roads, and trails. The mail roads are cleared about eighty feet wide
through the woods. An attempt has been made at surfacing and ditching,
and the bad places corduroyed. The winter roads are cleared about
twenty feet wide. Wherever possible they go through forestry clearings,
swamps and lakes, or down rivers. For this reason they can only be used
after a solid freeze-up. The trails are only cleared about six feet
wide and are often impassable for a horse and sleigh. Approximately
four and one-half miles of road have been corduroyed by this regiment,
and a considerable part of the front line roads were drained.
This battalion was called upon for a great diversity of work, which it
would have been impossible to do had not the men been carefully
selected in the United States. Company “C” was called upon to help
operate the Archangel power plant and street railway system the day
they arrived. This they were able to do very successfully.
Shortly afterwards they raised and spliced a submerged power cable,
used for conducting electricity under the river; one platoon was on
railroad maintenance and construction work; and one platoon operated
the saw mill. All the companies have been in action and have done
construction work under fire.
Two main features have governed all our construction work; first, the
large supply of timber, and second, the very cold climate. All of our
barracks, washhouses, latrines, blockhouses, and stables, were designed
to use available timber stocks. For a form of rapid construction we
used double walls six inches apart and filled the spaces with sawdust.
This proved very satisfactory and much faster than the local method
which calls for a solid log construction.
The supply of engineer material has presented many problems of
difficulty and interest. The distance to the nearest home base,
England, was two to three weeks voyage. The port was not opened to
supplies until after the 1st of June. Coupled with the necessary
reshipment to the various fronts by barge and railway before the
freeze-up, this caused a tremendous over-crowding of the dockage and
warehouse facilities. The congestion and inevitable confusion at the
port and warehouses has sometimes made it impossible to ever ascertain
what had arrived.
The local stocks of engineer materials are limited to what can be found
in Archangel itself and in the subsidiary ports of Economia and
Bakaritza. In 1916 and 1917, tremendous stocks of all sorts of war
material were to be found here, mostly brought from England and
destined for the Rumanian and Russian fronts. In the spring of 1918,
the Bolsheviks, anticipating the Allies landing, moved out to Vologda
and Kotlas as much as they could rush out by the railway and river, and
on the arrival of the first troops here not more than five per cent of
the military material still remained.
The materials of most use to the engineers, which still remained, were
forty thousand reels of barb wire and cable. A large amount of heavy
machinery was also left behind, from which we have been able to locate
and put in use a considerable number of various sized electric
generators. A dozen complete searchlight sets, somewhat damaged by
weather, were among this equipment. We overhauled these and used them
for night construction work and also used several of the generator
units of these sets to illuminate the headquarters train, work train,
and hospital trains employed on the railway front.
The problem of transportation was one of the most difficult for us to
contend with. The rail and road situations have already been explained.
The country is very short of horses, the best specimens having long
since been mobilized in the old Russian Army.
With motor transportation, the situation is no better. The Bolsheviks
evacuated the best cars to Vologda before the arrival of the expedition
and it is alleged that most of those they did not get away, were run
into the Dvina River. The few trucks that did remain behind were in
wretched condition. The British turned over two Seabrook trucks to us.
We made all repairs and furnished our own drivers. In addition to these
two trucks, the battalion supply officer secured five more, four
independently. The owners were willing to give them to us, without
cost, in order to forestall their being requisitioned by the Russian
Motor Battalion. The condition of these trucks was poor. During the
construction of the “Michigan” Barracks, the transportation was so
inadequate that we were compelled to run both night and day. Through
our control of the Makaroff sawmill, we had two tug-boats belonging to
the mill, but it was only rarely that we could use them for other
purposes.
It was a fine record our comrades, the engineers, made in the
expedition. As the ribald old marching song goes:
“Oh, the infantry, the infantry, with dirt behind their ears,
The infantry, the infantry, that drink their weight in beers,
Artillery, the cavalry, the doggoned engineers,
They could never lick the infantry in a hundred thousand years.”
But just the same the doughboy was proud to see the 310th Engineers
cited as a unit by General Ironside who called the 310th Engineers the
best unit, bar none, that he had ever seen soldier in any land. He
knows that without the sturdy and resourceful engineer boys with him in
North Russia the defense against the Bolshevik army would have been
impossible.
XXVI
“COME GET YOUR PILLS”
Medical Units Do Fine Work—Volunteers Of Old Detroit Red Cross Number
Eight Appear In North Russia As 337th Ambulance—Some Unforgettable
Stories That Make Our Teeth Grit—Wonderful Work Of 337th Field Hospital
Unit—Death Of Powers—Medical Men Do Heroic Duty.
Owing to the nature of the country in which the campaign was fought,
the 337th Ambulance Company was not able to function as an ambulance
company proper. It was split up into fifteen detachments serving in
various parts of the area under conditions exactly as difficult as
those described for the medical and hospital units. In fact, the three
companies of men—medical, hospital, and ambulance—who ministered to the
needs of the wounded and sick were very soon hopelessly mixed up on the
various fronts.
At first among the officers there were some heart-burnings as to the
apparent incongruity of a hospital man doing field duty and an
ambulance man doing hospital duty and so forth, but their American
sense of humor and of humanity soon had each doing his level best
wherever he might be found, whether under American or British senior
officers or none. The writer remembers many a medical—or was he
hospital or ambulance—man that did effective and sympathetic field
service to wounded comrades with no medical officer to guide the work.
The 337th Ambulance Company was originally a volunteer outfit known as
No. 8 Red Cross Ambulance Company of Detroit. Early in the history of
the 85th Division it came to Camp Custer and was trained for duty
overseas. After a month in the Archangel field several national army
men were transferred to fill up again its depleted ranks.
It was the commanding officer of this Ambulance Company, Captain
Rosenfeld, who, though too strict to be popular with his outfit, was
held in very high esteem by the doughboys for his vigilant attention to
them. It was a sight to see him with his dope bottle of cough syrup
going from post to post dosing the men who needed it. He will not be
forgotten by the man who was stricken with acute appendicitis at a post
where no medical detachment was stationed. He commandeered an engine
and box car and ran out to the place and took the man into the field
hospital himself and operated inside an hour, saving the man’s life.
For his gallantry in going to treat wounded men at posts which were
under fire, the French commander remembered him with a citation. He is
the officer whom the Bolshevik artillery tried to snipe with three-inch
shells, as he passed from post to post during a quiet time at Verst
445.
At Yemetskoe in February, one night just after the terrible retreat
from Shenkursk, forty wounded American, British, and Russian soldiers
lay on stretchers on the floor in British field hospital. They were
just in from the evacuation from Shenkursk front, cold and faint from
hunger. There was no American medical personnel at that village. They
were all at the front. Mess Sgt. Vincent of “F” Company went in to see
how the wounded soldiers were getting along. He was just in time to see
the British medical sergeant come in with a pitcher of tea, tin cups,
hard tack, and margarine and jam. He put it on the floor and said;
“Here is your supper; go to it.”
Sgt. Vincent protested to the English sergeant that the supper was not
fit for wounded men and that they should be helped to take their food.
The British sergeant swore at him, kicked him out of the hospital and
reported him to the British medical officer who attempted, vainly, to
put the outraged American sergeant under arrest.
Sergeant Vincent then reported the matter to Captain Ramsay of “F”
Company, who ordered him to use “F” Company funds to buy foods at the
British N. A. C. B. canteen. This, with what the Y. M. C. A. gave the
sergeant, enabled him to feed the American and Russian wounded the day
that they rested there. This deed was done repeatedly by Mess Sgt.
Vincent during those dreadful days. In all, he took care of over three
hundred sick and wounded Americans and Russians that passed back from
the fighting lines through Yemetskoe.
Doughboys at Seletskoe tell of equally heartless treatment. There at 20
degrees below zero they were required one day to form sick call line
outside of the British medical officer’s nice warm office. This was not
necessary and he was compelled to accede to the firm insistence of the
American company commander that his sick men should not stand out in
the cold. That was only one of many such outrageous incidents. And the
doughboys unfortunately did not always have a sturdy American officer
present to protect them as in this case.
Corporal Simon Bogacheff states that he left Archangel December 8th or
9th with seventy-three other wounded men and “flu” victims. After
fifteen days the “Stephen” landed at Dundee after a very rough voyage
in the pitching old boat. He had to buy stuff on the side from the
cooks as he could not bear the British rations. Men were obliged to
steal raw potatoes and buy lard and fry them. The corporal, who could
talk the Serbian language, fraternized with them and gained entrance to
a place where he could see English sergeants’ mess. Steaks and
vegetables for them and cases of beer.
Alfred Starikoff of Detroit states that he was sent out of Archangel in
early winter suffering from an incurable running sore in his ear. He
boarded an ice-breaker at the edge of the frozen White Sea. After a
four-hour struggle they cleared the icebound shore and made the open
sea, which was not open but filled with a great floe of polar ice. At
Murmansk he was transferred to a hospital ship and then without
examination of his ear trouble was sent to shore. There he put in five
protesting weeks doing orderly work at British officers’ quarters.
Finally he was allowed to proceed to England, Leith, Liverpool,
Southampton, London, Notty Ash, and thence to Brest, thence to the U.
S. in May to Ford Hospital. The delay in Murmansk did him no good.
American veterans of the campaign know that this is not the only case
of where sick and wounded doughboys were delayed at Murmansk, once
merely to make room for British officers who were neither wounded nor
sick. Let Uncle Sam remember this in his next partnership war.
[Illustration: ROULEAU
_Hot Summer Day at Pinega Before War._]
[Illustration: DOUD
_Dvina River Ice Jam._]
[Illustration: WAGNER
_Mejinovsky—Near Kodish._]
[Illustration: MCKEE
_Bolo General Under Flag Truce Near 445—April 1919._]
[Illustration: U. S. OFFICIAL PHOTO
_After a Prisoner Exchange Parley._]
Only on the Pinega front did the American medical officer enjoy free
action. An interesting story could be told of the American hospital and
the two Russian Red Cross (local) hospitals and the city civil hospital
which were all under control of Capt. C. R. Laird, the red-haired,
where he had any, unexcitable old doctor from Nebraska, who treated one
hundred and fourteen wounded Russian soldiers in one night.
And a romantic thread in the narrative would be the story of Sistra
Lebideva, the alleged Bolshevik female spy, who was released from
prison in Pinega by the American commanding officer and given duty as
nurse in the Russian receiving hospital. She was a trained nurse in an
apron, and a Russian beauty in her fine clothes. The Russian lieutenant
who acted as intelligence officer on the American commander’s staff in
investigating the nurse’s case, fell hopelessly in love with her. An
American lieutenant, out of friendship for the Russian officer, several
weeks later took the nurse to Archangel disguised as a soldier. Then
the Russian lieutenant was ordered to Archangel to explain his conduct.
He had risked his commission and involved himself in appearances of
pro-Bolshevism by disobeying an order to send the suspected nurse in as
a spy. He had connived at her escape from her enemies in Pinega, who,
when the Americans left, would have ousted her from the hospital and
thrust her back into prison. He was saved by the intercession of the
American officer and she was set free upon explanations. But the
romance ended abruptly when Sistra Lebideva threw the Russian
lieutenant over and went to nurse on another front where later the
Russians turned traitor.
The 337th Field Hospital Company was trained at Camp Custer as a part
of the 310th Sanitary Train, was detached in England and sent to North
Russia with the other American units. It was commanded by Major Jonas
Longley, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, who till April was the senior American
medical officer. The enlisted personnel consisted of eighty men.
The first duty of the unit in Russia was caring for “flu” patients. It
went up the Dvina River to Beresnik on September 22nd, taking over a
Russian civilian hospital, Three weeks later the hospital barge dubbed
“The Michigan” came up from Archangel with the “B” section of Field
Hospital Company. Five days later this section of the field hospital
proceeded by hospital sidewheeler to Shenkursk and took over a large
high school building for a permanent field hospital. Here the unit gave
service to the one hundred and fifty cases of “flu” among the Russians.
This was where Miss Valentine, the English girl who had been teaching
school for several years in Russia, came on to nurse the Russians
during the “flu” and later became very friendly with the Americans, and
was accused of being a Bolshevik sympathizer, which story is wound all
around by a thread of romance clean and pretty.
During the Bolo’s smashing in of the Ust Padenga front and the
subsequent memorable retreat from Shenkursk this section of field
hospital men had their hands full. It was in the field hospital at
Shenkursk that the gallant and beloved Lt. Ralph G. Powers of the
Ambulance Corps died and his body had to be left to the triumphant
Bolos. Powers had been mortally wounded by a shell that entered his
dressing station at Ust Padenga where he was alone with six enlisted
men. His wounds were dressed by a Russian doctor who was with the
Russian company supporting “A” Company. Lt. Powers had gone to the
railroad front in September, shifted to the Kodish front during severe
fighting, and then to the distant Shenkursk front. He was never
relieved from front line duty, although three medical officers at this
time were in Shenkursk. Capt. Kinyon immediately sent Lt. Katz to Ust
Padenga upon the loss of Powers, who will always be a hero to the
expeditionary veterans.
It was at Ust Padenga that Corp. Chas. A. Thornton gave up his chair to
a weary Supply Company man, Comrade Carl G. Berger, just up from
Shenkursk with an ambulance, and a Bolo three-inch shell hurled through
the log wall and decapitated the luckless supply man. In the hasty
retreat the hospital men, like the infantry men, had to abandon
everything but the clothes and equipment on their backs.
During the holding retreat of the 1st Battalion of the Vaga a small
hospital was established temporarily at Kitsa.
Later during the slowing up of the retreat, hospitals were opened at
Ust Vaga and Osinova. Here this section stayed. The other section had
been at Beresnik all the time. During the latter days of the campaign
the field hospital company took over the river front field medical
duties so that the medical detachments of the 339th and the detachments
of the 337th Ambulance Company could be assembled for evacuation at
Archangel. And the 337th Field Hospital Company itself was assembled at
Archangel June 13th and sailed June 15th. Their work had for the most
part been under great strain in the long forest and river campaign,
always seeing the seamy side of the war and lacking the frequent
changes of scenery and the blood-stirring combats which the doughboy
encountered. It took strong qualities of heart and nerve to be a field
hospital man, or an ambulance or medical man.
XXVII
SIGNAL PLATOON WINS COMMENDATION
Learning Wireless In A Few Weeks—Sterling Work Of Field Buzzers—With
Assaulting Columns—Wires Repaired Under Shell Fire—General Ironside’s
Commendatory Official Citation.
In the North Russian Expedition the doughboy had to learn to do most
anything that was needful. A sergeant, two corporals and four men of
the Headquarters Company Signal Platoon actually in four months time
mastered the mysteries of wireless telegraphy. This is usually a year’s
course in any technical school. But these men were forced by necessity
to learn how to receive and to send messages in a few weeks’ time.
They were trained at first for a few days at Tundra, the wireless
station used by the British and French for intercepting messages. Later
at Obozerskaya and at Verst 455 they gained experience that made them
expert in picking messages out of the air. At one time the writer was
shown a message which was intercepted passing from London to Bagdad. It
was no uncommon thing for a doughboy to intercept messages from Egypt
or Mesopotamia and other parts of the Mediterranean world, from Red
Moscow, Socialist Berlin, starving Vienna and from London.
At one period in the spring defensive of the Archangel-Vologda
Railroad, this American wireless crew was the sole reliance of the
force, as the Obozerskaya station went out of order for a time, and the
various points, Onega, Seletskoe and Archangel were kept in
communication by this small unit at Verst 455. “H” Company men will
recall that out of the blue sky from the east one day came a message
from Major Nichols asking if their gallant leader, Phillips, had any
show of recovering from the Bolo bullet in his lung. The message sent
back was hopeful.
The record of the signal platoon under Lieutenant Anselmi, of Detroit,
shows also that several of these signal men rendered great service as
telegraphers. One of the pleasant duties of the doughboy buzzer
operators one day in spring was to receive and transmit to Major J.
Brooks Nichols the message from his royal majesty, King George of Great
Britain and Ireland, that for gallantry in action he had been honored
with election to the Distinguished Service Order, the D. S. O.
But it is the field telephone men who really made the signal platoon
its great reputation. General Ironside’s letter of merit is included
later in this account. Here let us record in some detail the work of
the American signal platoon.
Thirty men maintained nearly five hundred miles of circuit wire that
lay on the surface of the ground and was subject in one-third of that
space to constant disruption by enemy artillery fire and to constant
menace from enemy patrols. The switchboard at Verst 455 was able to
give thirty different connections at once at any time of day or night;
at 448, ten; and at 445, six. This means a lot of work. The writer
knows that the field telephone man is an important, in fact, invaluable
adjunct to his forces whether in attack or in defense. For when the
attack has been successful and the officer in command wishes to send
information quickly to his superior officer asking for supplies of
ammunition or for more forces or for artillery support to come up and
assist in beating off the enemy counter-attack, the field telephone is
indispensable. Hence the doughboy who carries his reels of wire along
with the advancing skirmish line shares largely in the credit for doing
a job up thoroughly. At the capture of Verst 445 the signal men were
able to talk through to Major Nichols at 448 within four minutes of the
time the doughboys’ cheers of victory had sounded! And within fifteen
minutes a line had been extended out to the farthest point where
doughboys were digging in. There they were able later to give the
artillery commander information of the effect of his shells long before
he could get his own signals into place for observation. The British
signals were good, but, as the writers well recall, it was especially
assuring when the buzzer sounded to have an American doughboy at the
other end say he would make the connection or take the message. They
never fell down on the job.
General Ironside’s commendation is not a bit too strong in its praises
of the signal platoon. We are glad to make it a part of the history,
and without doubt all the veterans who read these pages will join us in
the little glow of pride with which we pass on this official citation
of the Commanding General’s, which is as follows:
“The Signal Platoon of the 339th Infantry, under Second Lieutenant
Anselmi, has performed most excellent work on this front. Besides
forming the Signals of the Railway Detachment, the platoon provided
much needed reinforcements for other Allied Signal Units, and the
readiness with which they have co-operated with the remainder of Allied
Signal Service has been of the greatest service throughout.
“Please convey to all ranks of the platoon my appreciation of the
services they have rendered.”
(Signed) E. IRONSIDE, Major-General,
Commander-in-Chief, Allied Forces, Archangel, Russia.
G. H. Q., 23rd May, 1919.
And our American commander, General Richardson, in transmitting the
letter through regimental headquarters said, “Their work adds further
to the splendid record made by American Forces in Europe.”
XXVIII
THE DOUGHBOY’S MONEY IN ARCHANGEL
Coin And Paper Of North Russia—Trafficking In Exchange—New Issue Of
Paper Roubles—Trying To Peg Rouble Currency—Yanks Lose On Pay Checks
Drawn On British Pound Sterling Banks.
The writer has a silver Nicholas the Fifth rouble. It is one of the
very few silver coins seen in Russia. Here and there a soldier was able
to get hold of silver and gold coins of the old days, but they were
very scarce. The Russian peasant had to feel a high degree of affection
for an American before he would part with one of his hoarded bits of
real money.
Of paper money there was no end. When the Americans landed, they were
met by small boys on the streets with sheets of Archangel state money
under their arms. The perforations of some Kerenskies were not yet
disturbed when great sheets and rolls of it were taken from the bodies
of dead Bolos. Everybody had paper money. The Bolsheviki were
counterfeiting the old Czar’s paper money and the Kerensky money and
issuing currency of their own. The Polar Bear and Walrus 25-rouble
notes of Archangel and their sign-board size government gold bond notes
were printed in England, as were later the other denominations of
Archangel roubles, better known as British roubles. Needless to say
there was a great speculation in money and exchange. Nickolai and
Kerensky and Archangel and British guaranteed roubles tumbled over one
another in the market. Of course trafficking in money was taboo but was
brisk.