and money obligations, and other passing rumors as errant and
disordered as the Red Bolo Bolshevik propaganda that begot them. But
was it altogether strange, that after this had gone on for months and
months, when the soldier asked for the facts and the facts were
denied him, that he should begin to wonder, and to grow almost
embittered; that, in fact, one of the companies should give audible
expression to its turbulence?
During the last part of March, a convoy of sleighs drew up before
Smolny Barracks to carry this company and its equipment over the
frozen bay of Archangel to the station where a train was waiting to
take them to the Railway Front. But the men did not stir from their
barracks, and the equipment was not loaded, so that the colonel of
the American regiment came (somewhat hastily) from his warm quarters
to learn the reason for the delay.
The colonel assembled his soldiers in a large Y.M.C.A. hall, and read
them that Article of War which pronounces death as the penalty for
mutiny. Then, following an impressive stillness, he asked if there
were any questions. There were no inquiries concerning the Article
of War, which is terse, succinct and unequivocal, but one soldier
arose very respectfully and said:
"Sir, what are we here for, and what are the intentions of the U.S.
Government?"
The colonel very frankly replied he could not give a definite answer
to the question, but added, that regardless of the purposes of the
Expedition, it was now in acute jeopardy of extinction, and the lives
of all depended upon successful resistance. More silence followed.
There is a favorite disciplinary method of the military based upon
basic, elementary psychics. It is invoked by all, from the drill
sergeant to the general officer. The principle is the antithesis of
mob psychology, and goes upon the presumption that man is a
gregarious being.
At the first rumor of incipient disorder, soldiers are assembled at
attention, and any man holding to minority views is commanded to step
forward (usually three paces) from the ranks and expound his
convictions.
Great heroes and those capable of the highest, unparalleled courage,
quail at this test, for it is one thing to rebel in company, or in
the secret counsels of one's inner conscience; quite another to stand
out stark alone and unsupported against the strong arm of the
military, the harsh, punitive, martial law of an intolerant warring
nation, that can brook no infringement of combat discipline.
Therefore, when the colonel had finished, no one accepted his
invitation to stand forth and declare his opposition, and the meeting
was dismissed with an order to load packs and proceed to the railway.
The next day, the fury of the Bolshevik offensive which swept the
Vaga, and strove to realize Moscow's boast of annihilation for the
Expedition, burst at Verst Four Forty Five where this "mutinous"
company took the brunt of the attack and never wavered during the
ceaseless, storming battles that followed, until, at the end of the
third day, the enemy sullenly retired, repulsed and defeated, and
another company relieved the exhausted American line.
And often before had these same men proved their mettle. There was
no finer company in the regiment than this, and no more gallant
officer than its commander. It is not the nature of the American to
become "cannon fodder" without a question. Theirs was only the voice
of sanity raised in this madman's war; yet when they saw that all in
Russia were in the same plight, that no one knew the reason why, that
all were caught in the same meshes of inextricable folly, they were
soldiers, and played the soldier's part unfalteringly until the
untried Russian conscripts came in May.
Many Russians had been killed as enemies; so like these simple
peasants in soldier uniform that came to relieve the contested lines
in May; so like the bearded host under whose foul-smelling roof the
American dwelt. They did not seem soldiers; so spiritless, so
immobile, so unmoved by firing emotions in this civil war wherein
foreign defenders had died for Russia. If they felt any gratitude,
it was covered beneath an exterior of impenetrable, Slavic lethargy,
that defied all effort to disrobe. Life had been a thing of rote
with these moujiks, as constant as the law of seasons and of stars,
and the violent change from opaque darkness to the dazzling light,
left them blinded, befuddled, groping for moral support. Before they
had commenced to grasp the tremendous significance of the Revolution,
swift came the Bolsheviks, crashing to earth every vestige of law,
stability, the social structure, property rights.
Now followed these foreign invaders, warring upon the Bolsheviks and
speaking with high sounding, noble phrases of saving Russia, as they
burned moujik homes and turned moujik women and children out upon the
cold snows. It was too much for the poor serf's imagination. From
fatalistic refuge he looked out on a howling storm-tossed universe
and abandoned all hope of comprehension.
_Nitchevoo_. There was no reason left on earth. All had gone crazy;
all were stark, raving madmen in a madman's world!
So did the curtain fall on this lurid melodrama and its fretful
Railway scene, and now that the heyday of the fight was done,
disquieting reflections took possession of the Americans. Their dead
had died for a scant few miles on this Railway battle ground, but
what the paltry little gain meant now not one could tell, nor why the
fearful price was paid, and ever came distracted thoughts of the
futility of it all, thoughts like howling, evil genie that ever
recurred to haunt and taunt those that came away.
ONEGA
13th Feb., 1919
"Americally Sowest London for H A E F France. Due to primitive
conditions of life and continuous service in the field under Arctic
conditions, officers and men are beginning to feel the strain.
Practically the whole Allied Command has been on continuous duty in
the field all winter with no reserves in Archangel. Limited Allied
reserves are now being supplied from Murmansk, a few coming on ice
breakers and others by rail to Kem and then by horses and sleighs to
destination. Recommend present force be entirely replaced as early
as practicable in the spring, with an adequate force commensurate
with its mission, supplied and equipped so that it can operate in an
American way."
STEWART
VI
ONEGA
General Ironside became Commander-in-Chief of the North Russian
Expedition at the commencement of winter, and the "offensive war"
forthwith came to an abrupt termination, without ceremony.
At that time, one company of Americans and ninety-three Slavic
Legionaires composed the Onega or right wing of the Allied army which
was at Chekuevo, some hundred and forty miles from Archangel on the
Onega River.
A landing party of the original Poole force, expert rifle marines
from the United States warship, _Olympia_, had taken the port of
Onega after a noisy fight in September, and a few days later, gave it
over to this Russo-American detachment, three hundred strong, whose
object was to accord right lateral support to the Railway Column, and
above all to safeguard the significant winter road connecting the
Railway with Onega, along which the winter mail came sporadically,
and the only reinforcements, three companies of British Yorks, were
brought from Murmansk during the cold days of February.
As the Americans, verst post to verst post, fought their way south
along the Railway line, so this detachment went forward at bloody
experience and kept abreast, until the Bolsheviks, following the
Railway victory at Verst Four Forty Five, grew cautious, and drew
back up the Onega Valley to Turchasova.
And when winter came, the forty miles between Turchasova and
Chekuevo, were a shadowy No Man's Acre along the twisting, snow
highway of the river, where hostile patrols prowled, and life was
held by uncertain tenure; but the disputed ground was narrowed by
half when the Americans moved up part of their small number nearly
midway to the Bolshevik village, and took station at Kyvalanda, in
order to watch a southern trail inlet to the important Railway road,
along which were regularly dispatched visiting patrols to the
scattered villages of Bolshie Ozerki, that they might hearten and
keep contact with the few pathetic Frenchmen and Allied Russians who
made an audacious pretense of maintaining a post there, and far off
on the snow, deserted many miles from the Railway, reminded one of a
choice morsel of tenderloin, baited for puma.
The Onega detachment joined in the operation for Plesetskaya, which
the new Commander-in-Chief, in furtherance of his defensive policy of
consolidation, was anxious to take before the intense cold.
Plesetskaya was an important base, and had they lost it, the
Bolsheviks would have encountered great, almost insurmountable
obstacles, in bringing troops from Vologda, and concentrating them in
an aggressive winter warfare, for this point was a junction of the
principal highways leading from the Railway line to Onega, Kochmas,
Tarasovo and Shenkurst.
But this Allied advance failed, primarily for the same cause that the
whole Expedition failed, through ridiculous paucity of numbers, and
in the second instance (although there were several more), because it
was impossible to maintain any semblance of liaison over the
difficult lateral terrain which separated the five Columns,
theoretically converging in the push for Plesetskaya.
So on New Year's day, after they had met the enemy and soundly
punished him in two sharp engagements, and standing to, were about to
drive him from his Turchasova stronghold, the Onega Americans were
given the disappointing order to fall back and resume post at
Chekuevo, where long, black months followed, and life took on a
grinding, monotonous, drab, depressing atmosphere, lifted only by an
occasional, welcomed brush or "wind up," till lo, in March, the sun
shone high and streamed in extravagant, effulgent light on the
glaring snow fields, the days grew longer and still longer, in this
eccentric, topsy-turvy, North world, and finally there were as few
hours of darkness as there had been of light a few months before.
Late in the month, a patrol was driven off from Bolshie Ozerki by the
shot from many rifles, and a combat party the next day ran counter
machine gun emplacements, was extricated only by adroit leadership,
and after worming a long distance through the piling drifts.
It was learned then that the little garrison at Bolshie Ozerki had
been annihilated, but it was thought by a strong raiding party, bent
upon capture of the ration and ammunition convoys between Onega and
the Railway. Not yet was there a suspicion of the enemy's
surprising, gigantic manoeuvre, which with incomparable, superior
force, sought to turn the Allied flank at Obozerskaya, carry through
to the Dvina, fuse with the Bolshevik Vaga army, then sweep on to
Archangel and make good the Moscow boast to cast every foreigner in
North Russia into the White Sea.
The British Colonel, irritated by the enemy resistance at Bolshie
Ozerki, was determined to chastise "the raiders" thoroughly, and felt
very confident when his seventy Americans were joined by the three
companies of Murmansk Yorks, which had marched one hundred and
seventy miles from Soroka on the Murman railway in the hope of
reaching the hard pressed Vaga Column, before it was too late.
The only access to Bolshie Ozerki from the west is a wagon road,
eighty feet wide, which cuts a swath through the ambient forest.
Passing sleighs had packed this road so that it gave good going, but
at either side among the trees was a hopeless, floundering snow bog
nearly four feet, and two miles out from the village, the Bolsheviks
had improvised an outguard, which swept this only approach with
machine guns that had the concentrated fire of three battalions.
At dawn, on the twenty-fourth day of March, the Americans, supported
by the Yorks on either flank, crept through the trees by the roadside
to the attack on Bolshie Ozerki. At five hundred yards, the enemy
opened fire, a murderous plunging storm of steel and lead that must
completely quell all thought of further approach, still none turned
back; dragging and pushing themselves through the snow by knees and
feet and elbows, the men made four hundred yards; here the American
officer was killed, two of the British officers were hit and went
down as if struck by lightning, and it was seen by volume of the fire
that the odds were hopeless, yet the little company, facing utter
massacre, burrowed in the deep snow, and, in the stiffening cold,
hung on to the last round, till the retirement order came at dusk;
the sacrifice was a heavy one, but not in vain, for by this devoted
stand the stupendous nature of the enemy operations to overwhelm the
whole Expedition at Bolshie Ozerki was fully revealed, and every man
at the rear position, vividly conscious of the desperate character of
the fight, steeled himself for the grim business in hand.
Back in Archangel, General Ironside saw in a flash that the life of
his army fluttered in the balance. He scoured the city for every
available fighting man, collected the few he could, a varicolored
assemblage of Americans, British, Allied Russians and a platoon of
French mounted on skis--Le Legion Courier du Bois--all counted, five
hundred eighty men, and rushed with them to the battle. There, this
iron General, well knowing himself to be faced by great unknown
numbers, tossed caution high to the four winds. He dragged his
artillery over the snow from the railway at Obozerskaya, and set it
twelve miles off in the woods, daring the enemy to capture it. He
brought out his handful of divergent troops, and, smashing down
trees, built up rough barricades, a cordon about his guns; then, cut
off from all hope of accessible retreat, this fighting man, whose
fighting stuff had been welded among the Northwest Mounted Police of
the Canadian frontier, threw down the challenge of wild death battle
to the Slavs.
Very close, not even a mile away, down the Bolshie Ozerki trail, the
Bolsheviks had concentrated their artillery and thrown out their
advance works, and now commenced a blasting duel between the opposing
batteries that tossed skyward mountainous geysers of snow, made
fragments of the trees, and, through every lighted hour, shook the
forest end to end with a ceaseless, reverberating roar, that pounded
upon the ear with the vindictive echoes of tortured damned souls.
Fortune is a fickle mistress, but she loves the strong and smiles her
favor on the brave, and in this strange mad Arctic forest fight, the
Briton gained her countenance by thus handsomely risking all at a
throw, and by his dashing courage, his magnificent, irresistible,
reckless courage.
The Slav, more cautious, and overestimating the strength opposing him
(as the Bolsheviks did time after time), did not strike while the
iron was hot, but held off until he had gathered together three
regiments; the 2nd Moscow, the 96th Saratov, the 2nd Kasan and
several companies of ski troops; and the road that paralleled the
Railway line to the Bolshevik camp at Shelaxa, near Plesetskaya,
became a pitiful trailing havoc of dead and dying horses, driven to
exhaustion in hysterical haste to bring still more artillery, more
supplies, more ammunition to the waiting assault.
But every day spent by the Bolshevik chief, in fortifying his attack,
was bringing victory to Ironside. In this winter campaign, with lack
of transportation and dwelling quarters, it was always impossible to
concentrate overmastering numbers of troops without costly
postponement of the striking assault. The most troops that could be
assembled were assembled by the Bolsheviks at the Vaga and Bolshie
Ozerki--probably eight thousand to ten thousand at each place, and
these were brought together with enormous labor, incredible striving,
heroic suffering in the cold, which plundered the soldiers' strength,
so that they were weakened by privation and shaken by much exposure,
and in the case of Bolshie Ozerki, came to the fight too late.
So this battle that might have taken the life of the Allied North
Russian Expedition was lost, the fleeting opportunity for success
sped away when after the first fell stroke the precious element of
surprise was profligately squandered. And the Americans, bracing
themselves for the storm, fell to under the engineers, and working
night and day, erected a citadel in the woods, strengthened the
barricades and actually finished two bullet proof blockhouses before
the first battle shock. Immense stores of ammunition were stacked
high about the guns, and as the men labored, their confident
enthusiasm grew; every soldier, under the stimulating, mesmeric
influence of his great chief, knew, with unwavering faith, that the
fight was won, grew impatient in the blood lust, and whetting his
bayonet, waited like a primitive savage, serene in the unshakable
conviction "that one Allied soldier was the equal of twenty
Bolsheviks." So, in truth, he had to be in the battles of Bolshie
Ozerki.
It was a tactical custom of the enemy to attack the front and rear
positions, sometimes he struck both simultaneously, but seldom the
flanks. Therefore, General Ironside placed his Americans forward and
back, where the gun emplacements were, and then stood poised for the
onslaught. If the law of averages traversed its orbital course, all
might be well, but if the Bolsheviks forsook their usual custom,
these dispositions might well prove fatal; for although the Yorkmen
were scattered among them as bolsters, the green, Russian, Archangel
troops on the flank positions were as yet untried, and the
presumption was against them in the pending death fight that would
give no quarter.
But when the enemy came at last, on the seventh day, he came just as
the General had speculated he would come in an attack on the rear
guns; then in greater strength followed through at the front
barricades. The next dawn, at three thirty o'clock, the full fury of
the assault was uncovered, as three swaying rows of men hurled
themselves forward like swelling, tidal waves, and when this forward
attack was at its climax, a wild horde stormed the rear.
In such an encounter, the great chance of success is in overwhelming
the weaker adversary by sheer preponderance of numbers, to palsy his
intelligence by bearing down on him with an awesome multitude, and
before he has recovered, sweep him off his feet. But with these
Americans, there was no such terror wrought hiatus, for the very
intensity of the situation seemed to electrify their fiber, and fire
their brains with the steady, blue flame of coordinated intelligence;
under these overwhelming tidal attacks these fighting men were never
so alert, never so keenly and appraisingly aware of every event,
never so thoroughly mindful of every tense situation as it
transpired; for they knew that piling cumbersomely through those
bogging snow depths, the oncoming Bolsheviks were shackled nearly as
effectually as if bound with ankle ropes, and they were acutely
conscious of the verity, that in the circumstances, one steady man
behind a bullet proof barricade, deliberately directing a functioning
machine gun, had the weight of three hundred rifles.
So now it was a glorious thing to be in the blockhouses and the log
barriers and to witness those human multitudes surge on, then
slacken, and falter and fail and shrivel as they came, while machine
guns swept them line to line, and flank to flank, and piled the dead
and left crumpled, moaning heaps of men, where red, ugly blotches
widened on the snow.
[Illustration: The blockhouses where men were crippled and maimed and
shell-shocked, far away from gala Archangel.]
By noon, the fury of the storm had nearly subsided, the Commander of
the Saratov Regiment, thinking his troops had won their ground, rode
on his white horse nearly into the defenses and was shot down as he
came, and from this time, the firing became desultory, except when
some violent commissar drove small groups forward to be killed, or
others, made desperate by despair, sneaked creeping out, and so were
killed, and the rest lay flattened on the snow, not daring to go
forward or back.
At nine, the sun went down upon the tumult of a bloody, grewsome day;
it became cold again, and there followed dusky, unnatural silence,
shattered occasionally by the rasping crack of snipers' shots, where
in that night of horrors, the unfortunate Bolsheviks passed the acme
of mortal misery. For if defeated, they returned to their own camp,
death was waiting for them, and ahead were the remorseless Americans
ready to shoot on sight, without stint of mercy. So, fairly caught
between two fires, they lay out through the endless, black hours of
terrible cold and frost, and gangrene took a greater toll than all
the gunshot wounds.
Yet great as was the enemy distress, all knew that when the next day
dawned, new forces would come up and press on to another determined
assault, and it was to divert as many of these reinforcements as
possible, that General Ironside ordered the Onega Detachment to move
against Bolshie Ozerki from the west.
That same night, one of the York companies left the Onega Detachment
and followed an unreconnoitred trail through the forest to strike
again the hostile village from the north at daybreak; but long before
dawn, became confused in the darkness and was hopelessly lost when
the attack began on the road where another British company was to
move against the village. A Polish company of Archangel volunteers,
who were to execute a corresponding south flank movement, came from
Chekuevo too late, so that the brunt of the fight fell upon the
unsupported Yorks on the road.
Thirty minutes after the first faint light, dogs, tied to trees by
the Bolsheviks, sighting the approaching front attack, gave
boisterous, barking alarm, and, on the instant, the woods were made
hideous with the rasping rattle of many machine guns. Many of the
little band were hit in this first storm, but the rest kept on,
dragging themselves through the yielding, four foot snow, while
inches over their heads, the air howled hideously with the passage of
flying death. In the snow, rifles became clogged in the breeches, so
that the bolts would not drive home, and men had to dig them clean
with fingers stiffening from cold, but still, a little at a time, the
attack wormed on and on. At one hundred yards, the gallant, British
captain rose to lead a rush at the machine gun positions and was
killed in his tracks; then the second officer was hard hit, and when
the delayed Polish company came forward in support, and two of its
number got shot through the bowels, the others bolted like sheep and
could not be driven to the battle again.
Then the Yanks went in and stood manfully to the fight by the side of
their distressed comrades, but against heart sickening, desperate,
despairing odds, as the merging Bolsheviks came from both sides and
massed in a vicious, determined counter attack that would have
overcome all, but when doom seemed certain, the lost York Company
emerged from the woods, by some act of a benevolent Providence, to
meet and stay the fullness of the thrust, until darkness came down to
save the valiant, little band on the snows.
This last, noble effort of the Onega Detachment had been made with a
single thought--that of baring their breasts to the blow that
otherwise would have fallen on their tired comrades in the barricades
out in the forest from Obozerskaya; and great as the cost, its effect
had been the final discouragement to the Bolsheviks who made one more
ineffectual effort to gain the Allied Railway flank, then drew back
in full retirement to the south.
The enemy sustained great losses in these battles of Bolshie Ozerki,
upwards of two thousand casualties, many of them from the frost, for
the villages could shelter but a fraction of the large forces, and
many had to live in such makeshift quarters as could be devised.
Time was of the essence in this undertaking of the Bolshevik
commander, and he had paused when he should have struck out with
every man in his control, but by his dalliance, spring joined the
league of his enemies. Soon the freezing clutch of winter would be
broken in the warm sun, and, unless he hastened to withdraw to the
south, his artillery would be mired in the yielding roads.