posts, and the heavily-tired Americans went back to assembly at
Archangel, buoyant and bright-eyed at the prospect of home, till they
met on the city streets a few invalided Category B Scots going back
to the battle lines, because the Bolo droves were gathering again and
every man was needed there. Then the light smile passed from the
lips of the Americans, a blush came to their cheek, home was
forgotten and all thought of home; for there was a man's work out in
the forest swamps far to the south--where death lurked and misery
waited; and hardly a man who would not have chosen the swamps with
their physical suffering and their ambushed death than escape and
bear the stinging reproach of deserting a mate in distress. Better
to play the wretched game through to the uttermost end than to be
faithless to the traditions of one's blood, to quit the field with
the honor of a nation stained and shamed in burning disgrace.
For was this such a flagitious, disgraceful brawl in which their
mates had bled their manhood blood away that American soldiers should
sneak from it thus, like cuffed and beaten mongrel curs?
Time, soothing time, will smooth with gentle, cooling fingers, the
harsh lines of fretful hardship, the distressful burdens of campaign
and trying vigils of sleepless peril, and even burn a purple halo of
romance about this miserable, petty, little war, but some hurts the
assuaging balm of time can never heal.
Many had cast off at the call of country and given all with generous
unstinting affection, and those who were coming back did not begrudge
the sacrifice; but rankling deep forever in the living consciousness
of every Archangel soldier is the thought of this ignoble quitting
and the weak abandonment by his country of everything to which he had
pledged his manhood faith.--The causelessness of it all--Alarming,
unbalancing reflections, a moral devastation that will not be
quieted--Corroding grief for those who flushed with promise were
"taken from life when life and love were young" in a shabby brawl for
nothing.--A dangerous cynical bitterness is with the soldier of North
Russia, mordant and enduring, that grows ever more bitter with the
years.
KODISH
January 30, 1919.
MEMORANDUM FOR COLONEL HOUSE.
SUBJECT: _Withdrawal of American troops from Archangel_.
Dear Colonel House:
The 12,000 American, British and French troops at Archangel are no
longer serving any useful purpose. Only 3,000 Russians have rallied
around this force.
Furthermore, they are in considerable danger of destruction by the
Bolsheviki.
The appended memorandum and map which General Churchill has prepared
show that unless the ice in the White Sea suddenly becomes thicker,
it is possible at present, with the aid of six icebreakers, which are
now at Archangel, to move these troops by water to Kem on the
Murmansk Railway, whence they may be carried by train to Murmansk.
The situation at Archangel is most serious for the soldiers, but it
is also serious for the Governments which seem to have abandoned
them. Unless they are saved by prompt action, we shall have another
Gallipoli.
Very respectfully yours,
WILLIAM C. BULLITT.
Abridgment of communication from William C. Bullitt of the American
State Department, delivered to Colonel E. M. House at the Paris Peace
Conference, on 30th January, 1919.
VII
KODISH
Kodish was the epitome of North Russia. Bought with toiling effort,
incredible privation and cruel losses, to be lost and won again time
following time in the bitter-most winter days with moving heroism and
a moral grandeur that at times reached a sublime estate--it was in
the end abandoned as "of no especial military significance."
The village lay in the course of the Imperial road from Petrograd
that parted from the Vologda railway at Plesetskaya and cut a
diagonal lane through the province north-easterly to Emetskoe on the
Dvina. Both Commands stressed its importance. In the early days of
the campaign the Allied leaders, bent upon conquest, seized upon it
as an opportune route to support the railway invasion by surprising
the enemy in rear, while the Bolshevik Staff saw a chance to drive a
wedge between the two advancing Columns and effectually deny the
River forces all communications.
A typical polyglot group of French, British, friendly Russians, and a
few American marines, some two hundred in all, had gone out from
Archangel in the first days of the Expedition to Seletskoe on the
Emtsa river determined to drive south from this subsidiary base along
this Petrograd road to Plesetskaya. This group, designated "D Force"
to distinguish it from "A Force" on the Railway and "C Force" on the
Dvina, and the Vaga, had hardly commenced its daring operation when
an urgent call for succor caused British, French and Americans to
hurry across a trail through the swamps to Obozerskaya, leaving the
loyal Russians as rear guard before Kodish. But the former never
reached their goal. Days passed and nothing was heard from them
until a relief contingent, out a day's journey from the Railway front
in the forest swamps, found in the midst of scattered infantry gear
and other signs of desperate encounter the soiled diary of an
American sailor with the epitaph of this illfated "B Force" written
on 30th August.
The rescue party continued east through the swamps to Seletskoe as
the pursuing Bolsheviks closed in on that village, but the Americans,
reinforced by a slender garrison, drove them south over the Emtsa,
where they stood their ground behind a destroyed bridge. It was
suicidal to attempt a passage of the open river in the face of
machine guns, so the Americans dug in the cold sodden ground, and in
the grim siege that followed the suffering was intense; no doctor was
at hand to care for the many casualties who were given crude first
aid (when they were reached), and bumped and jolted thirty torturing
miles to Seletskoe, yet, in the face of all these things, none at
Kodish knew thought of weakening or turning back.
On the ninth day, long awaited supports came up, a crossing was
effected at an unexpected point below the Bolshevik position, and
Kodish succumbed to a courage that would not be denied. Exposed
baldly in a broad clearing and flanked by three dominating hills,
this moujik village was helpless against modern artillery. The
French colonel pronounced it "strategically untenable," but the worst
feature was its opportunity for complete encirclement. This was
brought vividly to the consciousness of the Americans soon after
their occupation when great Bolshevik bands converged on them from
villages to the south and the Shred-Mekrenga trail, and following a
four days' battle, they fought for their lives in a night flight
nearly two miles along the road back across the river.
There the old familiar siege tactics were resumed. The engineers
with a genius of adaptitude built a fortress of blockhouses on the
north Emtsa embankment, and in these, one company of Americans,
augmented by a few British infantry and a section of Canadian Field
Artillery, stood off the Bolsheviks from the crucial Petrograd road.
In December, with Plesetskaya the objective of three Allied fronts,
this little group, now 450 strong, led by the impetuous "Major Mike"
Donaghue forced twenty-seven hundred Bolsheviks out of Kodish, but
could make little progress on the road beyond. So the contested
village was held as an advanced post for the main Allied force on the
Emtsa, and exposed to unremitting bombardment from many superior
guns, became an inferno of bursting shells.
Once on a black January night, it was abandoned by the little outpost
and set aflame, but before dawn, Donaghue was back with his men to a
chaos of charred ruins, like the skeleton of a beast of prey in a
desert of snow, through which the bitter, chill winds wailed
dolefully. In these deserted Kodish streets of abject desolation,
the American soldier knew the uttermost depths of physical misery
experienced during the whole winter campaign.
The Commander-in-Chief came to the Kodish front when British soldiers
evinced a truant disposition and would not "carry on" unless certain
interrogatories concerning this evasive war with Russia were
answered. The interrogatories were addressed to Premier Lloyd George
and were such as might arise from the mental consciousness of any men
who still have well poised, wholesome regard for life and the pursuit
of happiness as they understand it. These British soldiers had come
from the winter murk of Murmansk, had emerged from four years' hell
in France, and saw themselves the hapless forfeit in a confused
international melee without wit or reason at a time when all were
thoroughly sickened with war and thought they merited restoration to
their homes. But when the soldier Ironside, six feet four, with "an
eye like Mars to threaten and command" had spoken, the
interrogatories were all forgotten and these disgruntled men, who had
uttered mutiny, returned to the fight with a matchless valor; with a
steadfastness that gave never ceasing wonderment that they could so
freely offer all with every instinct and inclination opposed.
[Illustration: An outpost on the Railway]
It was at Kodish that the Bolsheviks strove their uttermost with
propaganda, that insidious, warring weapon of which so often they
have revealed themselves the masters. Thousands and thousands of
pamphlets, leaflets, circulars, manifestoes, announcements,
proclamations, appeals--an amazing collection of vitriolic, eloquent
literature, were left along the patrol routes in the snow forests.
This was true at all fronts, but especially at Kodish, where these
persuasive methods were concentrated like a great verbal bombardment,
a veritable war of scarifying words, Russian, French, German and
English. Many messages of hate and fire, with frank artlessness,
urged the Allied soldier to desert and join the Soviet; others, more
subtle, displayed a masterful knowledge of human weakness and human
passions and prejudices.
The following is taken from _The Call_ published in Moscow and
printed in English:
Do you British working men know what your capitalists expect you to
do about the war? They expect you to go home and pay in taxes
figured into the price of your food and clothing, eight thousand
millions of English pounds or forty thousand millions of American
dollars. If you have any manhood, don't you think it would be fair
to call all these debts off? If you think this is fair, then join
the Russian Bolsheviks in repudiating all war debts....
Do you realize that the principal reason the British-American
financiers have sent you to fight us for, is because we were sensible
enough and courageous enough to repudiate the war debts of the
bloody, corrupt old Tsar?...
You soldiers are fighting on the side of the employers against us,
the working people of Russia. All this talk about intervention to
"save" Russia amounts to this, that the capitalists of your countries
are trying to take back from us what we won from their fellow
capitalists in Russia. Can't you realize that this is the same war
that you have been carrying on in England and America against the
master class? You hold the rifles, you work the guns to shoot us
with, and you are playing the contemptible part of the scab.
Comrade, don't do it!...
You are kidding yourself that you are fighting for your country. The
capitalist class places arms in your hands. Let the workers cease
using these weapons against each other, and turn them on their
sweaters. The capitalists themselves have given you the means to
overthrow them, if you had but the sense and the courage to use them.
There is only one thing that you can do: Arrest your officers. Send
a committee of your common soldiers to meet our own workingmen, and
find out yourselves what we stand for.
The following is from the same publication:
The Bolshevik Revolution marked the culmination of the world struggle
to set us all free. Strike off your shackles, comrades, we are your
friends not enemies, and the only reason we seek to stamp out the
parasitical capitalists by force is because force is the only
language they can understand. This is the beginning of a great world
revolution which knows no national limitations. It will set the
producers free. Join the Soviet Party. We are fighting your fight
against the unprincipled capitalistic class. Comrades, you know the
meaning of "scab," well, that is the part you are acting in Russia.
For shame, comrades! Kill your officers, then shoulder your rifles
and come over to our lines which are your own.
These extracts have been taken at random from a hundred others of
like incendiary tenor, most of which had little effect on the
Americans except to impress them with the coincidence of a striking
similarity in style and sentiment between them and many public
addresses of American politicians printed in the newspapers that came
from home, where a soft going government tolerated perversions of
free speech, as hostile to American soldiers in Russia as the most
violent preachments from the enemy.
A huge bulletin board was erected on the Bolshevik bank of the Emtsa
river, which conducted daily classes in doctrines of International
Revolution, and the first confirmation of the Armistice news came in
a weird preternatural voice which startled the night stillness of
Kodish by announcing in sonorous tones the cessation of infamous war
and the restoration of peace to the afflicted peoples of earth.
There on the Emtsa bridge, a Bolshevik orator, shrouded by the
phantom shadow of a waning moon, delivered in excellent English,
almost academic in polish, a rhetorical harangue on the glories of
communism, the injustice of soldiers suffering in cold swamps while
others sat back in Archangel in soft ease. Also the speaker
described most persuasively the abundant, bountiful hospitality
awaiting all within the Soviet lines. It was all very diverting, but
nevertheless gave audible utterance to many of the disquieting
reflections which rankled deep in the heart of every man in the
Allied ranks and did not go towards helping Allied morale. Later
that same night, when this extraordinary speech was ended, two
captives, a Scot and an American, came out on the bridge to tell
their comrades of benevolent treatment at the hands of the
unspeakable enemy; in the darkness their voices were like those from
the grave, for many soldiers were led to believe that the barbarous
Bolos killed all prisoners after torturing them with frightful
savagery.
In the first stages of the campaign, the French on the Railway killed
those that could not be carried off the field to spare them the
grewsome horrors which would have been visited upon them by the
enemy, yet at Ust Padenga, volunteers brought in wounded not a
hundred yards in front of Bolshevik machine guns, and at Toulgas,
after a disastrous ambush, the enemy mysteriously withheld his fire
from a relief party that was entirely exposed. There was, in fact,
only one recorded instance of atrocity. This was on the Vaga where
the bodies of an officer and several Americans were found hacked and
mutilated with hideous debauchery, but there was nothing to show that
this barbarism was approved by the Bolshevik leaders, and it may have
been only an uncontrollable manifestation of primal cruelty which
underlies all war.
Several months after the last troops left Archangel, a number of
Americans "missing in action" were expatriated through the efforts of
the Red Cross by way of Finland, and these men spoke very favorably
of their considerate treatment in Moscow.
THE RIVER
"There ought to be an efficient American Hell Raiser from one end of
the front to the base, with a rank of lieutenant colonel."
DOCTOR JOHN HALL (_Major Medico 339th U.S. Infantry_).
21st October, 1918.
"The Government of the United States has never recognized the
Bolshevik authorities and does not consider that its effort to
safeguard supplies at Archangel or to help the Czechs in Siberia have
created a state of war with the Bolsheviki."
Cablegram, State Department, Washington, D.C., to David
R. Francis, American Ambassador, Archangel, Russia.
27th September, 1918.
VIII
THE RIVER
Half of the original Poole Expedition was selected for the punitive
pursuit down the railway, a garrison was left to guard Archangel, and
the trifling group that remained followed the dark course of the
Dvina into the unknown region of the interior. There were told off
for this river expedition two depleted companies of the Tenth Royal
Scots Regiment, and twenty-five of the American marines crowded into
merchant barges and towed slowly up-stream by small tugs. The only
escort was an armored British monitor, and seen from the shore, as
they made their toilsome struggling way against the swift racing
river course, conspicuous, unshielded targets on its broad surface,
the dauntless little band looked tempting ambush prey.
At Chamova, some one hundred and eighty miles from Archangel, the
enemy gave sign of having abruptly recovered from his first stampede.
He turned and showed his fangs, and the pursuit stopped short.
It now grew apparent that the retreat had not been as riotous as
first supposed; in fact, there was good reason to believe that it was
a part of Bolshevik strategy, and evidence was accumulating that
Trotsky had ordered the withdrawal from Archangel to make certain of
the millions of American made supplies and ammunition, had taken a
careful appraisal of the military situation, and elected to give
battle in the interior. When the Americans arrived they were met at
the wharf by an agitated Brass Hat who said the Allies at both fronts
were standing at bay and the situation had assumed a very precarious
phase.
The Third Battalion was rushed to the Railway, and the First
Battalion, in dirty, ill-smelling barges, followed the pioneer Poole
Expedition up the river one hundred and fifty miles to Bereznik.
These barges had carried many cargos on Dvina's waters, cargos of
livestock and flax and other agricultural produce, but were new to
human freight, and in their cramped, miserable, dank quarters, the
scourging influenza broke out afresh among the troops, and those who
had already been weakened by the disease grew fainter and fainter as
they followed up the unknown waterway till a day came when one after
one they quietly passed to the bourne of that country of gentle
unwaking sleep, and sometimes off on the gloomy foreboding river the
passage of this antic caravel seemed more a funeral processional than
an aggressive expedition of war.
The tired comrades who were even denied the vibrant thrill of the
fight, and its doubtful glory, were with simple soldier ceremonials
given to the soil of Russia, ceremonials, moving because of their
simplicity and that wholesome, fullhearted sentimentalism which has
always marked the American character--and always must be of our
America.
Here in these little churchyards, tragic death seemed robed in sorrow
more sacred with the brown, barren embankments like a shroud of
mourning, the grave skies drooping and disconsolate and the sombre
recesses of the forest where taps trailed in grieving cadences and
echoed within the soldier's spirit long after its last note had been
lost in the gloom. Laden with inarticulate depression and confused
melancholy, thoughts of life's crazy theatre, the crushing power and
immensity of fate, the tragedy of all, these men fresh from the
fields and shops of Michigan and Wisconsin groped their dazed way
back to the barges where dark shadows with ominous fingers reached
over the waters and death, in this haunting, melodramatic land
waited, suspended in the alien air like a pestilential vapor.
The first stop was five days out from Archangel at Bereznik, near the
junction of the Dvina and its main tributary, the Vaga. Here there
was a group of commodious, well constructed log buildings, which had
served as hunting lodges for the Tsar Nicholas and his retinue during
the days of the Romanoff dynasty. It was decided to make use of
these buildings for storage purposes, and to have Bereznik as the
subsidiary base of the Dvina expedition until progress was made so
far up the river that practical considerations would impel the
movement of the subsidiary base to a more advanced position.
So from the time of the arrival of the Americans on the 13th
September, until the close of water at the end of October, rations,
munitions, clothing and other accouterments of war, in value over one
million pounds sterling, which had been brought all the way from
England, were loaded on every craft that could be commandeered at
Archangel and transported the one hundred and fifty miles to Bereznik.
One of the American companies was left to guard these precious
supplies and the others hurried on to take up the gage of offensive
campaign. There was a brush at Chamova, but the enemy did not make
his first stand until he came to Seltzo, nearly thirty miles further
upstream, and now well over two hundred miles from far away
Archangel. Except on the Vaga, this was the furthermost south
achieved by the Allied troops.
At Seltzo, it became clear that the Soviets had no intention of
running further, and that the foreigners would be fortunate if they
held the ground already gained. The tactical abandonment of
Archangel having accomplished the effective seizure and retention of
everything of value in that port and extended the invader far into
the interior, revealing with obliging frankness his numerical
weakness, had realized the ends sought by the Bolsheviks, and the
signs were now many that they intended to strike back and strike back
hard.
Why did not Poole retire to Archangel?
The futility of the attempt to reach the distant Siberian railway
with the ridiculously small force at the disposal of the Allied
Commander was glaringly apparent to every common soldier.
Why did not Poole, like Joffre at the Marne, shift his policy to meet
the exigencies of the military situation, draw in his far scattered
fronts to Archangel, construct an enceinte of defenses about the
city, and hold on until help came in the spring, or until some
definite action was determined for Russia?
Many lives would have been spared and much misery averted had this
been done, but the lives of a few men, and the permanent impairment
of the lives of many more, do not weigh heavily in the scales with
those who sit in the councils of the inner sanctum at General
Headquarters and think nothing of the spending of divisions and even
army corps. Perhaps it would have been too galling to Anglo-Saxon
pride to admit being on the defensive before an inferior people like
these poor Slavs who were to be chastised with thoroughness and
dispatch. Then, too, it was always safer for Archangel to have the
outposts far into the country, and flattered the Allied Command in
the belief of still being the aggressor.
When Ironside took command he not only conceded that the Allies were
conducting a defensive campaign, but with soldier bluntness declared
that the Expedition was in gravest peril. It was too late then to
draw in the far dispersed battalions. They would have to fight it
out on the wide separated snowbound fronts, and show by deeds the
superiority of the Anglo-Saxon. If they failed, if they were faint
hearted and even so much as faltered, the entire force was doomed.
On the morning of 19th September battle was joined at Seltzo. A mile
of open marsh lies outside, through which the stream at the border of
the village meanders from the forest to pay tribute to the mighty
Dvina. The only easy approach is along a narrow road that parallels
the river and crosses a bridge over this deep icy stream. On this
morning of battle the Americans waded the swamp until within fifteen
hundred yards, when suddenly from the scattered concealment of the
houses there burst such a furious fusillade of musketry and machine
guns and Pom Pom guns that they dropped low in their tracks and could
go no further.