the rear. At Kodish, fifty miles east from the Railway and also on
the Vaga river, which forms a junction with the Dvina one hundred and
fifty miles from Archangel, it was imperative to organize invasions
auxiliary to the two main bodies. Likewise, from east and west,
threats were made upon the security of the city of Archangel, and it
became necessary to establish detached outposts in Pinega Valley, one
hundred miles on the left flank, and Onega Valley, about the same
distance on the right flank.
Also, isolated garrisons were installed in villages in the rear--at
Seletskoe on the Emtsa, and at Emetskoe, where this small tributary
flowed into the Dvina; at Morjagorskaya, midway between Emetskoe and
Bereznik, and Bereznik itself, fifty miles farther south on the
Dvina, where there was an important subsidiary base; at Shred
Mekrenga, where there was an important road, and at other villages in
the interior, little groups of soldiers were stationed, and often
lieutenants short from civil life found themselves "Officers
Commanding," faced with the problems and responsibilities of Field
Officers.
By December, the Allied fighting forward stations in Archangel
Province were extended in the form of a huge horseshoe, and a line
drawn from flank to flank and covering the forward position would
have reached out five hundred miles.
There were six principal American battlefronts: Pinega, Onega, the
Vologda Railway, Kodish, the Vaga River, and the Dvina. Each of
these in the war of North Russia formed a distinct episode quite
apart from the others. The soldiers on the Dvina were entirely in
ignorance of the fate of their companions on the Railway. At other
points in the interior many did not even know that there were
American outposts at Onega and Pinega; and so the history of the
expedition must of necessity be a series of disjointed apparently
fragmentary accounts of each separated battleground--in truth a
description of six little campaigns with only one point of contact,
that all Americans went out from Archangel in the fall of 1918 and in
spring the following year those who still lived _quit_ (under
orders), from the same quarter.
Twice during the expedition an attempt at liaison was made between
the Railway and its theoretical supporting flanks, Onega and Kodish,
and Shred Mekrenga, but both occasions demonstrated that cooperation
was impossible. The other forces on the rivers and at Pinega were as
unrelated as if they had been situate at opposite poles. Each
operated an independent, unconnected war, learning about the other
fronts only through wild and distorted rumors of disasters, and
hearing from far off Archangel only intermittently.
Thus the Allied North Russian Expedition melted away in the snows,
and the first flushed extravagant egoistic ambition of conquest and
aggression was followed by a sober appraisal of the grave peril of
annihilation.
When the policy of aggression had been carried so far that it was too
late to change, General W. E. Ironside assumed command. He was a
great tower of a man, the embodiment of soldierly force and
resolution. He directly announced that all ideas of a further
offensive were abandoned and that all fronts from thenceforward would
be content to hold their ground.
General Ironside has been criticised adversely for not withdrawing
his scattered troops to Archangel to await the breaking up of ice in
spring, when ships could enter the harbor and the fiasco be
terminated by evacuation of Russia. But this criticism is unfair and
unwarranted.
It was too late for such a change of policy. It would have been
disheartening to the defenders of these distant fronts after the
costly toll of the defense to have abandoned their hard fought posts.
It would have been a giving of ground that would have heartened the
enemy and thrilled him with new life; for the Bolsheviks were never
exalted by victory, they paid dearly for every inch they gained, and
our men, except when overwhelmed on the Vaga, never retreated from a
position which they had fortified and determined to hold.
There were no prepared defenses on the outskirts of Archangel, and
the defensive garrisons between the front lines and the city were far
separated and inadequately fortified to withstand an extensive
assault. Transportation of the retreat over the deep snowed roads
would have been beset with terrible and afflicting hardship. There
were long, cruel snow spaces between the villages that lay along the
backward way and very scanty opportunities for shelter.
The task given to General Ironside, to retrieve the North Russian
Expedition, was not within the range of human accomplishment. He did
the best he could with the means at hand, which was to hold grimly on
until those who directed from far off Europe, and who knew nothing of
the gravity of the situation, or did not appear concerned if they did
know, came to some sort of decision.
General Ironside conducted his defensive campaign with inspiring
leadership, with unfailing heartsome courage; and he won the sympathy
of all by his rare tact and understanding, and the affection of all
by his consideration for the men, his efforts to stay the casualty
lists.
4. The want of a definite moral purpose.
Since the days of Thermopylae, the effect of spiritual stimulus upon
the fighting qualities of fighting men has been known the world over.
The military people make a concrete thing of this, and attempt to
diagram it, analyze and classify it in their treatises, where they
call it morale.
As well might one try to reach out and touch any other manifestation
of the soul. This exaltation that comes over soldiers and makes them
glad to die, firm in their faith of the sacred character of their
cause is above all finite measurements.
It is the purging light of the spirit that floods men's souls and
raises them aloft from the restraining imprisonment of physical being
to the heights of the gods. On no other grounds can one explain the
superhuman valor of the lone Cheshire Company of the "Contemptibles,"
which, in the retreat from Mons, held up until dusk a German column
of three battalions.
The French had morale at Verdun when they said, "They shall not
pass," and fulfilled the eloquence of their words by the offering of
their bodies.
The Americans had morale at Chateau-Thierry.
[Illustration: SITUATION MAP--Showing principal battlefronts]
The British at Mons, the French at Verdun, and the Americans at
Chateau-Thierry, fought as they did because they knew, or thought
they knew, the cause of the fight.
But in Russia, the soldier was never told why he fought. At first,
this was not thought necessary. Then the High Command, remembering
the importance of morale, and recognizing the need of some sort of
explanation, if only for the purpose of regularity when men were
asked to risk their lives, issued proclamations that puzzled and
confused the soldier more than if a course of silence had been
followed.
While all this time to the Americans came newspapers from home with
accounts of speeches by politicians and demagogues who fired
Bolshevik bullets from the rear and extolled the Soviet cause,
hailing it as an heroic progression in human effort.
There is another axiom in the military books, that soldiers fight
best on their native soil and in defense of their homes; but here was
a company taken fresh from civil occupations, with a civilian mental
outlook, set adrift in an alien country, six thousand miles from
home, engaged in a desperate, sanguinary war, and asked to undergo
privation and hardship, to face untold perils for unmentionable
reasons.
Still, though the expedition was committed to no definite moral
purpose, there was a morale in North Russia. A morale that arose
from comradeship in a fated enterprise, a morale of seeing the bitter
game through, taking risks and meeting perils that must be borne by
others if even one shirked his share. A noble, selfless devotion,
playing the man's part in a lottery with Death, where Life was the
stake. The upholding of some elemental metaphysical creed that could
be definitely felt but never understood, a code of challenged manhood
that had come down through many generations of warring
ancestors--this was the morale of North Russia; it brought forth the
best and the purest in our manhood, and recorded deeds that no
survivor can recall without quickening heart beats, and a profound
belief from what he saw, that the spirit is supreme and triumphs over
the body of man.
5. The Russian people did not rally to the Allied Cause.
If the fight was for Russia, the Russian people were cold and
apathetic, the worst of ingrates. Many Russians had the impression
that we had come to restore another Romanoff to the throne.
The statement of the American government, with respect to the reasons
for military intervention, put the case as if the Allies were engaged
in a high-minded, selfless service for Russia, but the great mass of
moujiks were indifferent to our immolation, and showed undisguised
relief when we finally and ignominiously quitted their country.
During early August, a government of the north had been installed at
Archangel by a coalition of Cadets, Minimalists, members of the
People's Party and Social Democrats, with a bourgeois cabinet and
with an old man, Nicolai Tschaikovsky, as President of the province.
But it was a fact known to all that the Allies determined the
policies of this government, that it was in fact merely a guise for
an Allied Protectorate.
This government of the North it was that had invited military
intervention; but had a plebiscite been called, the people would have
registered their voice in unmistakable terms and volubly Russian "Let
us alone. _Nitchevoo_."
Thus the campaign was another effort of England to impose her will
upon an inferior people, and bring them for their own good to a
higher order of things, disregardful of their volition in the
premises. It was an echo of South Africa and Egypt, Mesopotamia and
India, inspired by that lofty faith in Britain and the immortal
commission of the Empire to rule an afflicted world and bring the
blessings of sustained order, where only trouble and chaos prevailed
before.
In Archangel, an ambitious attempt was made to recruit Russians under
the high sounding name of The Slavo British Allied Legion, and after
most energetic efforts, about two thousand starved moujiks, seeking
something to eat, joined the ranks; indifferent mercenaries never to
be trusted in the tight positions. They were given the khaki of the
Tommy, but there all resemblance to the British men of war ended.
Their pay was in worthless rubles. They were given an inferior
ration, were treated patronizingly. Between them and the Allied
soldiers there never was that generous comradeship that leaps the
restraints of divergent language and manners when men fight shoulder
to shoulder for life and some things that are more dear than life
itself. It was a case of alien spirit above all else. British
officers never could understand why the Russian officers, with the
acute, sensitive nature of the Slav, were quick to feel and keen to
resent, seemingly studied slights and snubs and discourtesies.
Russians of culture and refinement never could penetrate the
unfailing reticence and frigid unsympathetic exterior in which
gentlemen of England have been schooled for generations beyond
memory, habitually to conceal the emotions.
When the utter failure of the volunteer system became certain,
thousands of Russians were coerced into the army by a draft system;
but these failed too, because their hearts were cold to Russian
patriotic British appeals; because there was no great moral issue, no
moving cause for the fight.
The war with Russia was in fact a typical British show, conducted by
that conquering people who have spread the dominions of the mother
country to every shore of the far seas. A war that was waged with
the invincible will, that noble effacement of physical comfort; that
indomitable purpose and masterful determination; that courage and
careless naivete, and contempt of danger and risk; that splendid
sportsmanship, that love of fair play; and all the sublime self
sufficiency, all the muddling, blundering and fuddling, the lack of
understanding, the brutal arrogance and cold conceit, and apparent
heartlessness and want of sympathy that are forever British.
Naturally, the British assumed direction, just as in France when the
first Americans came Clemenceau and the Earl Haig demanded that they
be fed piece meal to the French and British front divisions; but the
soldier, Pershing, sensing the important moral value of having his
men go to battle under the American flag and directed by American
officers, waited and would not yield to the strongest pressure. And
it was an American army that brought us to glory at Saint Mihiel and
Chateau-Thierry and the Argonne forest; an all-American army led by
American divisional commanders.
There are racial differences, racial prejudices, racial disparities,
and racial asperities that cannot be gainsaid even under the
influence of impersonal military discipline, and experience has shown
that soldiers yield a more ready obedience to leaders who speak their
own language; understand the philosophy of their daily lives, and at
no other time did General Pershing so demonstrate his greatness, his
complete understanding of the perplexities in Allied military
organization as by his courageous insistence upon the solidarity of
the American army on the battlefields of France.
But in Russia the American regiment was at once merged with the
British Command, and from first action until the end of the campaign,
British Headquarters directed and controlled the dispositions and
conduct of the Americans.
At Archangel there is a modern, spacious white building, and here
from steam-heated headquarters Colonel George W. Stewart commanded
the United States 339th Infantry, here were quartered his staff
officers, the unemployed "brains" of our Northern American army. He
never saw any part of his regiment in action. For a long time I
believe he had not even a vague notion regarding the location of his
British dissipated troops.
Embassies of France and Serbia, Poland, and Italy were in Archangel,
and the American Ambassador, David R. Francis, came from Vologda
there early in August, and stayed until sickness compelled him to
leave for England during the winter. And there was an American
Military Attache who developed into a Military Mission with Colonel
James A. Ruggles as chief, and a staff of officers to assist him.
Also there was an American Consulate, with an American Consul
General, Dewitt C. Poole, who at times appeared to take over a
supervision of the American share in this strange, strange war with
Russia.
And over across the harbor at Bakaritza, a well-fed Supply Company
watched over mountains of rations and supplies that had been brought
all the way from far off America; supplies and little good things and
comforts that would have heartened and brought new life and hope to
the lonely, abandoned men on the far fighting lines in the snow.
These supplies never reached the front, but the Supply Company, with
American business shrewdness and American aptitude for trading,
acquired great bundles of rubles, and at the market place converted
these into stable sterling, and came out of Russia in the springtime
with pleasant memories of a tourist winter; likewise a small fortune
securely hid in their olive drab breeches. But there were others who
ate their hearts away, fretting and chafing, in Archangel, whose
petitions to go to the front to play the man's game were denied by
those in command.
British G.H.Q. brought six hundred surplus officers and forty
thousand cases of good Scotch whiskey. Some of the officers had come
frankly in search of a "cushy job" in a zone they thought safely
removed from poison gases and bombardments and all the hideous muck
of the trenches. Others, much to their disgust, had been sent to the
polar regions because some one in Headquarters had thought they
possessed some peculiar qualification to command or "get on" with
imaginary Russian regiments that were to spring to the Allied
Standard.
So it was that Archangel became a city of many colors, as gallant,
uniformed gentlemen strode down the Troitsky Prospect, whipping the
air with their walking sticks, and looking very stern and commanding,
as they answered many salutes, in a bored, absent-minded way.
There were officers of the Imperial Army, weighed down with
glittering, ponderous honor medals, and dark Cossacks with high gray
hats, and gaudy tunics, and murderous noisy sabers. Handsome
gentlemen of war from England, from Serbia, Italy, Finland, France,
and Bohemia, and many other countries, all arrayed in brilliant
plumage, and shining boots, and bright spurs, and every other kind of
"eye wash." And, of course, there were large numbers of batmen to
shine the boots and burnish the spurs, and keep all in fine order,
and other batmen to look after the appointments of the officers'
club, and serve the whiskey and soda.
In the afternoons there were teas, and receptions and matinees, and
dances in the evening, when the band played and every one was flushed
with pleasure and excitement. Such flirtations with the pretty
_barishnas_, such whispered gossip and intrigue and scandal in
light-hearted Archangel!
At Kodish, at Onega on the Vaga, and at Toulgas, far off across the
haunting snows, sick men and broken men, men faint from lack of
nutrition, and men sickened in soul, were doing sentry through the
numbing, cold nights, because there were none to take their places in
the blockhouses, and no supports to come to their relief, no reserves
to hearten them and give them courage.
The blockhouses so far away, where men were maimed and crippled and
shell shocked, and the black hopelessness that crept into men's
hearts, and strangled men's hearts, and overcame their soldier
spirit--in the blockhouses--far, so far off from gala Archangel.
THE RAILWAY
"We are not declaring war, nor making war on the Lenine and Trotsky
government, because it is not our affair."
SENATOR HITCHCOCK, Chairman of _Foreign Relations Committee_ in the
Senate of the United States.
13th February, 1919.
V
THE RAILWAY
When the troops of Poole's first expedition divided at Archangel, and
one group was sent up the Dvina; another which was a part of the
French Colonial battalion was told off for pursuit of the Bolsheviks
down the Archangel-Vologda railway.
Hot and eager for first blood, the French hurried forward until the
Kayama River was reached, where the enemy made an unexpected stand.
There was a sharp engagement, the Bolsheviks were severely punished,
and one hundred and fifty prisoners fell to the Allies.
But a little further, at Obozerskaya, some hundred miles south of
Archangel, the despised fugitives turned again and displayed an
amazing disposition for combat, entirely at variance with the cowed
spirit of the feeble rear guard that had surrendered Archangel.
They came back in force and greatly outnumbered the Allies, and there
was in the defiant attitude of the Red troops reason to believe that
the Soviet chieftains had taken stock of the military situation, had
verified the preposterous intelligence that the Three Great
Powers--Great Britain, France, and the United States--were definitely
bent upon war and seriously intended to invade the great domain of
Russia with scarcely two infantry combat regiments!
Reports came of fast gathering Bolshevik armies at all fronts massing
for attack, prepared to take offensive action on a grand scale, and,
hardly had the campaign entered upon its initial phase, when the
utter inadequacy of General Poole's numbers made egregiously evident
the impossibility of the proposed investment by River and Railway.
The two "Columns" were in simple truth little patrol parties, and, as
they drove further into the interior, the ridiculous audaciousness of
their ambition to sweep the enemy from Archangel Province, and south
even beyond Vologda Province, seemed almost beyond the purview of
sane contemplation.
Highways for flank envelopment, and byways for encirclement,
commenced to appear with discouraging frequency the further the
advance developed in this unknown, speculative, shadowy hinterland,
and all of these avenues for surprise attack had to be watched and
safeguarded. One of these was the Vaga river, which meets the Dvina
near the Allied subsidiary base at Bereznik; where an auxiliary,
flanking expedition was detailed from the River Column, for this
tributary is capable of floating substantial craft that could
transport artillery and many infantry from the Bolshevik stronghold
at Velsk in Vologda Province, and north of Velsk is Shenkurst, the
second city of Archangel, with a political significance that could
not be neglected by this politico-military excursion into the
interior of Russia.
If left unguarded, the Vaga would be an open invitation for the
Bolsheviks to capture this supply depot, Bereznik, and gain the rear
of the Allied Dvina forces.
Many other routes for enemy movement developed as the invasion
paused, undecided whether to retire for consolidation, or to try to
plug up these many openings for enemy movement, and as the Command
stood hesitant, still other approaches by flank and rear were
revealed.
It was (or became) known that the headquarters of the Sixth Bolshevik
Army was stationed at the city of Vologda, from which its commander
could send troops north along the railway, and assail the Allied
frontal position, or detrain, and move his men on roads and trails
that took off along this route and led to the Allies' flanks and rear.
One of these roads follows down the Onega valley north to the port of
Onega.
At Chekuevo, it is nearly opposite the Allied advanced railway
position, Obozerskaya, and these two villages are joined, fifty miles
cross-country, by a good roadway that in winter is capable of
supporting artillery carriage. Some fifteen miles west from
Obozerskaya, on the same road, Bolshie Ozerki, several groups of
moujik huts, lies in sprawling confusion.
Late in the winter, a pitiful little outpost of French and friendly
Russians, an immolation to this campaign of invincible folly, was
destroyed at Bolshie Ozerki in a massed enemy effort that sought to
annihilate the whole Expedition.
A few platoons of American infantry were stationed at Onega to shield
Archangel from the west, and to watch this Onega, Chekuevo, Bolshie
Ozerki, Obozerskaya communication line, which linked up Archangel
with Murmansk, and, during the frozen months, was the only outlet to
the world beyond the Arctic Sea.
The main Bolshevik stronghold north of Vologda was at Plesetskaya,
some fifty miles south of the furthermost position of the Allies on
the railway, from which an Imperial Government highway reached out
through Archangel Province northeast as far as Emetskoe, on the
Dvina, passing through the villages Kochmas, Avda, Kodish, and
Seletskoe, near the Emtsa river. At Kochmas, another road branched
east to Tarasovo, thence north through Gora and Shred Mekrenga.
From Shred Mekrenga and Seletskoe, the enemy could have access to the
lower Dvina, head off all supply convoys for the Dvina and Vaga
columns; and hold the Allies trapped far up stream. Therefore, two
more auxiliary expeditions were organized, and, instead of two
invading "Columns," the Allied forces, woefully insufficient at the
outset, were operating in seven columns, separated detachments,
advance parties, outguards, outposts, flanking forces, and all along
the Dvina, from Kholmogora to Bereznik, a stretch of one hundred
miles, were still other detached soldier groups watching the
treacherous way from Archangel, a Cossack Post in one village, a
squad in another, in still another a platoon, all without
communication and completely undefended in case of real attack.