commanding officer to get orders for the coming day, to check over
various claims and accounts and each week to receive pay for the entire
community engaged in these labors. One occasion we distinctly recall as
a striking example of this particular _starosta’s_ honesty and
integrity. He had spent the greater part of the evening in our
headquarters, checking over accounts involving some three or four
thousand roubles for the pay roll the following day. Finally the matter
was settled and the money turned over to him, after which we all
retired to our bunks. At about one o’clock that morning the sentry on
post near headquarters awakened us and said the _starosta_ was outside
and wished to see the commander, whereupon the C. O. sent word for him
to come up to our quarters. After the usual ceremony of crossing
himself before the icon the _starosta_ announced that he had been
overpaid about ninety roubles, which mistake he found after reaching
his home and checking over the account again. We were too dumfounded to
believe our ears. Here was this poor hard-working moujik who doubtless
knew that the error would never have been discovered by ourselves, and,
even if it had, the loss would have been trifling, yet he tramped back
through the snow to get this matter straightened out before he retired
to the top of the stove for the night. Needless to say, our C. O.
turned the money back to him as a reward for his honesty, in addition
to which he was given several hearty draughts of rum to warm him up for
his return journey, along with a small sack of sugar to appease his
wife who, he said, always made things warmer for him when he returned
home with the odor of rum about him.
[Illustration: U. S. OFFICIAL PHOTO (159458)
_Joe Chinzi and Russian Bride._]
[Illustration: DOUD
_Watching Her Weave Cloth._]
[Illustration: U.S. OFFICIAL PHOTO
_Doughboy Attends Spinning-Bee._]
[Illustration: DOUD
_Doughboy in the Best Bed—On Stove._]
[Illustration: MORRIS
_Defiance to Bolo Advance._]
[Illustration: DOUD
_337th Hospital at Beresnik._]
[Illustration: RED CROSS PHOTO
_Onega._]
[Illustration: U. S. OFFICIAL PHOTO
_Y M. C. A., Obozerskaya._]
IX
“H” COMPANY PUSHES UP THE ONEGA VALLEY
Two Platoons Of “H” Company By Steamer To Onega—Occupation Of
Chekuevo—Bolsheviki Give Battle—Big Order To Little Force—Kaska Too
Strongly Defended—Doughboys’ Attack Fails—Cossacks Spread False
Report—Successful Advance Up Valley—Digging In For Winter.
Meanwhile “H” Company was pushing up the Onega Valley. Stories had
leaked out in Archangel of engagements up the Dvina and up the railroad
where American soldiers had tasted first sweets of victory, and “H” men
now piled excitedly into a steamer at Archangel on the 15th of
September and after a 24-hour ride down the Dvina, across the Dvina Bay
up an arm of the White Sea called Onega Bay and into the mouth of the
Onega River, landed without any opposition and took possession. The
enemy had been expelled a few days previously by a small detachment of
American sailors from the “Olympia.”
The “H” force consisted of two platoons commanded by Lieuts. Phillips
and Pellegrom, who reported to an English officer, Col. Clark.
The coming of Americans was none too soon. The British officer had not
made much headway in organizing an effective force of the
anti-Bolshevik Russians. The Red Guards were massing forces in the
upper part of the valley and, German-like, had sent notice of their
impending advance to recapture the city of Onega.
On September 18th Lieut. Pellegrom received verbal orders from Col.
Clark to move his platoon of fifty-eight men with Lieut. Nugent, M. R.
C., and one man at once to Chekuevo, about fifty miles up the river.
Partly by boat and partly by marching the Americans reached the village
of Chekuevo and began organizing the defenses, on the 19th. Three days
later Lieut. Phillips was hurried up with his platoon to reinforce and
take command of the hundred and fifteen Americans and ninety-three
Russian volunteers. At dawn on the twenty-fourth the enemy attacked our
positions from three sides with a force of three hundred and fifty men
and several machine guns.
The engagement lasted for five hours. The main attack coming down the
left bank of the Onega River was held by the Americans till after the
enemy had driven back the Allies, Russians, on the right bank and
placed a machine gun on our flank.
Then the Americans had to give ground on the main position and the Reds
placed another machine gun advantageously. Meanwhile smaller parties of
the enemy were working in the rear. Finally the enemy machine guns were
spotted and put out of action by the superior fire of our Lewis
automatics, and the Bolshevik leader, Shiskin, was killed at the gun.
This success inspirited the Americans who dashed forward and the Reds
broke and fled. A strong American combat patrol followed the retreating
Reds for five miles and picked up much clothing, ammunition, rifles,
and equipment, and two of his dead, ten of his wounded and one prisoner
and two machine guns. Losses on our side consisted of two wounded. Our
Russian allies lost two killed and seven wounded.
The action had been carried on in the rain under very trying conditions
for the Americans who were in their first fire fight and reflected
great credit upon Lieut. Phillips and his handful of doughboys who were
outnumbered more than three to one and forced to give battle in a place
well known to the enemy but strange to the Americans and severely
disadvantageous.
Outside of a few patrol combats and the capture of a few Bolshevik
prisoners the remainder of the month of September was uneventful.
The Onega Valley force, like the Railway and Kodish forces, was
sparring for an opening and plans were made for a general push on
Plesetskaya. On September 30th Lieut. Phillips received an order as
follows:
“The enemy on the railway line is being attacked today (the 29th) and
some Cossacks are coming to you from Obozerskaya. On their arrival you
will move south with them and prevent enemy from retiring across the
river in a westerly direction.
“Open the wire to Obozerskaya and ascertain how far down the line our
troops have reached and then try to keep abreast of them but do not go
too far without orders from the O/CA force (Col. Sutherland at
Obozerskaya). I mean by this that you must not run your head against a
strong force which may be retiring unless you are sure of holding your
ground. There is a strong force at Plesetskaya on the railway and it is
possible that they may retire across your front in the direction of the
line running from Murmansk to Petrograd. The commandant of Chekuevo
must supply you with carts for rations and, as soon as you can, make
arrangements for food to be sent to you from the railway. The S. S.
service can run up to you with supplies and can keep with you until you
reach the rapids, if you go so far. Don’t forget that the enemy has a
force at Turchesova, south of you. Keep the transports in the middle of
your column so that no carts get cut off, and it would be a good thing
if you could get transport from village to village.
“Captain Burton, R. M. L. I., will remain in command at Chekuevo.”
W. J. CLARK, Lieut.-Col.
The Americans knew that this was a big contract, but let us now look at
the map and see what the plan really called for. Forty miles of old
imperial telegraph and telephone line to the eastward to restore to use
between Chekuevo and Obozerskaya. No signal corps men and no telling
where the wires needed repair. And sixty miles more or less to the
south and eastward on another road to make speed with slow cart
transport with orders to intercept an enemy supposed to be preparing to
flee westward from the railway. Not forgetting that was to be done in
spite of the opposition of a strong force of Red Guards somewhere in
the vicinity of Turchesova thirty-five miles up the valley. “A little
job, you know,” for those one hundred and fifteen Americans, veterans
of two weeks in the wilds of North Russia.
The American officer from his reconnaissance patrols and from friendly
natives learned that the enemy instead of seeking escape was massing
forces for another attack on the Americans.
About seven hundred of the Red Guards were heavily entrenched in and
around Kaska and were recruiting forces. In compliance with his orders,
Lieut. Phillips moved out the next morning, October 1st, with the
eighteen mounted Cossacks, joined in the night from Obozerskaya, and
his other anti-Bolshevik Russian volunteer troops. Movement began at
2:30 a. m. with about eight miles to march in the dark and zero hour
was set for five o’clock daybreak. Two squads of the Americans and
Russian volunteers had been detached by Lieut. Phillips and given to
the command of Capt. Burton to make a diversion attack on Wazientia, a
village across the river from Kaska. Lieut. Pellegrom was to attack the
enemy in flank from the west while Lieut. Phillips and the Cossacks
made the frontal assault.
Phillip’s platoon was early deserted by the Cossacks and, after
advancing along the side of a sandy ridge to within one hundred yards
of the enemy, found it necessary to dig in. Lieut. Pellegrom on the
flank on account of the nature of the ground brought his men only to
within three hundred yards of the enemy lines and was unable to make
any communication with his leader. Captain Burton was deserted by the
volunteers at first fire and had to retreat with his two squads of
Americans. The fire fight raged all the long day. Phillips was unable
to extricate his men till darkness but held his position and punished
the enemy’s counter attacks severely. The enemy commanded the lines
with heavy machine guns and the doughboys who volunteered to carry
messages from one platoon to the other paid for their bravery with
their lives. Believing himself to be greatly outnumbered the American
officer withdrew his men at 7:30 p. m. to Chekuevo, with losses of six
men killed and three wounded. Enemy losses reported later by deserters
were thirty killed and fifty wounded.
Again the opposing sides resorted to delay and sparring for openings.
At Chekuevo the Americans strengthened the defenses of that important
road junction and kept in contact with the enemy by daily combat
patrols up the valley in the direction of Kaska, scene of the
encounter. It was during this period that one day the “H” men at
Chekuevo were surprised by the appearance of Lieut. Johnson with a
squad of “M” Company men who had patrolled the forty miles of
Obozerskaya road to Chekuevo looking for signs of the enemy whom a
mounted patrol of Cossacks sent from Obozerskaya had declared were in
possession of the road and of Chekuevo. They learned from these men
that on the railway, too, the enemy had disclosed astonishing strength
of numbers and showed as good quality of fighting courage as at Kaska
and had administered to the American troops their first defeat. They
learned, too, that the French battalion was coming back onto the
fighting line with the Americans for a heavy united smash at the enemy.
A new party of some fifteen Cossacks relieved the eighteen Cossacks who
returned to Archangel. The force was augmented materially by the coming
of a French officer and twenty-five men from Archangel.
The same boat brought out the remainder of “H” Company under command of
Capt. Carl Gevers, who set up his headquarters at Onega, October 9th,
under the new British O/C Onega Det., Col. (“Tin Eye”) Edwards, and
sent Lieut. Carlson and his platoon to Karelskoe, a village ten miles
to the rear of Chekuevo, to support Phillips.
Success on the railroad front, together with information gathered from
patrols led Col. Edwards to believe the enemy was retiring up the
valley. An armed reconnaissance by the whole force at Chekuevo moving
forward on both sides of the Onega River on October 19th, which was two
days after the Americans on the railroad had carried Four Hundred and
Forty-five by storm and the Bolo had “got up his wind” and retired to
Emtsa. Phillips found that the enemy had indeed retired from Kaska and
retreated to Turchesova, some thirty-five miles up the valley.
Phillips occupied all the villages along the river Kachela in force,
sending his combat patrols south of Priluk daily to make contact.
Winter showed signs of early approach and, in compliance with verbal
orders of Col. Edwards at Onega, Phillips withdrew his forces to
Chekuevo on October 25th. This seems to have been in accordance with
the wise plan of the new British Commanding General to extend no
further the dangerously extended lines, but to prepare for active
defense just where snow and frost were finding the various widely
scattered forces of the expedition. On the way back through Kaska it
was learned that two of the “H” men who had been reported missing in
the fight at Kaska, but who were in fact killed, had been buried by the
villagers. They were disinterred and given a regular military funeral,
and graves marked.
Outside of daily patrols and the reliefs of platoons changing about for
rest at Onega there was little of excitement during the remainder of
October and the month of November. Occasionally there would be a
flurry, a “windy time” at British Headquarters in Onega and patrols and
occupying detachments sent out to various widely separated villages up
the valley. There seems to have been an idea finally that the village
of Kyvalanda should be fortified so as to prevent the Red Guards from
having access to the valley of the Chulyuga, a tributary of the Onega
River, up which in the winter ran a good road to Bolsheozerke where it
joined the Chekuevo road to Oborzerskaya. Wire was brought up and the
village of Kyvalanda was strongly entrenched, sometimes two platoons
being stationed there.
Captain Gevers had to go to hospital for operation. This was a loss to
the men. Here old Boreas came down upon this devoted company of
doughboys. They got into their winter clothing, gave attention to
making themselves as comfortable shelters as possible on their advanced
outposts, organized their sleigh transport system that had to take the
place of the steamer service on the Onega which was now a frozen
barrier to boats but a highway for sleds. They had long winter nights
ahead of them with frequent snow storms and many days of severe zero
weather. And though they did not suspect it they were to encounter hard
fighting during and at the end of the winter.
X
“G” COMPANY FAR UP THE PINEGA RIVER
Reds Had Looted Villages Of Pinega Valley—Winter Sees Bolsheviks
Returning To Attack—Mission Of American Column—Pinega—Pinkish-White
Political Color—Yank Soldiers Well Received—Take Distant
Karpogora—Greatly Outnumbered Americans Retire—“Just Where Is Pinega
Front?”
In making their getaway from Archangel and vicinity at the time the
Allies landed in Archangel, the Reds looted and robbed and carried off
by rail and by steamer much stores of furs, and clothing and food, as
well as the munitions and military equipment. What they did not carry
by rail to Vologda they took by river to Kotlas. We have seen how they
have been pursued and battled on the Onega, on the Railroad, on the
Vaga, on the Dvina. Now we turn to the short narrative of their
activities on the Pinega River. As the Reds at last learned that the
expedition was too small to really overpower them and had returned to
dispute the Allies on the other rivers, so, far up the Pinega Valley,
they began gathering forces. The people of the lower Pinega Valley
appealed to the Archangel government and the Allied military command
for protection and for assistance in pursuing the Reds to recover the
stores of flour that had been taken from the co-operative store
associations at various points along the river. These co-operatives had
bought flour from the American Red Cross. Accordingly on October 20th
Captain Conway with “G” Company set off on a fast steamer and barge for
Pinega, arriving after three days and two nights with a force of two
platoons, the other two having been left behind on detached service,
guarding the ships in the harbor of Bakaritza. Here the American
officer was to command the area, organize its defense and cooperate
with the Russian civil authorities in raising local volunteers for the
defense of the city of Pinega, which, situated at the apex of a great
inverted “V” in the river, appeared to be the key point to the military
and political situation.
Pinega was a fine city of three thousand inhabitants with six or seven
thousand in the nearby villages that thickly dot the banks of this
broad expansion of the old fur-trading and lumber river port. Its
people were progressive and fairly well educated. The city had been
endowed by its millionaire old trader with a fine technical high
school. It had a large cathedral, of course. Not far from it two hours
ride by horseback, an object of interest to the doughboy, was the three
hundred-year-old monastery, white walls with domes and spires, perched
upon the grey bluffs, in the hazy distance looking over the broad
Pinega Valley and Soyla Lake, where the monks carried on their fishing.
In Pinega was a fine community hall, a good hospital and the government
buildings of the area.
Its people had held a great celebration when they renounced allegiance
to the Czar, but they had very sensibly retained some of his old
trained local representatives to help carry on their government. Self
government they cherished. When the Red Guards had been in power at
Archangel they had of course extended their sway partially to this
far-off area. But the people had only submitted for the time. Some of
their able men had had to accept tenure of authority under the nominal
overlordship of the Red commissars. And when the Reds fled at the
approach of the Allies, the people of Pinega had punished a few of the
cruel Bolshevik rulers that they caught but had not made any great
effort to change all the officers of civil government even though they
had been Red officials for a time. In fact it was a somewhat confused
color scheme of Red and White civil government that the Americans found
in the Pinega Valley. The writer commanded this area in the winter and
speaks from actual experience in dealing with this Pinega local
government, half Red as it was. The Americans were well received and
took up garrison duty in the fall, raising a force of three hundred
volunteers chiefly from the valley above Pinega, whose people were in
fear of a return of the Reds and begged for a military column up the
valley to deliver it from the Red agitators and recover their flour
that had been stolen.
November 15th Captain Conway, acting under British G. H. Q., Archangel,
acceded to these requests and sent Lieut. Higgins with thirty-five
Americans and two hundred and ten Russian volunteers to clear the
valley and occupy Karpogora.
For ten days the force advanced without opposition. At Marynagora an
enemy patrol was encountered and the next day the Yanks drove back an
enemy combat patrol. Daily combat patrol action did not interfere with
their advance and on Thanksgiving Day the “G” Company boys after a
little engagement went into Karpogora. They were one hundred and twenty
versts from Pinega, which was two hundred and seven versts from
Archangel, a mere matter of being two hundred miles from Archangel in
the heart of a country which was politically about fifty-fifty between
Red and White. But the Reds did not intend to have the Americans up
there. On December 4th they came on in a much superior force and
attacked. The Americans lost two killed and four wounded out of their
little thirty-five Americans and several White Guards, and on order
from Captain Conway, who hurried up the river to take charge, the
flying column relinquished its hold on Karpogora and retired down the
valley followed by the Reds. A force of White Guards was left at
Visakagorka, and one at Trufanagora, and Priluk and the main White
Guard outer defense of Pinega established at Pelegorskaya.
Like the whole expedition into Russia of which the Pinega Valley force
was only one minor part, the coming of the Allied troops had quieted
the areas occupied but, in the hinterland beyond, the propaganda of the
wily Bolshevik agents of Trotsky and Lenine succeeded quite naturally
in inflaming the Russians against what they called the foreign
bayonets.
And here at the beginning of winter we leave this handful of Americans
holding the left sector of the great horseshoe line against a gathering
force, the mutterings of whose Red mobs was already being heard and
which was preparing a series of dreadful surprises for the Allied
forces on the Pinega as well as on other winter fronts. Indeed their
activities in this peace-loving valley were to rise early in the winter
to major importance to the whole expedition’s fate and stories of this
flank threat to Archangel and especially to the Dvina and Vaga lines of
communication, where the Pinega Valley merges with the Dvina Valley,
was to bring from our American Great Headquarters in France the terse
telegram: “Just where is the Pinega Front?”
It was out there in the solid pine forests one hundred fifty miles to
the east and north of Archangel. Out where the Russian peasant had
rigged up his strange-looking but ingeniously constructed _sahnia_, or
sledge. Where on the river he was planting in the ice long thick-set
rows of pines or branches in double rows twice a sled length apart.
These frozen-in lines of green were to guide the traveller in the long
winter of short days and dark nights safely past the occasional open
holes and at such times as he made his trip over the road in the
blinding blizzards of snow. Out there where the peasant was changing
from leather boots to felt boots and was hunting up his scarfs and his
great _parki_, or bearskin overcoat. That is where “G” Company, one
hundred strong, was holding the little, but important, Pinega Front at
the end of the fall campaign.
XI
WITH WOUNDED AND SICK
Lest We Forget S. O. L. Doughboy—Column In Battle And No Medical
Supplies—Jack-Knife Amputation—Sewed Up With Needle And Thread From Red
Cross Comfort Kit—Diary Of American Medical Officer—Account Is Choppy
But Full Of Interest.
Some things the doughboy and officer from America will never have grace
enough in his forgiving heart to ever forgive. Those were the
outrageous things that happened to the wounded and sick in that North
Russian campaign. Of course much was done and in fact everything was
meant to be done possible for the comfort of the luckless wounded and
the men who, from exposure and malnutrition, fell sick. But there were
altogether too many things that might have been avoided. Lest we forget
and go off again on some such strange campaign let us chronicle the
story of the grief that came to the S. O. L. doughboy.
One American medical officer who went up with the first column of
Americans in the Onega River Valley in the fall never got through
cussing the British medical officer who sent him off with merely the
handful of medical supplies that he, as a medical man, always carried
for emergencies of camp. Story has already been told of the lack of
medical supplies on the two “flu”-infected ships that took the soldiers
to Russia. Never will the American doughboy forget how melancholy he
felt when he saw the leaded shrouds go over the side of the sister ship
where the poor Italians were suffering and dying. And the same ill-luck
with medical supplies seemed to follow us to North Russia.
Dr. Nugent, of Milwaukee, writes after the first engagement on the
Onega front he was obliged to use needle and thread from a doughboys’
Red Cross comfort kit to take stitches in six wounded men.
Lieut. Lennon of “L” Company reports that during the first action of
his Company on the Kodish Front in the fall, there was no medical
officer with the unit in action. The American medical officer was miles
in rear. Wounded men were bandaged on the field with first aid and
carried back twenty-six versts. And he relates further that one man on
the field suffered the amputation of his leg that day with a pocket
knife. The officer further states that the American medical officer at
Seletskoe was neglectful and severe with the doughboys. At one time
there was no iodine, no bandages, no number 9’s at Kodish Front. The
medical officer under discussion was never on the front and gained the
hearty dislike of the American doughboys for his conduct.