unprotected, communication line. General Ironside would have
massacred the Bolsheviks had positions been reversed. The Germans
would have annihilated the Allied North Russian Expedition with half
the numbers that the Bolsheviks had.
During the winter, several circling movements were essayed, but never
on a scale of comprehensive organization; at Morjagorskaya, in
February, and at Shred Mekrenga, the enemy came closest to success,
but at both places was stopped by the gallant British, and when
spring came his chances vanished, the bogging quagmire precluded any
further offensive. But while the Bolsheviks did not destroy the
Expedition, they soon reduced the invasion to a series of desperate,
detached, outguard actions, and the River and Railway Columns that
were to have entered Kotlas and Vologda with the coming of the first
snow, were flung far and broad over vast Archangel, as the effort "to
stage a real show with two men and an orange" wilted with the first
snow, a dismal, ghastly "washout."
Even when the Americans reached Archangel in September, the campaign
had already assumed a defensive character. Indeed, so serious was
the outlook that they were rushed from the troop-ships, shunted off
to Russian box cars, and consigned with expeditious haste to the
Railway Front.
Nothing of this was known to these new zealous soldiers off from a
brief military training encampment to the very heart of war's purple,
glamourous adventure. And it is doubtful whether they could have
realized the significance of the military situation, even had it been
communicated to them. In a few crowded weeks, so many stirring
events had thronged their heretofore placid lives that these recruits
from Michigan and Wisconsin were buried beneath a bewildering
wilderness of amazing impressions through which confused, alien
scenes and persons and places trooped in phantom and fantastic
multicolored parade, until their minds were stunned beyond the power
of further reception.
During the long voyage, a few still civilian in mind, had recovered
sufficient equipoise to inquire about the connection between a war in
Russia against Germany, but the inquiry was so unproductive, so
futile, and there were so many eccentric twists and turns to this
stupendous world madness that in most part they soon fell into that
fatalistic philosophy of all soldiers; most of them were content to
place their unbounded trust in those who sat in the high places and
whose omniscience guided from afar. It was far more quieting, vastly
more satisfactory.
Once, during that swaying night journey, from Archangel to the battle
line, the decrepit Russian locomotive gasped convulsively and stood
still by an old station of huge logs, and, under the lurid light of a
flaming torch, was revealed a trainload of prisoners, passing north
from the scene of hostilities somewhere below. They made an unheroic
spectacle, with their shrinking countenances and unsoldierly,
nondescript uniforms, so that some American wag, in a spirit of
bantering patronage, called them "Bolo wild men," a name that clung
to the enemy throughout all the days of the campaign.
But the shabby prisoners, first living sign of real battle, sent a
thrill up and down the spines of these young men, who were so ardent
for war and knew so little about it. They sniffed the air of
conflict, yearned to give the "Bolos" a taste of their quality, and
promised themselves that the folks back home would have nothing to be
ashamed of when they came under fire.
The next morning the depressing aspect of the dirty, unkempt group of
huts where the soldiers detrained almost passed unnoticed alongside
the captivating spectacle that stood on the track nearby, a ferocious
war monster, with massive plates of steel like dragon's scales, huge
funneled naval guns, and locomotive set in rear of trucks which were
piled with sand bag barricades where Lewis automatics poked out
murderously, manned by a hodge-podge Polish-Russian crew, who were
themselves manned by competent appearing, war-weathered British
N.C.O's.
A narrow threadlike swath trailed through the stunted starveling
forest to the lowering gloom of dull, laden skies, and the hearts of
the fresh, battle eager soldiers swelled big as they gazed far down
the gleaming rails to the murky mystery of No Man's Land.
There was in the air a peculiar, dispiriting quality, a brooding,
pensive, Russian note that cannot be made known except to those who
have felt it. Stillness, heavy almost to the point of suffocation,
the shroud of skies that hover mourning on the trees, and the shadow
of unlifted gloom that reaches out from the forest and bears down
upon the spirit with deep intangible melancholy.
Suddenly the quiet was broken by the distant boom of a heavy gun.
Then an ominous whine circled from the ground, approached snarling
stridently high in air, and fell with a crumbling roar seemingly very
near the new soldiers, who, on command, scampered to cover from their
erect column of twos on the naked embankment.
A cordon of strongpoints had been constructed around the village,
Obozerskaya, and these the Americans took over, tensed for the
impending battle.
But inexplicable days passed, and the Bolo did not come. There was
not even a feint of attack, and the Allied Command, with short memory
for the hazardous nature of its extended position, the apprehension
it had felt only a little while before, began to chafe for action,
became impatient; again the military fetish of an "offensive
campaign" grew, waxed strong, became assertive once more, and again
the ambitious vision arose to take Vologda before the snow.
"All patrols must be aggressive," directed a secret order of the
officer in command, "and it must be impressed on all ranks that we
are fighting an offensive war and not a defensive one."
So American officers, directed by ranking British officers, moved
their companies forward to the "offensive war," and four miles beyond
Obozerskaya, where a post on the railway bore the Russian characters
"Verst Four Sixty Six," they closed with the Bolos and drove them
beyond the bridge at Verst Four Sixty Four.
In the counter-attack that soon followed, one platoon of the
Americans, separated in the swamps of the woods, was nearly
enveloped. It fought until all ammunition was exhausted, and then
the officer, Lieutenant Gordon Reese, had no thought of submission.
After the last cartridge was gone, the bayonets still remained, and
after the bayonet, came doubled fists. At word of command, the
platoon fixed bayonets, went forward with a yelling charge, broke
down the Bolsheviks by their sheer courage and impetuosity, and the
endangered men were able to join the main body of their comrades,
repulsing the attack.
Before Verst Four Fifty Eight, Allied aggressive operations were
resumed when one of the French companies came back from Archangel to
assist in moving against the strong enemy works. There was a bridge
at Verst Four Fifty Eight. If this was destroyed, it would take a
long time to rebuild and seriously impede the "offensive war" down
the Railway. It was, therefore, intended to drive the Bolos back so
violently that they would have no chance to detonate the important
bridge.
The plan of attack was for a three-fold movement: front, right flank
and rear. The French company, supported by the artillery of the
armored train, an American machine gun section, and twenty-one
Americans, with three Stokes mortars (who were not entirely sure of
the use of these weapons) were to hit out at front. The rest of the
Americans, two infantry companies, were to form as many detachments
and rush the enemy from his east flank and rear at his furthermost
trench back at Verst Four Fifty Five.
The frontal assault would wait on these circling movements; a bivouac
in the woods, and at dawn, timed together, the three parties would
move to the three-quartered battle. The distance through the woods
to the enemy rear was "estimated at from six to eight miles."
But, in execution, the plan failed dismally, like many an operation
that carries through flawlessly around the military council table,
for "estimates" are of little use in the service of battle conduct,
where time is reckoned in seconds, and victory measured in minutely
fluctuating scales.
The contemplated operation was to approach the enemy flank through
one of those lofty, forest aisles, which were cut with masterful,
precise woodcraft by the engineers of Peter the Great, entirely
transverse Archangel Province. Regularly, narrow lanes intersect
these forest aisles, and it seemed to the officer planning this
attack a simple thing to follow one of these lanes, and take the
course of a north and south aisle until a point was reached opposite
the enemy position. He did not know that those forest paths were
deep with clinging, slimy morass, and bog that gave no footing, that
frequently the main cuttings opened before shallow lakes of open
water. There was no reliable map to show these things, and no native
would admit that he knew the way.
So the attackers went forth over unknown ground, and soon were
stumbling in a blackness so dense that one file could not see even
the outline of the preceding file. The sinking bog made the march
distressingly arduous, yet for hours the company kept resolutely on,
when, without warning, the forest parted and the sodden way
terminated in a wide sheet of open water.
It is impossible in the night blindness to know position or location,
or how far the exhausting, laborious pace has made. Startlingly near
comes the coughing exhaust of a locomotive, doubtless the armored
train standing by the Bolshevik defenses on the tracks.
In their jaded and spent condition, the men are ill fit to engage in
battle, yet there is nothing to do but have a go at it, so plowing
through waist deep swamp and awful, oozing quagmire, they lurch on.
Struggling forward, still forward, they are caught and tripped, and
sprawl splashing in the cold water and the bog, but they get up and
drag on until all are breathing with heavy, sobbing gasps; and under
the strain of terrible exertion, all are weakened, some so done in,
that they lie in the water like wounded animals on their haunches,
and have to be helped forward by others of more physical strength or
greater will.
In this agonizing way, perhaps a few hundred wallowing yards are
made, but it is clear that the company cannot go on, and there is no
hope of end to the miserable, sinking marsh; so the officers hold
council, and decide, not without great reluctance, to abandon their
mission, and the word is passed on to the scattered troops to follow
back over the way they came.
In the darkness and the trackless morass, this is not easy, as
through the endless black night the lost company struggles
flounderingly and with little hope, until the heart of all is cold
with despair; but more blighting than the knowledge of being lost in
the wilderness of Russian swamps, and the depression of abject,
physical exhaustion, is the mordant disappointment of failing the
expectant French in the coming fight.
At dawn, two soldiers, who, in days of peace, had been timber
cruisers in the pine woods of the Michigan Peninsula, led their
comrades to ground firm enough for footing, and half dead from
fatigue, brought them back to the railway, but too late, for hours
before the tumult and shots of battle had reverberated from far
advanced ground on the railway tracks; for, at the appointed hour,
hoping that the cooperating actions would still develop, the French
went in to the attack, supported by the American trench mortars and
machine guns, and smashed the enemy from his foremost lines.
Directly he rallied and returned in force to the counter-attack in
which many French were killed, the trench mortar section was
decimated and lost most of the guns, the machine gunners put out of
action, and the whole little force was shoved back over much of the
freshly won ground to the bridge at Verst Four Fifty Eight, where the
Americans stood with braced backs and would not yield.
For two days, the Bolo armored train showered them with shrapnel, and
upcasted tons of high explosives that tore glaring, wide wounds in
the railway track, till theoretically they were hammered into
submission, but when the Bolshevik infantry, in the gray hours of
dawn and dusk, approached to take the crucial position, they were
always driven to cover by a heroic defense that never failed. So the
bridge was held under difficulties that would have shaken ordinary
troops and caused them to fall back, but not in Russia, for that was
the way of this queer little war. Priceless lives would be lost,
much blood run, and stirring exploits of courage and noble sacrifices
be performed, to safeguard a little bridge like Verst Four Fifty
Eight, or a dirty village that objectively meant nothing. Yet what
sacrilege to have breathed this to the soldiers who bled for them;
for to those who risked their lives and yielded up their lives,
rather than desert some little bridge or moujik village, these
signified the shibboleth of North Russia.
For inordinate stress was placed upon these inconsequential, hard
contended spots; they became graphic in the imagination, cardinal
precepts in some strange soldier creed, altars upon which friends had
given all as proof of a comradeship triumphant over self and self
desire. Indeed, with the fresh recollection of courageous comrades
now dead, their abiding faith in him, and the thought of those far
back at home, whose eyes watched from afar with undimmed loyalty, did
he not stamp himself as a craven if he failed, a mongrel thing
unfaithful to his breeding?
Thus has it always been. The race has carried on by dimly
understood, irrational traditions that move men to the profoundest
depths and challenge elemental impulses that have descended in
transmuted ancestral determinism, we know not how or why. And if we
are to endure, it must be by these same primal emotions, that cause
men the world over to scorn soft ease and security for the sake of a
vague, inexplicable ideal; inchoate conceptions of service;
passionate, stirring impulses lacking definition, which are born with
life itself, reach down to the bottommost depth of nature and
transcend all feeble efforts of analysis and artificial ratiocination.
So it came that the momentous bridge at Verst Four Fifty Eight stood
fast, and the Bolshevik attack beat against an unyielding rock until
it spent itself by its own fury. Then the position was consolidated,
Allied headquarters moved nearly three miles down the railbed, and
the dead, in order that there might be no interruption of the renewed
offensive, were laid away in white Obozerskaya churchyard, beneath
rough crosses of wood, such harsh emblems of life's surcease, and so
fitting in this inflexible, cold, repellent north world.
After a fortnight of more scheming and preparation, the forest was
carefully reconnoitered, a path that could be traversed was found
through the swamps, in a three cornered attack, the Allied position
advanced to Verst Four Fifty Five; and pressing on, the Americans and
French went forward to still further battle. But now occurred an
event more baneful to the Expedition than all the enemy attacks. The
month was only October, but in some mysterious way, the French had
already received word of the pending Armistice, and entirely unmoved
by the disaster that might befall their abandoned comrades, the whole
French company quit the front and went back to Obozerskaya in an ugly
mood.
"The war is over in France," they argued, "why should we be fighting
here in Russia when France has declared no war on Russia or the
Bolsheviki?"
Ninety of the mutineers were placed under arrest, and returned to
Archangel for confinement.
It is not known whether or not the Bolsheviks were directly apprised
of the mutiny, but hardly had the French retired, when the enemy
artillery laid down a shaking barrage, and when night came, the lone
group of Americans were standing off a great horde of Bolo infantry
that only waited for dawn to continue an overwhelming assault.
Clearings occurred at intervals of several miles all along the
Vologda railway. Usually they were in the shape of large squares, a
half mile or more across, with log stations, several woodchoppers'
houses in the center, and near them piles of corded pine to feed the
wood burning locomotives. The next day when the supports came up
they nearly blundered on a large Bolshevik force massed for a
surprise attack in one of these clearings.
With unerring, quick-witted appraisal, the American officer saw that
he was outnumbered three to one, but losing no time, he divided his
company into three parts and struck out from three directions of the
woods, firing rapid fire, making a great commotion and noise, to give
the impression of great numbers.
Most of the enemy troops were poorly disciplined and poorly led in
these days of the Fall campaign, and this ruse of the three-cornered
attack was carried through with such colored theatrical effect that
it scored complete success. There was a brief fight, some good
Americans shooting at open, closely grouped targets, and the
frightened Bolshviks fled in disorder. Not only were the Americans
able to relieve their threatened comrades, but the scattered
Bolsheviks were followed up to Verst Four Forty Five.
[Illustration: Where a mill flaps its awkward wings]
This was the furthermost point of the advance, for soon General
Ironside assumed the office of Commander-in-Chief, and the "offensive
war" was heard of no more. The campaign became a stalemate, each
side awaiting the opponent's next move, and not till November did the
Bolsheviks become aggressive again. Then they stormed the positions
with great determination, but all posts held and they were thrown
back with frightful loss.
The succeeding month, it was decided by the Allied Command to capture
Plesetskaya, so that the enemy might be denied a base for winter
movement, and the divergent Allied forces of the Railway brought
together. But the effort failed. The Russian contingent that was to
go on skis around the left, fifteen miles to Emtsa, floundered
helplessly, became exhausted and funked out in the deep snow many
miles from their objective; also the auxiliary force at Shred
Mekrenga could not gain its ground; but most of all, the failure was
caused by the members of the Slavo-British Allied Legion, who
faithlessly deserted in large numbers and went over to their
countrymen, the Bolsheviks, with full information of the Allied plans.
This marked the collapse of the invasion of Archangel, and when the
cold of winter had settled, the Red leaders set busily about the task
of planning the destruction of the over-extended Allied lines on six
unsupported fronts, which could neither retire beyond Archangel, nor
be reinforced until the remote coming of spring. It looked as if the
great military machine which Trotsky assembled, would speedily crush
Ironside's men, and the Moscow newspapers announced that a million
Red bayonets would hurl the foreigners to the White Sea, and into it
(although the sea was then solid ice), but inexplicably strange,
after the failure of Plesetskaya, there were few stirring, winter
days on the Railway Front, except once, when a daring Bolshevik
raiding excursion on skis snatched one of the rear guns from the
French (who had been shamed into returning to the front), destroyed
it, and got away in the snow.
Major J. B. Nichols was at this Railway Front, a civilian officer,
and the only one of the Americans in senior authority who appeared to
possess a heart, and courage, and unfogged discernment. He early
grasped the vain futility of the whole campaign and no cajoling or
flattery or threats from Archangel could sway his refusal to engage a
single man in unavailing patrols through the ambushed forests or in
hazardous "blow-offs" between the contested lines, that accomplished
nothing save the sacrifice of life. So for the most part the winter
defense was a routine of work on the defenses, the dugouts and the
fortifications, and necessary reconnaissance parties over the trails,
to watch the flank approaches and to keep an eye on dangerous Bolshie
Ozerki.
With ready methods of quick transportation, and an increase in the
garrison by the coming of the King's Own Liverpools, it became
possible to arrange spells of relief, and in March the Americans went
back to Archangel.
At the front it was different. There was a tautness, a hushed, dread
expectancy in the air, and life, an uncertain thing, was to be lived,
like the Hedonist, for the day; there was no time to analyze the
causes of one's misery or even to be more than dully conscious of it;
pressing urgencies, actual or imaginary, were always occurring, and
they crowded out all opportunities for contemplation and
introspection.
But there was no pressure in careless Archangel, where harrowing care
and disgusting, swinelike filth vanished with a wave of fairy wand
and lo, the war with Russia became a magical heroic pageant. Large
numbers of unemployed officers strolled the Troitsky Prospect, very
merry and bright, an array of bright, varicolored ribbons, like
flower gardens, flourishing on their well-arched military chests.
There was the American Supply Company at full strength, which looked
very sleek and smug, and groomed well, and well fortified to
withstand the rigors of the Arctic winter, who displayed
extraordinary capacity for trading with the natives and astounding
dexterity in the acquisition of an affluent wealth of Russian rubles.
It made a soldier sick at heart to see the good things stacked high
at Bakaritza, the sweets and dainties and tobacco that would have
meant so much to the homesick Vaga men and the far Dvina men who were
never relieved--the cases and cases of whisky piled in mountainous
piles in the warehouses at Bakaritza!
There were other cases (empty ones) outside the Officers' Club. And
in the happy city, parties were held, with sparkling jollity, and
entertainments, and dances, and jingling sleigh rides, and down the
long toboggan run near the domed cathedral roistering funmakers with
screaming laughter would glide through the exhilarating Arctic air to
the white world below. The varied military were having a rather
unique and amusing time of it in jaunty galliard Archangel, and none
of the impassive Slavs there seemed agitated or even interested in
this war to bring peace to "sad, distressed, and afflicted Russia,"
which had ended life for many Americans and broken the lives of many
more. Russian soldiery was everywhere, Russian officers, with gaudy
uniform and restored Imperialistic hauteur; and Russian soldiers
drilling on the parade grounds, with a snap and a smartness that was
oddly British, all fit and well-fed looking, capable of destroying
untold American rations, with the appearance of being able to
shoulder a musket in defense of their country if they were so minded,
but with no apparent intention of being so disposed.
Every soldier knew of the scene at Alexandra Nevsky Barracks, where
American machine guns were turned on the S.B.A.Ls. to put down the
revolt that occurred when our Russian allies were ordered to the
fighting front. And poignantly fresh was the memory of the faithless
conduct that had lost Plesetskaya in December. Treachery at the
front, and treachery stabbing in rear! Why should American soldiers
die and suffer exposure and hardship for these heedless, indifferent
people?
And if the fight was not for Russia, what was it for?