question of where it would strike. On the 19th day of January, the
dispositions were these: a platoon of Americans held the village on
the pedestal, fifty-four allied Russians were in the village on the
flat below, and the main body of Americans, some two hundred strong,
two Field Pieces, one One Pounder of Russian design, one Pom Pom and
forty Russian artillerymen (who funked in the first fight and were
relieved by Canadians), were in the backward village on the high
bluff.
At dawn, for one hour, enemy batteries from across the Vaga shelled
the foremost position on the elevated ground, then suddenly ceased
firing, and like grotesque Jacks in the Box, swarms of white-clad
Bolsheviks arose by magic from the concealment of the ravines. A
succession of long, white lines came from the close forest, and
across the open snow of the Vaga came still more advancing,
white-clothed men.
Against such bulked masses, resistance was impossible. Three machine
guns, burst after burst, tore rending gaps in the coming lines, but
they merely welded and kept on.
When the last pannier of ammunition was gone, word was given to blaze
a path through to the rear--and double time! And now down the steep
hillside the trapped company charged, tumbling and fighting like
maddened, cornered animals, until they gained a foothold on the road
which stretched out bleak and coverless eight hundred yards to the
main village. Some tried to make a run of it over the bottomless,
intervening snows, where they struggled piteously like hobbled
animals and were killed. But in most part, they dashed in frantic
relays down the open road, sprinting forward a score of yards, then
flattening on the ground, and so on, rushing and sprawling flat,
until the fatal course was run, while every rifle from the abandoned
village on the height, and the flanking forest and across the Vaga
spurted death, and machine guns rattled rasping death, and bullets
lashed the air with the furious cracking of ten thousand whips, or
sped fluttering through the snow, and went off whimpering into space,
or felled men with sledgelike blows, until the doomed way was strewn,
end to end, with the prostrate forms of the fallen ones, and a
pitiful few, by some fluke of luck, had gained the shielding hill.
Not ten minutes had been taken in that terrible dash through that
valley of Death's shadow, and of the forty-seven who began the
journey, six reached the goal of the main village. In the fearful
sub-zero temperature, all of the wounded would have perished by
freezing, had not a volunteer party, braving the unspeakable,
barbarous Bolos (who for some reason held their fire), gone out in
the open snow and brought them to shelter. Fifteen were thus
accounted for, and the rest lay somewhere beyond sight, "missing in
action," that ambiguous, impersonal expression of the War Department,
so fraught with mingled hope and dread, harrowing fear.
[Illustration: When the snow mounted high the fortifications had been
made safe against any projectile save a six-inch shell]
When night screened the battle scene, the Allied Russians, upon their
own inspiration, evacuated the village on the flat, and the next day,
the unwitting Bolsheviks began the second phase of their investment
of Ust Padenga. Again the artillery, even more violently than the
first day, flung hurtling blasts at the deserted village, and late at
day, the infantry, grotesque, bobbing objects out on the wide snow
stretches, stormed the uncontested position. It was like rifle
practice to shoot down those living targets, glaringly open on the
white snow, and they were downed by tattering bursts of shrapnel,
downed by musketry, downed by awful devastating bursts from machine
guns, that moved them row upon row, until the last man had passed to
the cover of this village of costly folly, and the snow was dotted
with dead and wounded, which, from the distant hill, looked
grotesquely like raisins stuck in an immense rice pudding.
On the third day, the surviving village, lying bare on the
unsheltered top of the cliff, was the target of a barrage that
searched it house to house, until many of the moujik homes were
wrecks of smashed timbers, and the trail of human wreckage was a
ghastly, unsightly thing. The American doctor went to death, a
victim of the shells, because he would not have his wounds bound up
while a single, private soldier was not relieved, but he lives with
Vaga men as long as life endures, a symbol of moral grandeur and
noblest self abnegation, that will ever inspire faith in the
immortal, spiritual entity of man.
It was not the Viking Captain who ordered retreat from Ust Padenga.
Half of his little company was gone, but he had no thought of
yielding. He would have held on until the last dog was hung, if
superior directions had not come from Shenkurst. He loved a fight,
this antique Norseman, loved the wild, esoteric fury of it. Three
times, his men threw back the Bolsheviks, and caught in a contagion
of blood lust, they craved still more, maddened by battle, they took
hilarious delight in seeing "the Bolos bite the snow banks."
They did not know that pitted against them was the vanguard of an
army that by every objective rule of warfare should have crushed this
rash, little group to utter destruction; but if Ust Padenga did not
know, all at Shenkurst were fully alert to the gravity of the
situation. This was the much proclaimed Bolshevik offensive, with
its object, the annihilation of the Allied North Russian Expedition;
and now as the full fury of the gigantic, impending assault unfolded,
the "offensive defensive" theory found vindication, for at the Ust
Padenga, little more than one company had stood off a regiment of the
enemy.
There seemed small hope of escape for the valiant Vaga men who
remained after the fourth night of the attack, when an incendiary
shell fell upon the village, sending hungry, devouring flames athwart
the curtain of the Russian night, till naught was left of the moujik
homes save the gray ashes of "friendly intervention"; but in the
confusion of concentration, the assemblage of large numbers and
numerous troop movements, the retreating company glided in darkness
down the center of the frozen, white covered Vaga, through the very
midst of unsuspecting, enemy hosts, and two nights later, reported at
Headquarters tired and half starved, the Viking leader among the
casualties with a serious wound.
In Shenkurst, the beleaguered city, in point of numbers, the Slavic
Battalion, nearly twelve hundred strong, was the mainstay of the
garrison, but on trial in a previous attack for one of the two
flanking villages, it had made a sorry showing, and in a last stand,
was estimated as of uncertain, staying quality. Besides these
Russians, there was one full company of American Infantry, the
exhausted half company from Ust Padenga, one section of the
Thirty-Eighth Canadian Field Artillery, four Two Point Nine mountain
pieces, and three trench mortars.
The Bolsheviks had surrounded Shenkurst in an immense, unnumbered
multitude. They had mounted one nine inch gun, two six inch guns,
four Four Point Sevens and a Battery of Field Artillery, and from
three-quarters of the forest commenced to batter down the buildings.
It could be only a brief time before the city would be in ruins, but
even more serious was the question of provisions. They were already
limited, and in case of siege, no new supply could be brought up
until the breaking of the river in May.
The Bolsheviks, confident that the garrison would try to escape from
Shenkurst, waited in great masses on the main north road, eager for
the coming slaughter; but a native had informed the Allied Command of
a secret path through the deep, snow covered swamps, and at midnight,
along this unknown route, evacuation was silently effected.
Before the retreat, the Allied Russians were sent as a protective
screen along a flanking trail, but scarce had the retiring movement
begun, when what remained of them came rushing back in frantic haste,
that was altogether unsoldierly, gasping an excited, incoherent story
of how two entire companies had deserted to the enemy lines and the
rest had fled in desperate fear for their lives.
Many civilians joined this bizarre, midnight march through the snow
forest and swamps, and made the retreat a spectacle of wantonous
disorder, as stoical men and wailing women strove heavily on, bent
under the torturing weight of bundled treasures, which, under duress
of fatigue, one by one were reluctantly abandoned, leaving a pathetic
havoc of cluttering waste in the trail; and soldiers, weakened by
much fasting and sleepless battle nights, lurched in the darkness,
fell and lay in the cold snow, and had to be struck and urged on by
violent means, so grateful was any surcease from further excruciating
effort.
Late the next day, a merciful halt for the night was made at
Shaguvari, where a rear detached outpost of Shenkurst had been
maintained, and which outnumbering, advance enemy patrols had vainly
striven to dislodge. But the disheartening march was resumed in the
morning, when the Bolsheviks were reported collecting in force to cut
off retreat downstream. So Shaguvari was added to the sum of Russian
villages fed to fires of the Allied cause and became another charred
ruin on the Vaga.
At villages outside of Kitsa, twenty miles further, trenches were dug
in the snow, and barricades improvised of trees, in order that the
driven troops might catch their breath. And on the Dvina, now only a
few miles away, new positions were taken, where the imperiled River
Column could be drawn back, and the consolidated Allied forces stand
embattled in a desperate last defense of Bereznik, for if Bereznik
fell, all knew it meant the beginning of the siege of unfortified
Archangel.
But the delaying action was prolonged beyond the most sanguine dream
of hope, and at Vistafka and Yeveevskaya, Maximofskaya and
Ignatevskaya, the neighboring villages of Kitsa, the Americans held
out, relieved in turns by British troops, and the remaining Slavic
allies, who atoned for much by a heaven bestowed blunder that saved a
surrounded post of the Americans.
These places, with their unpronounceable Slavic names, will be
remembered always by the Vaga men, for here during Arctic February
and March days, they fought savage, bloody fights in the mounting
snowdrifts, and performed deeds of sublime sacrifice and courage,
that will never be known save by those who were there.
They were still at Kitsa, and had not given ground, when the first
redolence of spring softened the rasping, winter winds, and made the
Bolshevik Commander draw back his artillery in fear of being mired in
the yielding snow roads.
Not one of the Vaga men, in the innermost counsel of his heart, had
ever expected to live through that winter onslaught, and when all
with quiet courage stood ready for the end, lo, the enemy abandoned
the field where victory awaited, and left the battle when it had been
won. This petty, strange and inexplicable war was freighted deep
with countless things of mystery, but none so beyond understanding as
the failure of the Bolshevik Command to follow up the capture of
Shenkurst.
The feeble, Allied remanent on the Vaga was reeling from the stunning
blows of the massed attack, and thought of resistance all hung on the
hope of saving Archangel and the life of the Expedition; but when all
tensed themselves for the crucial shock, it did not come, the
Bolshevik advance weakened and faltered and held back, so that the
defenders, panting in terrible exhaustion, were able to suck in the
air of reviving strength and hold on. When later the attacks of
February and March came, they were sporadic, and lacked the fury, the
sustained and vehement driving power of the first assault. Now in
spring, it was too late, for Nature with sun and gentle breath had
definitely won the battle for the Vaga men, and they crossed the
river to safety, leaving in the black, despairing night, two villages
flaming, a recessional of ill-will and destruction.
The first boast of "one Allied soldier against twenty Bolsheviks" had
been made good, and the Expedition was saved, but by a precariously
close margin. In no respect did the Allied Command so underestimate
the enemy as in his power of military organization. The miserable
"Bolo brigands" that were to have disbanded with the first punishment
of Arctic cold, had raised an enormous army, which now, in late
winter, exceeded one million soldiers, and the regiments that took
Shenkurst must have laughed contemptuously at the undisciplined,
untrained troops of the early days of the campaign.
Perhaps it will never be known why the Allies were not destroyed by
these Vaga attacks. There were many villages capable of housing
great numbers of soldiers south of Shenkurst, and probably in the
January thrust, seven thousand five hundred to eight thousand hostile
troops were quartered in them, a force that should have swept the
Vaga Column before it like chaff in the storming wind, but it did not
do so, and one may conjecture that the reason was because Trotsky did
not care to hazard the risk of stirring the American people and the
British people to an avenging and genuine war by the annihilation of
the lone Allied battalions. Greater wars have been brought about by
more trivial causes; but the stronger probability is that the
Bolshevik soldiers revolted at the staggering slaughter of the
attacks over the deep snows.
"Our losses are terrible," said one of the prisoners, "the commissars
cannot understand your resistance. We are twenty to one and have
many guns. Our Commander expected to take Bereznik in three days,
but the soldiers will not attack any more over the snow against your
awful machine guns."
The troops at the Vaga battles could not be compared with the unruly,
Bolo rabble of the early days. They shot low and were well officered
by officers, mostly Letts, who had been trained in Trotsky's military
schools at Moscow.
Another explanation might have been in the story of some of the
prisoners, but which was never confirmed, that the soldiers had met
in a solemn, protest meeting, following the last costly, Vaga
offensive, and shot their Commander for his persistence in pushing
on, despite the heavy casualties. The fatal potion of Kerensky's
Order still poisoned the blood of the Russian army, and although the
Soviet soldiers gave exhibition of great bravery, and were well led,
they were not great soldiers; they failed in the ultimate trial, and
did not go through to victory when stamina and resilience for the
last lap would have won.
As the Vaga men had gone furthest in fulfillment of a vain and futile
mission, had parried the heart thrust, and beat back its violence, so
were they the last to leave, and were still in battle at Malo
Bereznik at the close of May, six months after the Armistice, that
proclaimed Peace to an afflicted World, and poured cooling balm on a
million wounds, so far from feverish, strife torn Russia.
Not until June did they meet their regimental comrades, coming from
every compass point of the wide province, save the seabound,
impassable north, to assemble at Economia for the homegoing. There
the battles of Kodish and the Railway, Onega, the Vaga and Dvina and
Pinega Valley were fought again, until the white, Russian snows were
hued rose red with blood of recounted slain, until American soldiers
sailed away, bewildered still at this gambling murder game, and
sacred life--the most contemptible stake in the mad lottery.
Not the Vaga men to idly speculate on causes! They knew full well
the colonel's words, and were exalted still by the fervor of their
sacrificial avowal, the noblest of mankind--to lay down life for a
friend.
PINEGA
19th March, 1919.
C. G. Tours.
HQ: 3407, Following telegram repeated from Archangel quote
Information as to future possible relief for this expedition would
materially improve the morale of troops after their long winter of
Field Service, and it would also assist me in making arrangements for
the future. So far I have not received any official information as
to prospects.
_Signed_ Stewart unquote.
Repeated to G.H.Q. and Agware.
Wheeler.
"It has always been a cardinal axiom of the Allied and Associated
Powers to avoid interference in the internal affairs of Russia.
Their original intervention was made for the sole purpose of
assisting those elements in Russia which wanted to continue the
struggle against German autocracy, and to free their country from
German rule, and in order to rescue the Czecho-slovaks from the
danger of annihilation at the hand of the Bolshevik forces."
G. CLEMENCEAU.
D. LLOYD GEORGE.
WOODROW WILSON.
V. E. ORLANDO.
SAIONJI.
From note, dated 26th May, 1919, Allied and Associated Powers to
Admiral Kolchak.
[Illustration: Patrols were often clad in white smocks]
X
PINEGA
The Orthodox Church of Russia is hated by the Soviets with an intense
and vehement hatred, for the institution of kings was sustained by
religion even more effectively than by the Imperial Guards.
Therefore, no opportunity to deride reverend personages and sacred
objects is ever neglected by the Bolsheviks, or to violate with
leering and uncouth pleasure, the hallowed worship places.
Under the nimbose influence of Red Moscow, the religious precepts of
the people will be snatched ruthlessly from them. Harsh and
unyielding though these precepts be, they are the only note of
spirituality in the life of the moujik, and without them he wallows
in a mire of crass animalism. There was in Holy Russia many a homily
in patience and honesty and humility; but will these homely virtues
endure in the arid waste and the spiritless air of agnosticism?
At Pinega, some ninety miles east of Archangel (and nearly one
hundred fifty on the devious road), the cleric party was well
fortified, and the outstanding civic feature of the city was the
ancient monastery, standing commandingly at the edge of Lake Soyla.
The Pinega monks were quite naturally opposed to the Bolsheviks, but
the mayor was a Soviet, and the city was divided in allegiance
between White Archangel and Red Moscow when the detachment of
Americans came in October.
The Americans' presence shepherded the wavering ones to the fold. A
company of Home Guards was organized, and from outward signs the
cause of the Allies had ascended to triumph. But the surrounding
Bolsheviks were far from disbanded. They gathered in much strength
under the leadership of Kulikoff, a competent horsethief, and
commenced to plunder the slender, household larders of the peasants
in the lower Pinega valley, to whose succor a police force of
thirty-five Americans and two hundred White Russians were dispatched
in mid-November. This police party penetrated eighty miles southeast
and took Karpagora, after an engagement, but early in December was
overpowered by the returning Bolsheviks. A few of the Americans were
killed, more wounded, and the rest went back to Pinega, posting the
White Russians in outlying villages as they retired.
So critical was the outlook that another American detachment came the
one hundred and fifty miles from Archangel, ten days' journey in the
darkness and the cold. But, more important to Pinega than these
Christmas reinforcements, was Joel R. Moore, who came with them,
wearing the shoulder straps of an infantry captain for the time in
being, but whose life profession was that of college instruction, as
skilled in applied humanity as the classical Humanities, and
possessed of tact and understanding and sympathy, and that
indefinable gift of leadership. He organized the Russians for their
own defense in this bloody internecine fight, and shamed their
leaders to vivid consciousness of dreadful responsibility to their
pitifully dependent people.
In February, a vicious and prolonged attack in conjunction with the
great Vaga offensive was made on Pinega, but the defense was well
held, and when the situation looked most strained, and the fall of
the city almost sure, the Bolsheviks slackened and fell back without
overt cause or reason for relenting in their fierce assault, just as
they did on the Vaga when the life of the Expedition was the stake.
No soldier who was in it will ever forget that mid-winter march from
Archangel in gray days and cold, when the spruce trees cracked in the
frost with the report of rifle shots; when the wind, a blearing
blast, swept down and piled great billowy swells on the whitened
trail, covered men head and foot like powdered, clownish figures,
plastered their eyelids and nostrils grotesquely white with hoary
frost, and flicked snow particles under headgear where they stung
with the sting of pelting sand; other days when oppressive calm would
stifle the air with the mystery of eternal stillness, jarringly
profaned by the crunch of heavy, marching feet, the shambling of the
little convoy ponies; and the tenacious trail would lower to great
sheeted space, that swelled to the summit of long hills where village
roofs were etched in steel on a burnished background, where the
ineffectual sun strove vainly to thrust back imprisoning cloud
curtains, slate hued and black.
Sometimes the way brought the soldiers through the phantom glade of a
fairy forest, where delicately spun aigrettes and fragile, filmy
plumes held by doubtful tenure on a limb would wave precariously in
the wind and be lost in shapeless, irretrievable chaos of crumpled
snow, but tens of thousands of others would fill their places, and
inconceivable, bizarre festoons would spring to magic life, countless
balloons and garlands and wreaths, and massive, ponderous globes, all
shaped by the infinite artistry of the frost in an endless profusion
of enchanting wonderment.
Sometimes their canopy would be a lilac sea, with islands of suave
saffron, and slender, garish emerald reefs, which could never escape
the tristful quality of the haunting Russian skies, where tragedy and
melodrama ever unfolded till night clasped in blackness the brief
twilight of those doleful winter days.
Under their humble roofs, the patient people revealed a hospitality
that was moving in its utter absence of guile. The cherished samovar
would be brought forth from a covert trove to kindle the uninvited
guests with steaming tea, and in the evening all the villagers would
troop to the crowded huts to doff their hats and cross themselves
with pious orisons, and gaze with never wearying gaze at the
strangers from the far fabled land of miracle and hope. Years from
now moujik grandmothers will group rapt children around the oven
stoves to tell them of the strange Americanskis who once came so many
miles in the dread winter cold to help afflicted Russia.
Out in the frigid night, the aurora of the north swung swaying
evanescent curtains, now fluttering with faint ethereal light, now
springing to flowing, colorful life again, and one could fancy that
Thalia signaled from the night heavens a playful spectral heliograph,
mocking these silly little men so far below, that strove to conquer
the dread elements of that gaunt Northland.
But, if in the whole campaign the somber veil of tragedy was ever
lifted, it was at this front where the altruistic intention of the
Allies seemed to have caught the consciousness of the people (whether
or not this intent was in fact altruistic), they bore not only
benevolence, but even humble touching gratitude towards their
deliverers, and even undertook the burden of their own battles. Many
Russians were lost in these battles for Pinega, but after the first
expeditionary engagements not one American fell.
In January there was a massed assault, and when the fall of the city
seemed almost sure, the Bolsheviks slackened and fell back, with
their blade poised for the heart thrust.