always in the hands of their own American medical officers
and enlisted men. The bright story of the Convalescent Hospital appears
in another place. This receiving hospital was a fine old building which
one time had been a meteorological institute, a Russian imperial
educational institution. Its great stone exterior had gathered a
venerable look in its two hundred years. The Americans were to give its
interior a sanitary improvement by way of a set of modern plumbing. But
the thing that pleased the wounded doughboy most was to find himself,
when in dreadful need of the probe or knife, under the familiar and
understanding and sympathetic eyes of Majors Henry or Longley or some
other American officer, to find his wants answered by an enlisted man
who knew the slang of Broadway and Hamtramck and the small town slang
of “back home in Michigan, down on the farm,” and to find his food
cooked and served as near as possible like it was “back home” to a sick
man. Blessings on the medical men!
II
FALL OFFENSIVE ON THE RAILROAD
Third Battalion Hurries From Troopship To Troop-Train Bound For
Obozerskaya—We Relieve Wearied French Battalion—“We Are Fighting An
Offensive War”—First Engagement—Memorable Night March Ends At Edge Of
Lake—Our Enemy Compels Respect At Verst 458—American Major Hangs
On—Successful Flank March Takes Verst 455—Front Line Is Set At 445 By
Dashing Attack—We Hold It Despite Severe Bombardments And Heavy
Assaults.
On the afternoon of September the fifth the 3rd Battalion of the 339th
Infantry debarked hurriedly at Bakaritza. Doughboys marched down the
gangplank with their full field equipment ready for movement to the
fighting front. Somewhere deep in the forest beyond that skyline of
pine tree tops a handful of French and Scots and American sailors were
battling the Bolos for their lives. The anxiety of the British staff
officer—we know it was one of General Poole’s staff, for we remember
the red band on his cap, was evidenced by his impatience to get the
Americans aboard the string of tiny freight cars.
Doughboys stretched their sea legs comfortably and formed in column of
squads under the empty supply shed on the quay, to escape the cold
drizzle of rain, while Major Young explained in detail how Captain
Donoghue was to conduct the second train.
All night long the two troop trains rattled along the Russki railway or
stood interminably at strange-looking stations. The bare box cars were
corded deep with sitting and curled up soldiers fitfully sleeping and
starting to consciousness at the jerking and swaying of the train. Once
at a weird log station by the flaring torchlights they had stood for a
few minutes beside a northbound train loaded with Bolshevik prisoners
and deserters gathered in that day after the successful Allied
engagement. Morning found them at a big bridge that had been destroyed
by artillery fire of the Red Guards the afternoon before, not far from
the important village of Obozerskaya, a vital keypoint which just now
we were to endeavor to organize the defense of, and use as a depot and
junction point for other forces.
No one who was there will forget the initial scene at Obozerskaya when
two companies of Americans, “I” and “L”, proceeded’ up the railroad
track in column of twos and halted in ranks before the tall station
building, with their battalion commander holding officers call at
command of the bugle. An excited little French officer popped out of
his dugout and pointed at the shell holes in the ground and in the
station and spoke a terse phrase in French to the British field staff
officer who was gnawing his mustache. The latter overcame his
embarrassment enough to tell Major Young that the French officer feared
the Bolo any minute would reopen artillery fire. Then we realized we
were in the fighting zone. The major shouted orders out and shooed the
platoons off into the woods.
Later into the woods the French officers led the Americans who relieved
them of their circle of fortified outposts. Some few in the vicinity of
the scattered village made use of buildings, but most of the men stood
guard in the drizzly rain in water up to their knees and between
listening post tricks labored to cut branches enough to build up a dry
platform for rest. The veteran French soldier had built him a fire at
each post to dry his socks and breeches legs, but “the strict old
disciplinarian,” Major Young, ordered “No fires on the outpost.”
And this was war. Far up the railroad track “at the military crest” an
outpost trench was dug in strict accordance with army book plans. The
first night we had a casualty, a painful wound in a doughboy’s leg from
the rifle of a sentry who cried halt and fired at the same time. An
officer and party on a handcar had been rattling in from a visit to the
front outguard. All the surrounding roads and trails were patrolled.
Armed escorts went with British intelligence officers to outlying
villages to assemble the peasants and tell them why the soldiers were
coming into North Russia and enlist their civil co-operation and
inspire them to enlist their young men in the Slavo-British Allied
Legion, that is to put on brass buttoned khaki, eat British army
rations, and drill for the day when they should go with the Allies to
clear the country of the detested Bolsheviki. To the American doughboys
it did not seem as though the peasants’ wearied-of-war countenances
showed much elation nor much inclination to join up.
The inhabitants of Obozerskaya had fled for the most part before the
Reds. Some of the men and women had been forced to go with the Red
Guards. They now crept back into their villages, stolidly accepted the
occupancy of their homes by the Americans, hunted up their horses which
they had driven into the wilderness to save them from the plundering
Bolo, greased up their funny looking little _droskies_, or carts, and
began hauling supplies for the Allied command and begging tobacco from
the American soldiers.
Captain Donoghue with two platoons of “K” Company, the other two having
been dropped temporarily at Issaka Gorka to guard that railroad repair
shop and wireless station, now moved right out by order of Colonel
Guard, on September seventh, on a trail leading off toward Tiogra and
Seletskoe. Somewhere in the wilds he would find traces of or might
succor the handful of American sailors and Scots who, under Col.
Hazelden, a British officer, had been cornered by the Red Guards.
“Reece, reece,” said the excited _drosky_ driver as he greedily
accepted his handful of driver’s rations. He had not seen rice for
three years. Thankfully he took the food. His family left at home would
also learn how to barter with the generous doughboy for his tobacco and
bully beef and crackers, which at times, very rarely of course, in the
advanced sectors, he was lucky enough to exchange for handfuls of
vegetables that the old women plucked out of their caches in the rich
black mould of the small garden, or from a cellar-like hole under a
loose board in the log house.
“Guard duty at Archangel” was aiming now to be a real war, on a small
scale but intensive. Obozerskaya, about one hundred miles south of
Archangel, in a few days took on the appearance of an active field base
for aggressive advance on the enemy. Here were the rapid assembling of
fighting units; of transport and supply units; of railroad repairing
crews, Russian, under British officers; of signals; of armored
automobile, our nearest approach to a tank, which stuck in the mud and
broke through the frail Russki bridges and was useless; of the feverish
clearing and smoothing of a landing field near the station for our
supply of spavined air-planes that had already done their bit on the
Western Front; of the improvement of our ferocious-looking armored
train, with its coal-car mounted naval guns, buttressed with sand bags
and preceded by a similar car bristling with machine guns and Lewis
automatics in the hands of a motley crew of Polish gunners and Russki
gunners and a British sergeant or two. This armored train was under the
command of the blue-coated, one-armed old commander Young, hero of the
Zeebrugge Raid, who parked his train every night on the switch track
next to the British Headquarters car, the Blue Car with the Union Jack
flying over it and the whole Allied force. Secretly, he itched to get
his armored train into point-blank engagement with the Bolshevik
armored train.
“All patrols must be aggressive,” directed a secret order of Col.
Guard, the British officer commanding this “A” Force on the railroad,
“and it must be impressed on all ranks that we are fighting an
offensive war, and not a defensive one, although for the time being it
is the duty of everybody to get the present area in a sound state of
defense. All posts must be held to the last as we do not intend to give
up any ground which we have made good.”
And within a week after landing in Russia the American soldier was
indeed making head on an offensive campaign, for on September 11th two
platoons of “M” Company reconnoitering in force met a heavy force of
Bolos on similar mission and fought the first engagement with the Red
Guards, driving the Reds from the station at Verst 466 and taking
possession of the bridge at Verst 464.
We had ridden out past the outguard on the armored train, left it and
proceeded along the railway. Remember that first Bolo shell? Well, yes.
That thing far down the straight track three miles away Col. Guard,
before going to the rear, derisively told Lieut. Danley could not be a
Bolo armored train but was a sawmill smoke stack. Suddenly it flashed.
Then came the distant boom. Came then the whining, twist-whistling
shell that passed over us and showered shrapnel near the trenches where
lay our reserves. He shortened his range but we hurried on and closed
with his infantry with the decision in the American doughboy’s favor in
his first fight. He had learned that it takes many shrapnel shells and
bullets to hit one man, that to be hit is not necessarily to be killed.
A few days later “L” Company supported in the nick of time by two
platoons of “I” Company repulsed a savage counter-attack staged by the
Red Guards, September 16th, on a morning that followed the capture of a
crashing Red bombing plane in the evening and the midnight
conflagration in “L” Company’s fortified camp that might have been
misinterpreted as an evacuation by the Bolo. In this engagement Lieut.
Gordon B. Reese and his platoon of “I” Company marked themselves with
distinction by charging the Reds as a last resort when ammunition had
been exhausted in a vain attempt to gain fire superiority against the
overwhelming and enveloping Red line, and gave the Bolshevik soldiers a
sample of the fighting spirit of the Americans. And the Reds broke and
ran. Also our little graveyard of brave American soldiers at
Obozerskaya began to grow.
It was the evening before when the Bolo airman, who had dropped two
small bombs at the Americans at Obozerskaya, was obliged to volplane to
earth on the railroad near the 464 outguard. Major Young was there at
the time. He declared the approaching bomb-plane by its markings was
certainly an Allied plane, ordered the men not to discharge their Lewis
gun which they had trained upon it, and as the Bolos hit the dirt two
hundred yards away, he rushed out shouting his command, which
afterwards became famous, “Don’t fire! We are Americans.” But the Bolo
did not _pahneemahya_ and answered with his own Lewis gun sending the
impetuous American officer to cover where he lay even after the Bolo
had darted into the woods and the doughboys ran up and pulled the moss
off their battalion commander whom they thought had been killed by the
short burst of the Bolo’s automatic fire, as the major had not arisen
to reply with his trusty six shooter.
Meanwhile “K” Company had met the enemy on the Seletskoe-Kodish front
as will be related later, and plans were being laid for a converging
attack by the Kodish, Onega and Railroad columns upon Plesetskaya. “L”
Company was sent to support “K” Company and the Railroad Force marked
time till the other two columns could get into position for the joint
drive. Machine gun men and medical men coming to us from Archangel
brought unverified stories of fighting far up the Dvina and Onega
Rivers where the Bolshevik was gathering forces for a determined stand
and had caused the digging of American graves and the sending back to
Archangel of wounded men. This is told elsewhere. Our patrols daily
kept in contact with Red Guard outposts on the railroad, occasionally
bringing in wounded Bolos or deserters, who informed us of
intrenchments and armored trains and augmenting Bolshevik regiments.
Our Allied force of Cossacks proved unreliable and officer’s patrols of
Americans served better but owing to lack of maps or guides were able
to gain but little information of the forest trails of the area.
British intelligence officers depending on old forester’s maps and on
deserters and prisoners and neutral natives allowed the time for “Pat
Rooney’s work,” personal reconnaissance, to go by till one day,
September 28th, General Finlayson arrived at Obozerskaya in person at
noon and peremptorily ordered an advance to be started that afternoon
on the enemy’s works at Versts 458 and 455. Col. Sutherland was caught
unprepared but had to obey.