On April nineteenth the ice in the Vaga was heaving and cracking. Kitsa, the doomed Kitsa, where the Yanks and Scots and Canadians alternately had held on so many days, expecting any time another overwhelming attack, was at this time being held by "F" Company. But the British officer in command had delayed his order to evacuate till Captain Ramsay was barely able to lead his men across. One more foolhardy day of delay would have lost the British officer a company of much needed troops.

Sharp on the hour of midnight April 19th "F" Company silently withdrew from the front line positions and started across the river, the ice of which was already beginning to move. As they marched through the inky darkness of the woods the dummy guns began discharging which kept the enemy deceived as to our movements.

As the last man crossed the river a rocket went up as a signal to the Engineers that "F" Company and the other infantry units had arrived safely at Ignatavskaya. The following moment the entire surrounding country shook to a series of terrific explosions both at Kitsa and Maximovskaya and then a great red glare emblazoned the sky as the two oil soaked villages burst into flame. The engineers quickly joined the party and from then on until the following morning they continued in a forced march back to prepared positions at Mala-Beresnik and Nizhni Kitsa on opposite sides of the river about eight versts in rear of Kitsa.

The positions here were a godsend after our experience of the past two months in the open and exposed positions further up the river. Here for more than two months hundreds of Russian laborers had been busily engaged in stringing mile after mile of barbed wire about the positions and constructed practically bomb-proof shelters. Furthermore, our artillery commanded a good view of the river, which was all important, for as the ice was now moving out we knew that the enemy gunboats would soon come steaming down river with nothing but land batteries to stop them since the mouth of the Dvina and the White Sea would not be free from ice for several weeks to come, thus making it impossible for our gunboats there to get down to these positions.

And the ice went out of the upper river with a crunching roar. The Reds came on with their water attacks, but with little success. The Canadian artillery was well prepared and so well manned that it beat the Red flotilla badly. Fortunately the Bolo gunners were not as accurate as on former occasions. So losses from this source were comparatively few.

The lower Dvina was unusually rapid in clearing this spring. The 310th Engineers had assisted by use of dynamite. The Red army command had counted on three weeks to press his water attacks. But by May tenth gunboats had gone up the Dvina to help batter Toulgas into submission. And when on May seventeenth Commander Worlsley of Antarctic fame went steaming up the Vaga on board the "Glow Worm," a heavily armed river gunboat, the worries of the Americans in the battle-scarred Vaga column were at an end.

With the gunboats now at their disposal the morale of all ranks was greatly improved and it was thereupon decided to retake the position at Ignatavskaya immediately across the river from Kitsa, which position was held by the enemy, giving him the opportunity of sheltering thousands of his troops there with his artillery on the opposite side of the river to further protect them.

On the morning of May 19th several strong patrols went forward into the woods in the direction of the enemy and quickly succeeded in gaining contact with his outposts. The Bolo must have sensed some activity for at 10:30 a. m. he commenced a violent artillery bombardment. Shortly thereafter his airplanes came flying over our lines and machine-gunned our trenches. The men had long since become so accustomed to this little by-play that they gave it little consideration other than keeping well under cover. Others even gave it less regard, as the following amusing incident indicates:

During the shelling of that morning a great number of enemy shells exploded in the river and these explosions immediately brought large numbers of fish to the surface. The company cook, seeing such a splendid opportunity to replenish the company larder, crawled down to the edge of the river, jumped into a rowboat and soon was occupied in filling his boat with fish, utterly disregardful of the intermittent shelling and sniping. That evening, needless to say, the cook was the most popular man in his company.

At 9:30 p. m. the boats brought down battalion after battalion of fresh Russian troops from Zaboria who were landed near our positions under cover preparatory to the attack on Ignatavskaya. It might be well to mention here that at this time of the year the Arctic sun was practically shining the entire twenty-four hours, only about midnight barely disappearing below the rim of the horizon, making it dark enough in the woods in the dull twilight to advance without observation. At midnight the infantry pushed forward along the road toward the Bolo outpost positions. American infantry also covered the opposite bank of the river.

Our guns on the river in conjunction with the land batteries immediately opened up with a terrific bombardment, shelling the Bolo positions for twenty minutes until the infantry had gained the outposts of the village and a few moments later when the barrage had lifted they entered Ignatavskaya, which had been in the hands of the enemy for more than a month. Our attack took the enemy clearly by surprise, for in the village itself we found great numbers of enemy dead and wounded, who had been caught under our curtain of fire from the artillery, and for the next several days we were busy in bringing in other wounded men and prisoners from the surrounding woods, estimated at more than two hundred alone.

We quickly consolidated the new position with our old ones and patiently sat tight, awaiting the coming of the new British reinforcements, which had by this time landed in Archangel. From this time on our fighting was practically at an end on the Vaga River.

Over on the Dvina during the months of March and April, "B" and "C" Company were still holding forth at Toulgas and Kurgomin far up the river. They were daily employed in patrol and defensive duty. The Bolo had acquired a healthy respect for these positions after his terrible repulses on this front during the winter.

In fact, so strong was this position here that by April we had gradually begun relieving American troops at Toulgas and supplanting them, about five to one, by fresh Russian troops from Archangel, who subsequently fell before the most vicious and deadly of all the enemy weapons—Bolshevik Propaganda.

During the night of April 25 and 26, these Russian troops who had been secretly conniving with the Red spies and agents, suddenly revolted, turned their guns on their own as well as the British officers there, and allowed the enemy lurking in the woods to walk unmolested into the positions that months of shelling and storm attacks had failed to shake. True, some of the Russians, especially the artillery men, remained loyal and by superhuman efforts succeeded in withdrawing with some equipment and guns to Shushuga on the same side of the river. Yorkshire troops and machine gunners were quickly rushed up to bolster up these loyal men and a few days later retribution swift and terrible was visited upon the deserters and their newly made comrades.

Shortly prior to the defection of the troops in Toulgas, and unknown to them, a battery of large six-inch guns had been brought up to the artillery position at Kurgomin on the opposite side of the river, which, with the guns already in position there, made it one of our strongest artillery positions. The enemy was given ample time in which to fully occupy the position at Toulgas, which he at once proceeded to do.

On the 26th day of April our artillery suddenly opened fire on Toulgas and at the same time dropped a curtain barrage on the far side of the village, making retreat practically impossible. During this time thousands of shells of high explosive gas and shrapnel were placed in the village proper with telling effect. Unable to go forward or back, we inflicted enormous losses upon the enemy, and shortly thereafter the loyal Russians, supported by English infantrymen, entered the village, putting the remaining numbers to flight and once again Toulgas was ours.

With the settling of the roads and trails the enemy was able to mass up forces and continue his harrying tactics but could make no impression on the Allied lines. Americans were gradually withdrawn from the front lines and Russians served along with the Liverpools and Yorks, who were now looking every week for the promised volunteers from England who were to relieve not only the Americans but the Liverpools and Yorks and other British troops in North Russia. "F" Company was active in patrolling during the month of May and reported last combat patrol with enemy near Kitsa on May twentieth. This company of Americans had been the last one to get into action in the fall and enjoyed the distinction of being the last one to leave the front, leaving on June 5 for Archangel.

Meanwhile the spring drive of the Red Guards who had massed up near Trufanagora on the Pinega River was menacing Pinega. After the Americans had been withdrawn from that area in March for duty on another front, Pinega forces under command of Colonel Deliktorski were augmented by the previously mentioned "Charlie" Tschaplan, now a Russian colonel with three companies, and supported by another section of Russian artillery. Also an old British veteran of the Mesopotamian campaign, personal friend of General Ironside, was sent out to Leunova to take command of a joint drive at the Bolsheviki. He had with him the well-known Colonel Edwards with his Asiatic troops, the Chinese coolies who had put on the S. B. A. L. uniform, and a valorous company of British troops equipped with skiis and sleds to make the great adventurous forest march across the broad base of the big inverted V so as to cut the Reds off far in their rear near Karpogora.

But that British-Russian adventure resulted disastrously. Two British officers lost their lives and their troops were nearly frozen in the woods and badly cut up by the Reds who had been all set for them with a murderous battery of machine guns. Too late the British-Russian command of the Pinega Valley found that the Americans had been right in their strategy which had not failed to properly estimate the Bolo strength and to properly measure the enormous labor and hardship of the cross-forest snows. Again the enthusiastic and fearless but woefully reckless Russian Colonel and English Colonel threw their men into death traps as they had done previously on other fronts. With success in defense the Reds gained their nerve back and again, as in December, January and February, began a drive on Pinega.

Then the stoutness of the city's White Guard defenses and their morale was put to the test. "K" Company men at Kholmogori waited with anxiety for the decision, for if Pinega fell then, Red troops would press down the river to threaten Kholmogori, which, though safe from winter attack because of the blockhouses built by American Engineers and doughboys, would be at the mercy of the gunboats the Reds were reported to have rigged up with guns sent over from Kotlas. But the Pinega artillery and machine guns and the stout barricades of the Pelegor and Kuligor infantrymen held out, though one of the gallant Russian officers, who had won the admiration of the Americans in the winter by continuing daily on duty with his machine gun company after he had been wounded severely in the arm, now fell among his men.

Later Allied gunboats ascended the Pinega River and that area was once more restored to safety. Spring thaw-up severed the Red communications with Kotlas, which was on the Dvina. The Bolsheviki in the upper Pinega could no longer maintain an offensive operation. Archangel was relieved from the menace on its left.

With the Vaga and Dvina Rivers now so well protected by the naval forces of the Allies, the Bolo drives up the Kodish-Seletskoe road were now no longer of much strategic importance to them. In the latter part of the winter they had hopes of themselves controlling the water. Then they had put on drives at Shred Mekhrenga and at the Kodish front but with severe losses and no gains. Now in the spring the warfare was reduced to combat patrol actions with an occasional raid, most of the aggressive being taken by our Allies, the Cossacks, and Russian Archangel troops.

On the Onega the spring was very quiet after the Reds withdrew their huge force from Bolsheozerki April 19. They withdrew under cover of a feinted attack in force on Volshenitsa, which was on the other flank of the railroad force. With the opening of Archangel harbor the Onega-Oborzerskaya road was no longer of so vital importance to us and the Reds' one savage thrust at it just at the close of winter, as related already, was their last drive. "H" Company had a quiet time during the remaining April and May days. And that company of men deserved the rest.

On the railroad the coming of spring meant the renewal of activities. For us it meant constant combat patrols and daily artillery duels. However, the Bolshevik seemed to be discouraged over his failure at the end of winter. His heralded May Day drive did not materialize. We brought our Russian infantrymen and machine gunners up to the front sectors, gradually displacing Americans until finally on May seventh Major Nichols was relieved at Verst 455—it should have been re-christened Fort Nichols—by Colonel Akutin, whose Russian troops took over the active defense of the front, with the Americans at Obozerskaya in reserve. At this place and at Bolsheozerki, "G", "L", "M", "I", and "E" Companies in the order named at the end of May, together with machine gun company platoons, were relieved by British and Russian troops. American Engineers also withdrew from this front just about the time that the First Battalion and "F" Company were embarking from Beresnik and "K" Company was steaming out of Yemeskoe and Kholmogori for Archangel. Most of the boys of the First Battalion had been up the river for months and had never seen the streets of Archangel.

One of the interesting features of the spring defensive was the arrival of General Wilds P. Richardson from France to take command of all American forces during the remainder of the time we were in North Russia. He arrived on a powerful ice-breaker which cut its way into Archangel on April seventeenth. At that time we were still running trains across the Dvina River on the railroad track laid on the ice, and continued to do so for several days.

General Richardson, veteran of many years of service in Alaska, immediately made his way to the various fronts. At Verst 455 on the railroad he said in part to the soldiers assembled there for his inspection:

"When I was detailed to come to North Russia, General Pershing, Commander-in-Chief of the A. E. F., told me that he desired me to come up to command the troops, help out if I could, and to cheer them up, as he had an idea that you thought you had been overlooked and forgotten, and were not part of the A. E. F. When I arrived here I found a telegram from General Pershing stating briefly all that I could have said, more and, better, and I only want to emphasize to you that which was sent out and published, that your comrades in France have been doing wonderful work just as well as you have up here. Your people are pleased and proud of you. They have not forgotten you, nor has the A. E. F. in France. They want to see you come home as soon as you can, with the right spirit and without any act by company or individual that you will be ashamed of. You are here to do a certain duty, determined by the highest authority in our country and in others of our Allies, and by the best minds in the world in connection with this great war which we have been waging and were drawn into through no fault of our own.

"While the 339th and other detachments that have come with them to perform a share of the work in North Russia seemed far away and at times you perhaps felt lonely and that you were not getting the same consideration, you still were as much a part of the game, as far as forces stand, as any portion of the Western Front.

"Remember, you are Americans in a foreign country taking part in a great game, making history which will be written and talked of for generations, doing your duty as best you can so as to maintain the highest standard that the Army has attained in Europe."

General Pershing's telegram as transmitted to the Americans fighting the Bolsheviki in, North Russia was as follows:

"Inform our troops that all America resounds with praise of the splendid record that the American Expeditionary Forces have made. The reputation of the American soldier for valor and for splendid discipline under the most trying conditions has endeared every member of the Expeditionary Forces not only to his relatives and friends but to all Americans. Their comrades in France have not forgotten that the Americans in Northern Russia are part of the American Expeditionary Forces, and we are proud to transmit to you the generous praise of the American people. I feel sure that every soldier in Northern Russia will join his comrades here in the high resolve of returning to America with unblemished reputations. I wish every soldier in Northern Russia to know that I fully appreciate that his hardships have continued long after those endured by our soldiers in France and that every effort is being made to relieve the conditions in the North at the earliest possible moment."

The Americans had let go the tail holt. The spring defensive had been surprisingly easy after the desperate winter defensive with the persistently heralded threats of Trotsky's Northern Army to punish the invaders with annihilation. In fact, there was a suspicion that the Reds were content to merely harry the Americans, but not to take any more losses going against them, preferring to wait till they had gone and then deal with the Archangel regiments of some twenty-five thousand and the British troops coming out from England. Probably if the truth were known Kolchak and Denikin were in the spring of 1919 taking much of Trotsky's attention. They were getting the grain fields of Russia that the Reds needed, which was of more importance than the possession of the Archangel province.

Then there was the political side of the case. The Peace Conference was struggling with the Russian problem. Lenine and Trotsky could well afford to deal not too violently and crushingly with the Allied troops in the North of Russia while they were with both open and underground diplomacy and propaganda seeking to get recognition of their rule.

Anyway, we found ourselves letting go that tail holt which in the winter had seemed to be all that the Detroit News cartoonist pictured it, "H—- to hang on, and death to let loose." And we did not get many more bad scratches or bites from the Bolo bob-cat.



The Hard Job Is To Let Go From Detroit News



XXV

THE 310TH ENGINEERS

Engineers Busy Right From Start—Seen On All Fronts—Great Aid To Doughboys—- Occasionally Obliged To Join Firing Line—Colonel Morris Gives Interesting Summary Of Engineer Work—General Ironside Pays Fine Tribute To 310th Engineer Detachment.

The 310th Engineers went into quarters at Bakaritza, September 7th, where it was said German agents two years before had blown up Russian munitions even as they had blown many a dock in our own country. They looked mournfully at the potato fields the retreating Bolos had robbed and destroyed and they fished for the one hundred motor trucks said to have been sunk in the Dvina River by the Reds, hoping to get the reward offered by the British.

They fixed up their quarters, built sheds for the commissary and quartermaster stores of the Americans and began preparations for their construction work upon the Railroad and River fronts. On a dark night in October one platoon crossed the Dvina in the storm thinking of G. W. crossing the Delaware, and took station in Solombola and began building "Camp Michigan." The third week in October the engineers saw the Russki sleighs running about, but then came an Indian Summer-like period. The greater part of November was spent in making the Russian box cars habitable for the soldiers and engineers on the Railroad front.

One American company on the railroad had hated to give up its taploo-shkas which they had fitted up for quarters, to the British units that had been weeks at Archangel while they were overworked at the front. But Col. Stewart raised a fine hope. He ordered a detail of men from that company, resting ten days at Archangel, to go to Bakaritza to assist the American Engineers to make a protected string of troop taplooshkas for the company. And while they were at it the engineers "found" an airplane motor and rigged up electric lights for the entire train. They set up their tiny sheet iron stoves, built there three tiers of bunks and were snug, dry, warm and light for the winter. Some proud company that rode back to the front, feeling grateful to the engineers.

It was zero weather when they went south just before Thanksgiving to help build blockhouses and hospitals, Y. M. C. A. and so forth, on the Railroad. Christmas found them at Obozerskaya holding mass in a Y. M. C. A. to usher in the day. In January this Company "B" exchanged places with "A" Company 310th Engineers, who had been further forward on the railroad. There they constructed for Major Nichols the fine dugouts and the heavy log blockhouses which were to defy the winter's end drive and the spring shelling of the Bolsheviki. On January 19th and 20th they found themselves under shell fire but suffered no casualties.

In the latter part of February this "B" Company of Engineers responded to the great needs for new defenses on the Vaga front, travelling by way of Kholmogorskaya, Yemetskoe and Beresnik to reinforce the hard-working engineers then assisting the hard-pressed doughboys fighting their bitter retreat action.

They were building defenses at Kurgomin and getting ready for the opening of the river when Toulgas fell, due to the treachery of the disaffected Archangel Russian troops. They saw the ice go out of the Dvina, April 26th, snap shot of which is shown, and witnessed the first engagement between the British boat fleet and the Red fleet in May.

The greatest of camaraderie and loyalty were manifested between engineers of the 310th and doughboys of the 339th. They have been mentioned repeatedly in the narrative of battles and engagements. From the official report of Lt.-Col. P. S. Morris, who commanded the 310th Engineer Detachment in North Russia, we present the following facts of interest:

The 310th Engineers arrived in England, August 3rd, 1918. The First Battalion, under Major P. S. Morris, was detached from the regiment by verbal order of Major-General Biddle immediately upon arrival to Cowshot Camp, Surrey, England, where we were equipped for the expedition. We remained under canvas until August 26th, 1918, at which time we entrained for Newcastle, England. On August 27th, the entire command left England on board H. M. S. "Tydeus." The mess and quarters were clean and the food was good. The health of the men was exceptional, as none of the men contracted influenza which was very prevalent on the other three ships of the convoy. We anchored at Archangel on September 4th, 1918. and debarked on September 7th.

When detached from the 310th Engineers the entire Headquarters detachment was taken with the Second Battalion, leaving this battalion without a non-com staff for headquarters; even the Battalion Sergeant-Major was taken, as we were told there was no place in the table of organization for a battalion sergeant-major when the battalion is acting separately. No extra officers were furnished us. Upon our arrival it was found necessary to open an Engineer depot. Capt. William Knight, Battalion Adjutant, was put in charge. Lieut. R. C. Johnson, Company "C," was detached from his company and assigned to duty as Regimental Adjutant, Topographical Officer and Personnel Adjutant. Lieut. M. K. Whyte, Company "B," was assigned as Supply and Transportation Officer. As the Northern Russian Expedition covers a front of approximately five hundred miles and the 310th Engineers were the only engineering troops with the expedition, the shortage of officers was a very great handicap. It was necessary to put sergeants first-class and sergeants in charge of sectors, with what engineers personnel could be spared. The shortage of officers was not relieved until April 17th, 1919, when six engineer officers reported.

All the engineering equipment went straight to France. We were re-equipped in England with English Field Company tools. The English table of organization does not include mapping or reconnaissance supplies, which were purchased in small quantities in London.

Upon arrival, the battalion was placed under the direction of Lieut.-Col. R. G. S. Stokes, C. R. E., Allied Forces, North Russia, for Engineer operations and distributions of personnel. We remained under command of Col. Stewart, 339th Infantry, senior American officer, for all administrative matters.

There were very few engineers here at the time of our arrival and an immense amount of work to be done at the base besides furnishing engineer personnel for the forward forces in operation at the time. It was decided to place one company at the front and the two companies at the base until some of the important base work could be finished. "A" Company was then ordered to the front and "B" and "C" Companies remained at the Base. "B" Company at Bakaritza and "C" Company at Solombola.

On our arrival the forward forces consisted of three main columns or forces known as "A" force, operating on the Archangel-Vologda Railroad, with Obozerskaya as a base; "C" force, operating on the Dvina and Vaga Rivers, with Beresnik as a base; and "D" force, with Seletskoe as a base. It was necessary to attach engineers to each of these forces; so one platoon of "A" Company, commanded by an officer, joined "A" force; one sergeant and ten men joined "D" force, and the remainder of "A" Company consisting of five officers and approximately one hundred eighty men joined "C" force, where they were divided into small detachments with each operating force.

The base work consisted mainly of construction of warehouses and billets and operation of sawmills, street car systems, water works and power plants. This work was divided among "B" and "C" Companies.

Later in the fall it became necessary to have two more columns in the field, one on the Onega River with Onega as a base and one on the Pinega River with Pinega as a base. By the time this became necessary, the rush on base work was over and "B" Company was moved forward, having one detachment of one sergeant and twelve men with "D" force and one platoon with Onega River Column. The remainder of the company was doing construction and fortification work on the lines of communication along the railroad and roads to flanking forces.

In spite of our shortage of personnel and equipment, the morale of the engineers has been the highest. They have gone about their work in a most soldier-like manner and have shown extreme gallantry in the actions in which they have participated.

The engineers were found on every front, as well as at Archangel, the various sub-bases, the force headquarters of the various columns, and also were found in winter at work on second and third line defenses. They often worked under fire as the narrative has indicated. At night they performed feats of engineering skill. Never was a job that appalled or stumped them. They generally had the active and willing assistance of the doughboys in doing the rough work with axe and shovel and wire. The writers themselves have killed many a tedious hour out helping doughboy and engineer chop fire lanes and otherwise clear land for the field of fire.

Here is Colonel Morris' summary of the engineer work done. This includes much but not all of the doughboy engineering also. One thing the engineers, doughboys and medics did do in North Russia was to demonstrate American industry:

Blockhouses (some of logs and some of lumber) 316 Machine gun emplacements 273 Dugouts 167 Double Apron Wire 266,170 yards Knife Rests (wire entanglement) 2,250 yards Concertinas (wire entanglement) 485 Barricades (some of earth, some logs) 46 Billets (mostly of lumber) 151 Standard Huts (of lumber) 42 Latrines 114 Washhouses (of lumber) 33 Warehouses (of lumber) 30 Stables (of lumber) 14 Clearing (fire lanes and field of fire) 1,170 acres Railroad Cars (lined and remodelled) 257 Rafts 12 Bridges (of lumber and of logs) 4,500 lineal feet Roads 11,000 lineal yards Trenches 14,210 yards Topography—total copies of maps and designs 109,145 Topography—plane table road traverses 1,200 miles

In connection with their mapping work engineers took many pictures, several of which are included in this volume. All the mapping work of the expedition was done by the American engineers. See the one in this volume.

The longest bridge constructed was the 280-foot wooden bridge which spanned the Emtsa River. At Verst 445, close to No Man's Land, a sixty-foot crib bridge was constructed by Lieut. W. C. Giffels. This work was completed in two nights and was entirely finished before the enemy knew that an advance was anticipated. Not a single spike or bolt was driven on the job. Railway spikes were driven into the ties behind our own lines and ties carried up and placed. Finally the rails were forced in under the heads of the spikes and were permanently fastened.

In this district there are three types of road—mail roads, winter roads, and trails. The mail roads are cleared about eighty feet wide through the woods. An attempt has been made at surfacing and ditching, and the bad places corduroyed. The winter roads are cleared about twenty feet wide. Wherever possible they go through forestry clearings, swamps and lakes, or down rivers. For this reason they can only be used after a solid freeze-up. The trails are only cleared about six feet wide and are often impassable for a horse and sleigh. Approximately four and one-half miles of road have been corduroyed by this regiment, and a considerable part of the front line roads were drained.

This battalion was called upon for a great diversity of work, which it would have been impossible to do had not the men been carefully selected in the United States. Company "C" was called upon to help operate the Archangel power plant and street railway system the day they arrived. This they were able to do very successfully.

Shortly afterwards they raised and spliced a submerged power cable, used for conducting electricity under the river; one platoon was on railroad maintenance and construction work; and one platoon operated the saw mill. All the companies have been in action and have done construction work under fire.

Two main features have governed all our construction work; first, the large supply of timber, and second, the very cold climate. All of our barracks, washhouses, latrines, blockhouses, and stables, were designed to use available timber stocks. For a form of rapid construction we used double walls six inches apart and filled the spaces with sawdust. This proved very satisfactory and much faster than the local method which calls for a solid log construction.

The supply of engineer material has presented many problems of difficulty and interest. The distance to the nearest home base, England, was two to three weeks voyage. The port was not opened to supplies until after the 1st of June. Coupled with the necessary reshipment to the various fronts by barge and railway before the freeze-up, this caused a tremendous over-crowding of the dockage and warehouse facilities. The congestion and inevitable confusion at the port and warehouses has sometimes made it impossible to ever ascertain what had arrived.

The local stocks of engineer materials are limited to what can be found in Archangel itself and in the subsidiary ports of Economia and Bakaritza. In 1916 and 1917, tremendous stocks of all sorts of war material were to be found here, mostly brought from England and destined for the Rumanian and Russian fronts. In the spring of 1918, the Bolsheviks, anticipating the Allies landing, moved out to Vologda and Kotlas as much as they could rush out by the railway and river, and on the arrival of the first troops here not more than five per cent of the military material still remained.

The materials of most use to the engineers, which still remained, were forty thousand reels of barb wire and cable. A large amount of heavy machinery was also left behind, from which we have been able to locate and put in use a considerable number of various sized electric generators. A dozen complete searchlight sets, somewhat damaged by weather, were among this equipment. We overhauled these and used them for night construction work and also used several of the generator units of these sets to illuminate the headquarters train, work train, and hospital trains employed on the railway front.

The problem of transportation was one of the most difficult for us to contend with. The rail and road situations have already been explained. The country is very short of horses, the best specimens having long since been mobilized in the old Russian Army.

With motor transportation, the situation is no better. The Bolsheviks evacuated the best cars to Vologda before the arrival of the expedition and it is alleged that most of those they did not get away, were run into the Dvina River. The few trucks that did remain behind were in wretched condition. The British turned over two Seabrook trucks to us. We made all repairs and furnished our own drivers. In addition to these two trucks, the battalion supply officer secured five more, four independently. The owners were willing to give them to us, without cost, in order to forestall their being requisitioned by the Russian Motor Battalion. The condition of these trucks was poor. During the construction of the "Michigan" Barracks, the transportation was so inadequate that we were compelled to run both night and day. Through our control of the Makaroff sawmill, we had two tug-boats belonging to the mill, but it was only rarely that we could use them for other purposes.

It was a fine record our comrades, the engineers, made in the expedition. As the ribald old marching song goes:

"Oh, the infantry, the infantry, with dirt behind their ears, The infantry, the infantry, that drink their weight in beers, Artillery, the cavalry, the doggoned engineers, They could never lick the infantry in a hundred thousand years."

But just the same the doughboy was proud to see the 310th Engineers cited as a unit by General Ironside who called the 310th Engineers the best unit, bar none, that he had ever seen soldier in any land. He knows that without the sturdy and resourceful engineer boys with him in North Russia the defense against the Bolshevik army would have been impossible.



XXVI

"COME GET YOUR PILLS"

Medical Units Do Fine Work—Volunteers Of Old Detroit Red Cross Number Eight Appear In North Russia As 337th Ambulance—Some Unforgettable Stories That Make Our Teeth Grit—Wonderful Work Of 337th Field Hospital Unit—Death Of Powers—Medical Men Do Heroic Duty.

Owing to the nature of the country in which the campaign was fought, the 337th Ambulance Company was not able to function as an ambulance company proper. It was split up into fifteen detachments serving in various parts of the area under conditions exactly as difficult as those described for the medical and hospital units. In fact, the three companies of men—medical, hospital, and ambulance—who ministered to the needs of the wounded and sick were very soon hopelessly mixed up on the various fronts.

At first among the officers there were some heart-burnings as to the apparent incongruity of a hospital man doing field duty and an ambulance man doing hospital duty and so forth, but their American sense of humor and of humanity soon had each doing his level best wherever he might be found, whether under American or British senior officers or none. The writer remembers many a medical—or was he hospital or ambulance—man that did effective and sympathetic field service to wounded comrades with no medical officer to guide the work.

The 337th Ambulance Company was originally a volunteer outfit known as No. 8 Red Cross Ambulance Company of Detroit. Early in the history of the 85th Division it came to Camp Custer and was trained for duty overseas. After a month in the Archangel field several national army men were transferred to fill up again its depleted ranks.

It was the commanding officer of this Ambulance Company, Captain Rosenfeld, who, though too strict to be popular with his outfit, was held in very high esteem by the doughboys for his vigilant attention to them. It was a sight to see him with his dope bottle of cough syrup going from post to post dosing the men who needed it. He will not be forgotten by the man who was stricken with acute appendicitis at a post where no medical detachment was stationed. He commandeered an engine and box car and ran out to the place and took the man into the field hospital himself and operated inside an hour, saving the man's life. For his gallantry in going to treat wounded men at posts which were under fire, the French commander remembered him with a citation. He is the officer whom the Bolshevik artillery tried to snipe with three-inch shells, as he passed from post to post during a quiet time at Verst 445.

At Yemetskoe in February, one night just after the terrible retreat from Shenkursk, forty wounded American, British, and Russian soldiers lay on stretchers on the floor in British field hospital. They were just in from the evacuation from Shenkursk front, cold and faint from hunger. There was no American medical personnel at that village. They were all at the front. Mess Sgt. Vincent of "F" Company went in to see how the wounded soldiers were getting along. He was just in time to see the British medical sergeant come in with a pitcher of tea, tin cups, hard tack, and margarine and jam. He put it on the floor and said; "Here is your supper; go to it."

Sgt. Vincent protested to the English sergeant that the supper was not fit for wounded men and that they should be helped to take their food. The British sergeant swore at him, kicked him out of the hospital and reported him to the British medical officer who attempted, vainly, to put the outraged American sergeant under arrest.

Sergeant Vincent then reported the matter to Captain Ramsay of "F" Company, who ordered him to use "F" Company funds to buy foods at the British N. A. C. B. canteen. This, with what the Y. M. C. A. gave the sergeant, enabled him to feed the American and Russian wounded the day that they rested there. This deed was done repeatedly by Mess Sgt. Vincent during those dreadful days. In all, he took care of over three hundred sick and wounded Americans and Russians that passed back from the fighting lines through Yemetskoe.

Doughboys at Seletskoe tell of equally heartless treatment. There at 20 degrees below zero they were required one day to form sick call line outside of the British medical officer's nice warm office. This was not necessary and he was compelled to accede to the firm insistence of the American company commander that his sick men should not stand out in the cold. That was only one of many such outrageous incidents. And the doughboys unfortunately did not always have a sturdy American officer present to protect them as in this case.

Corporal Simon Bogacheff states that he left Archangel December 8th or 9th with seventy-three other wounded men and "flu" victims. After fifteen days the "Stephen" landed at Dundee after a very rough voyage in the pitching old boat. He had to buy stuff on the side from the cooks as he could not bear the British rations. Men were obliged to steal raw potatoes and buy lard and fry them. The corporal, who could talk the Serbian language, fraternized with them and gained entrance to a place where he could see English sergeants' mess. Steaks and vegetables for them and cases of beer.

Alfred Starikoff of Detroit states that he was sent out of Archangel in early winter suffering from an incurable running sore in his ear. He boarded an ice-breaker at the edge of the frozen White Sea. After a four-hour struggle they cleared the icebound shore and made the open sea, which was not open but filled with a great floe of polar ice. At Murmansk he was transferred to a hospital ship and then without examination of his ear trouble was sent to shore. There he put in five protesting weeks doing orderly work at British officers' quarters. Finally he was allowed to proceed to England, Leith, Liverpool, Southampton, London, Notty Ash, and thence to Brest, thence to the U. S. in May to Ford Hospital. The delay in Murmansk did him no good. American veterans of the campaign know that this is not the only case of where sick and wounded doughboys were delayed at Murmansk, once merely to make room for British officers who were neither wounded nor sick. Let Uncle Sam remember this in his next partnership war.



ROULEAU Hot Summer Day at Pinega Before War



DOUD Dvina River Ice Jam



WAGNER Mejinovsky—Near Kodish



MCKEE Bolo General Under Flag Truce Near 445—April 1919



U S OFFICIAL PHOTO After a Prisoner Exchange Parley

Only on the Pinega front did the American medical officer enjoy free action. An interesting story could be told of the American hospital and the two Russian Red Cross (local) hospitals and the city civil hospital which were all under control of Capt. C. R. Laird, the red-haired, where he had any, unexcitable old doctor from Nebraska, who treated one hundred and fourteen wounded Russian soldiers in one night.

And a romantic thread in the narrative would be the story of Sistra Lebideva, the alleged Bolshevik female spy, who was released from prison in Pinega by the American commanding officer and given duty as nurse in the Russian receiving hospital. She was a trained nurse in an apron, and a Russian beauty in her fine clothes. The Russian lieutenant who acted as intelligence officer on the American commander's staff in investigating the nurse's case, fell hopelessly in love with her. An American lieutenant, out of friendship for the Russian officer, several weeks later took the nurse to Archangel disguised as a soldier. Then the Russian lieutenant was ordered to Archangel to explain his conduct. He had risked his commission and involved himself in appearances of pro-Bolshevism by disobeying an order to send the suspected nurse in as a spy. He had connived at her escape from her enemies in Pinega, who, when the Americans left, would have ousted her from the hospital and thrust her back into prison. He was saved by the intercession of the American officer and she was set free upon explanations. But the romance ended abruptly when Sistra Lebideva threw the Russian lieutenant over and went to nurse on another front where later the Russians turned traitor.

The 337th Field Hospital Company was trained at Camp Custer as a part of the 310th Sanitary Train, was detached in England and sent to North Russia with the other American units. It was commanded by Major Jonas Longley, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, who till April was the senior American medical officer. The enlisted personnel consisted of eighty men.

The first duty of the unit in Russia was caring for "flu" patients. It went up the Dvina River to Beresnik on September 22nd, taking over a Russian civilian hospital, Three weeks later the hospital barge dubbed "The Michigan" came up from Archangel with the "B" section of Field Hospital Company. Five days later this section of the field hospital proceeded by hospital sidewheeler to Shenkursk and took over a large high school building for a permanent field hospital. Here the unit gave service to the one hundred and fifty cases of "flu" among the Russians. This was where Miss Valentine, the English girl who had been teaching school for several years in Russia, came on to nurse the Russians during the "flu" and later became very friendly with the Americans, and was accused of being a Bolshevik sympathizer, which story is wound all around by a thread of romance clean and pretty.

During the Bolo's smashing in of the Ust Padenga front and the subsequent memorable retreat from Shenkursk this section of field hospital men had their hands full. It was in the field hospital at Shenkursk that the gallant and beloved Lt. Ralph G. Powers of the Ambulance Corps died and his body had to be left to the triumphant Bolos. Powers had been mortally wounded by a shell that entered his dressing station at Ust Padenga where he was alone with six enlisted men. His wounds were dressed by a Russian doctor who was with the Russian company supporting "A" Company. Lt. Powers had gone to the railroad front in September, shifted to the Kodish front during severe fighting, and then to the distant Shenkursk front. He was never relieved from front line duty, although three medical officers at this time were in Shenkursk. Capt. Kinyon immediately sent Lt. Katz to Ust Padenga upon the loss of Powers, who will always be a hero to the expeditionary veterans.

It was at Ust Padenga that Corp. Chas. A. Thornton gave up his chair to a weary Supply Company man, Comrade Carl G. Berger, just up from Shenkursk with an ambulance, and a Bolo three-inch shell hurled through the log wall and decapitated the luckless supply man. In the hasty retreat the hospital men, like the infantry men, had to abandon everything but the clothes and equipment on their backs.

During the holding retreat of the 1st Battalion of the Vaga a small hospital was established temporarily at Kitsa.

Later during the slowing up of the retreat, hospitals were opened at Ust Vaga and Osinova. Here this section stayed. The other section had been at Beresnik all the time. During the latter days of the campaign the field hospital company took over the river front field medical duties so that the medical detachments of the 339th and the detachments of the 337th Ambulance Company could be assembled for evacuation at Archangel. And the 337th Field Hospital Company itself was assembled at Archangel June 13th and sailed June 15th. Their work had for the most part been under great strain in the long forest and river campaign, always seeing the seamy side of the war and lacking the frequent changes of scenery and the blood-stirring combats which the doughboy encountered. It took strong qualities of heart and nerve to be a field hospital man, or an ambulance or medical man.



XXVII

SIGNAL PLATOON WINS COMMENDATION

Learning Wireless In A Few Weeks—Sterling Work Of Field Buzzers—With Assaulting Columns—Wires Repaired Under Shell Fire—General Ironside's Commendatory Official Citation.

In the North Russian Expedition the doughboy had to learn to do most anything that was needful. A sergeant, two corporals and four men of the Headquarters Company Signal Platoon actually in four months time mastered the mysteries of wireless telegraphy. This is usually a year's course in any technical school. But these men were forced by necessity to learn how to receive and to send messages in a few weeks' time.

They were trained at first for a few days at Tundra, the wireless station used by the British and French for intercepting messages. Later at Obozerskaya and at Verst 455 they gained experience that made them expert in picking messages out of the air. At one time the writer was shown a message which was intercepted passing from London to Bagdad. It was no uncommon thing for a doughboy to intercept messages from Egypt or Mesopotamia and other parts of the Mediterranean world, from Red Moscow, Socialist Berlin, starving Vienna and from London.

At one period in the spring defensive of the Archangel-Vologda Railroad, this American wireless crew was the sole reliance of the force, as the Obozerskaya station went out of order for a time, and the various points, Onega, Seletskoe and Archangel were kept in communication by this small unit at Verst 455. "H" Company men will recall that out of the blue sky from the east one day came a message from Major Nichols asking if their gallant leader, Phillips, had any show of recovering from the Bolo bullet in his lung. The message sent back was hopeful.

The record of the signal platoon under Lieutenant Anselmi, of Detroit, shows also that several of these signal men rendered great service as telegraphers. One of the pleasant duties of the doughboy buzzer operators one day in spring was to receive and transmit to Major J. Brooks Nichols the message from his royal majesty, King George of Great Britain and Ireland, that for gallantry in action he had been honored with election to the Distinguished Service Order, the D. S. O.

But it is the field telephone men who really made the signal platoon its great reputation. General Ironside's letter of merit is included later in this account. Here let us record in some detail the work of the American signal platoon.

Thirty men maintained nearly five hundred miles of circuit wire that lay on the surface of the ground and was subject in one-third of that space to constant disruption by enemy artillery fire and to constant menace from enemy patrols. The switchboard at Verst 455 was able to give thirty different connections at once at any time of day or night; at 448, ten; and at 445, six. This means a lot of work. The writer knows that the field telephone man is an important, in fact, invaluable adjunct to his forces whether in attack or in defense. For when the attack has been successful and the officer in command wishes to send information quickly to his superior officer asking for supplies of ammunition or for more forces or for artillery support to come up and assist in beating off the enemy counter-attack, the field telephone is indispensable. Hence the doughboy who carries his reels of wire along with the advancing skirmish line shares largely in the credit for doing a job up thoroughly. At the capture of Verst 445 the signal men were able to talk through to Major Nichols at 448 within four minutes of the time the doughboys' cheers of victory had sounded! And within fifteen minutes a line had been extended out to the farthest point where doughboys were digging in. There they were able later to give the artillery commander information of the effect of his shells long before he could get his own signals into place for observation. The British signals were good, but, as the writers well recall, it was especially assuring when the buzzer sounded to have an American doughboy at the other end say he would make the connection or take the message. They never fell down on the job.

General Ironside's commendation is not a bit too strong in its praises of the signal platoon. We are glad to make it a part of the history, and without doubt all the veterans who read these pages will join us in the little glow of pride with which we pass on this official citation of the Commanding General's, which is as follows:

"The Signal Platoon of the 339th Infantry, under Second Lieutenant Anselmi, has performed most excellent work on this front. Besides forming the Signals of the Railway Detachment, the platoon provided much needed reinforcements for other Allied Signal Units, and the readiness with which they have co-operated with the remainder of Allied Signal Service has been of the greatest service throughout.

"Please convey to all ranks of the platoon my appreciation of the services they have rendered."

(Signed) E. IRONSIDE, Major-General, Commander-in-Chief, Allied Forces, Archangel, Russia. G. H. Q., 23rd May, 1919.

And our American commander, General Richardson, in transmitting the letter through regimental headquarters said, "Their work adds further to the splendid record made by American Forces in Europe."



XXVIII

THE DOUGHBOY'S MONEY IN ARCHANGEL

Coin And Paper Of North Russia—Trafficking In Exchange—New Issue Of Paper Roubles—Trying To Peg Rouble Currency—Yanks Lose On Pay Checks Drawn On British Pound Sterling Banks.

The writer has a silver Nicholas the Fifth rouble. It is one of the very few silver coins seen in Russia. Here and there a soldier was able to get hold of silver and gold coins of the old days, but they were very scarce. The Russian peasant had to feel a high degree of affection for an American before he would part with one of his hoarded bits of real money.

Of paper money there was no end. When the Americans landed, they were met by small boys on the streets with sheets of Archangel state money under their arms. The perforations of some Kerenskies were not yet disturbed when great sheets and rolls of it were taken from the bodies of dead Bolos. Everybody had paper money. The Bolsheviki were counterfeiting the old Czar's paper money and the Kerensky money and issuing currency of their own. The Polar Bear and Walrus 25-rouble notes of Archangel and their sign-board size government gold bond notes were printed in England, as were later the other denominations of Archangel roubles, better known as British roubles. Needless to say there was a great speculation in money and exchange. Nickolai and Kerensky and Archangel and British guaranteed roubles tumbled over one another in the market. Of course trafficking in money was taboo but was brisk.

Early the Yankee got on to this game. His American money was even more prized than the English or French. The Russian gave him great rolls of roubles of various sorts for his greenbacks. Then he took the good money on the ships in the harbor and bought, usually through a sailor, boxes of candy and cartons of cigarettes and,—whisper this, bottles and cases of whiskey of which thousands of cases found their way to Archangel. The Russian then went out into the ill-controlled markets and side streets of Archangel and sold to his own countrymen these luxuries at prices that would make an American sugar profiteer or bootlegger seem a piker. Meanwhile the Yank or Tommie or Poilu went to his own commissary or to the British Navy and Army Canteen Bureau, "N. A. C. B." to the doughboy's memory, or to our various "Y" canteens and at a fixed rate of exchange—a rate fixed by the bankers in London—to use his roubles in buying things. He could also use the roubles in buying furs and skins of the Russians who still had the same saved from the looting Bolsheviki. At the rate first established, an English pound sterling was exchangeable for forty-eight roubles and vice versa. But on the illicit market, the pound would bring anywhere from eighty to one hundred and forty roubles. The American five dollar bill which was approximately worth fifty roubles in this "pegged" rouble money on the market when an American ship was in the harbor, would bring one hundred to one hundred and fifty roubles. No wonder the doughboy who was stationed around Archangel or Bakaritza found it possible to stretch his money a good way. Many a dollar of company fund was made to buy twice as much or more than it otherwise would have bought. And in passing, let it be remarked that the Yank who had access to N. A. C. B. and other canteen stores was not slow in joining the thrifty Russki in this trafficking game, illicit though it was. And truth to tell, many a case of British whiskey was stolen by Yank and Tommie and Russki and Poilu and sent rejoicing on its way through these devious underground channels of traffic. One American officer in responsible position had to suffer for it when he returned to the States. The doughboys and medics and engineers who were up there are still filled with mixed emotions on the subject, a mixture of indignation and admiration.

"Let him now who is guiltless throw the first stone."

Returning to the discussion of currency, let it be recorded that after the market was flooded with all sorts of money and after the ships stopped coming because of the great ice barrier, the money market became wilder than ever. Finally the London bankers who had been the victims of this speculation, decided upon a new issue of pegged currency. At forty to the pound the old roubles were called in. That is, every soldier who had forty-eight roubles could exchange them for forty new crisp and pretty roubles. Their beauty was marred by the rubber stamp which was put over the sign of old Nicholas' rule, which the thoughtless or tactless London money maker printed on the issue. The Russian would have none of this new money with that suggestion of restoration of Czar rule. Inconsistently enough they still prized the old Nickolai rouble notes as the very best paper currency in the land, and loud was the outcry at giving forty-eight Nickolais for forty English-printed and guaranteed roubles of their own new Archangel government.

To stimulate the retirement of all other forms of currency, which measure in a settled country would have been a sensible economic pressure, the Archangel government set a date when not forty-eight but fifty-six roubles might be exchanged for forty new roubles. Then a date for sixty-four, then for seventy-two and then eighty. Thus the skeptical peasant and the suspicious soldier saw his old roubles steadily decline in exchange value for the new roubles. Of course they had always grabbed all the counterfeit stuff and used it in exchange with no compunctions. That was the winning part of the game. Now they were pinched. It afforded some merriment to hear the outcries of some who had been making rolls of money in the trafficking.

At the same time there was real suffering on the part of peasants in far distant areas who could not get their currency up for exchange or for stamping and punching which itself was finally necessary to even get the eighty-forty rate. They felt mistreated. To their simple hearts and ignorant minds, it was nothing short of robbery by the distant London bankers. Soldiers on the far distant fronts were caught also in the currency reform. Some of the fault was neglect by their own American officers and some was indifference to the subject by those American officers at Archangel who were in position to know what was going to be the result of the attempt to peg the currency at a fixed rate.

An officer who was in Archangel during the summer on Graves Commission service after the American units had been withdrawn, reports that speculators for a song bought up great bales of the old Kerensky and Nickolai currency supposed to be cancelled, dead, defunct stuff, and when there was a considerable evacuation of central Russians who had been for months refugees in Archangel, this currency came out of hiding, and its traffickers realized a handsome profiteerski by selling it to the returning people at sixty to the pound sterling, for in interior Russia the old stuff was still in circulation. At any rate that was Shylokov's advertisement. During the summer, the money market, says Lieut. Primm, became a violent wonder. On one day a person could not obtain two hundred and fifty roubles for one hundred North Russian roubles and a day or two later he might be importuned to take three hundred old for one hundred new.

Neither the soldiers nor the Russians saw any justice in this flip-flopping of the currency market, to which of course they themselves were contributors. The thing they saw clearly was that when they had need of English credit (that is, checks) to send money to London banks or when they wanted to buy goods from England or America, then they could buy only with the new, the guaranteed rouble, which might be dear, even at one hundred and twenty-five to the pound sterling and was dearer of course in terms of old roubles, the more the demand was for the new roubles which were in the hands of speculators who manipulated the market as sweetly for themselves as the American profiteers with their oral and written advertisements manipulate our foodstuffs and goods for us. On the other hand, if the soldier or peasant or small merchant had dues coming to him in English money he then found them valued at forty to the pound sterling. This difference between eighty and one hundred and twenty-five he thought (naturally enough to his unsophisticated mind) was due to the vacillation in policy of enforcement of the pegged rate and prosecution of the traffickers.

However opinion may differ as to the blame for the inability to peg the exchange, we know it was a bonanza to the speculators. Ponzi ought to have been there to compete with the whiskered money sharks. And we know there were Americans as well as British, French, Russians and other nationals who were numbered among those speculators.

After all is said we must admit that the money situation was one that was exceedingly difficult to handle. It was infinitely worse in Bolshevikdom. The doughboy who used to find pads of undetached counterfeit Kerenskie on the dead Bolsheviks, can well believe that thirty dollars of good American chink one day in the Soviet part of Russia bought an American newspaper man one million paper roubles of the Lenine-Trotsky issue, and that before night, spending his money at the famine prices in the worthless paper, he was a dead-broke millionaire.

During the time American soldiers were in Russia they were paid in checks drawn on London. During the war, this was at the pegged rate ($4.76-1/4) which had been fixed by agreement between London and New York bankers to prevent violent fluctuations. But at the end of the war, after the Armistice, the peg was pulled and the natural course of the market sent the pound sterling steadily downward, as the American dollar rose in value as compared with other currencies of the world. To those who were dealing day by day this was all in the game of money exchange. But to the soldier in far-off North Russia who had months of pay coming to him when he left the forests of the Vaga and Onega this was a real financial hardship. Many a doughboy whose wife or mother was in need at home because of the rapidly mounting prices put up by the slackers in the shops and the slackers in the marts of trade, now saw his little pay check shrink up in exchange value. He felt that his superior officers in the war department had hardly looked after his interests as well as they might have done. Major Nichols did succeed at Brest in getting the old pegged rate for the men and officers, but many had already parted with the checks at heavy discount for fear that the nearer they got to the land for which they had been fighting, the more discount there would be on the pay checks with which their Quartermaster had paid them their pittances. Soldiers of the second detachment came on home with Colonel Stewart to Camp Custer and were obliged (most of them) to take their little $3.82 per pound sterling of the British pound sterling paid them by Quartermaster Major Ely in North Russia, at $4.76-1/4. Later, through the efforts of the late Congressman Nichols, many of those soldiers were reimbursed. Of course complete restitution would have been made by the war department if all the soldiers had sent their claims in. Hundreds of American veterans of the North Russian campaign lost ten to twenty per cent of their pay check's hard earned value.



XXIX

PROPAGANDA AND PROPAGANDA AND—

Propaganda Two-Edged Tool—From Crusaders To Carping Cynics—Be Warned— Afraid To Tell The Truth—Startling Stories Of Bolo Atrocities Published—Distortion Disgusts Brave Men—Wrong To Play On Race Prejudices—Our Own Government Missed Main Chance—Doughboy Beset By Active Enemy In Front And Plagued By Active Propaganda Of Hybrid Varieties—Sample Of Bolshevik Propaganda Used On Americans—Yanks Punched Holes In Red Propaganda—Propaganda To Doughboy Connotes Lies And Distortion And Concealment Of Truth.

"Over there, over there, the Yanks are coming," sang the soldiers in training camp as they changed from recruits into fighting units of the 85th Division at Battle Creek. And the morale of the 339th was evidenced, some thought, by the fervor with which the officers and men roared out their hate chorus, "Keep your head down, you dirty Hun. If you want to see your father in your Fatherland, Keep your head down, you dirty Hun." Maybe so, maybe not. Maybe morale is made of finer stuff than hate and bombast. Maybe idealism does enter into it. Of course there are reactionary periods in the history of a people when selfishness and narrowness and bigotry combine to cry down the expression of its idealism. Not in 1918.

No secret was made of the fact that the Americans went into the war with a fervor born of an aroused feeling of world-responsibility. We must do our part to save Christian civilization from the mad nationalism of the German people led by their diabolic Hohenzollern reigning family and war bureaucracy. Too much kultur would ruin the world. Germany must be whipped. We tingled with anticipation of our entrance to the trenches beside the bled-white France. We were going "Over There" in the spirit of crusaders.

What transformed a hesitating, reluctant, long-suffering people into crusaders? Propaganda. Press work. Five-minute men. Open and secret work. It was necessary to uncover and oppose the open and secret propaganda of paid agents of Germany, and woefully deluded German-Americans who toiled freely to help Kaiser Bill, as though to disprove the wisdom of the statement that no man can serve two masters. We beat their propaganda, uncovered the tracks of the Prussian beast in our midst, found out, we thought, the meaning of explosions and fires and other terrible accidents in our munition plants, and turned every community into vigilant searchers for evidences of German propaganda or deviltry of a destructive kind and we persecuted many an innocent man.

And now we sadly suspect that in fighting fire with fire, that is in fighting propaganda with propaganda, we descended by degrees to use the same despicable methods of distorting truth for the sake of influencing people to a certain desired end. England and France and all other countries had the same sad experience. Doubtless we could not very well avoid it. It is part of the hell of war to think about it now. Propaganda, fair one, you often turn out to be a dissipated hag, a camp follower.

Many years from now some calm historian going over the various Blue Books and White Books and Red Books, with their stories of the atrocities of the enemy, ad nauseam, will come upon the criminating Official Documents of various nations that sought to propagandize the world into trembling, cowering belief in a new dragon. Bolshevism with wide-spread sable wings, thrashing his spiny tail and snorting fire from his nostrils was volplaning upon the people of earth with open red mouth and cruel fangs and horrid maw down which he would gulp all the political, economic and religious liberties won from the centuries past. The dragon was about to devour civilization.

And the historian will shake his head sadly and say, "Too bad they fell for all that propaganda. Poor Germans. Poor Britishers. Poor Frenchmen. Poor Russians. Poor Americans. Too bad. What a mess that propaganda was. Propaganda and propaganda and—well, there are three kinds of propaganda just as there are three kinds of lies; lies and lies and d—- lies."

In this volume we are historically interested in the propaganda as it was presented and as it affected us in the campaign fighting the Bolsheviki in North Russia in 1918-19. We write this chapter with great hesitation and with consciousness that it is subject to error in investigation and sifting of evidences and subject to error of bias on the part of the writer. However, no attempt has been made to compel the parts of this volume to be consistent with one another. Facts have been stated and comments have been written as they occurred to the writers. If they were forced to be consistent with one another it would be using the method of the propagandizer. We prefer to appear inconsistent and possibly illogical rather than to hold back or frame anything to suit the general prejudices of the readers. Take this chapter then with fair warning.

Keenly disappointed we were to be told in England that we were not to join our American comrades who were starting "Fritz" backward in Northern France. We were to go to Archangel for guard duty. The expert propagandists in England were busy at once working upon the American soldiers going to North Russia. The bare truth of the matter would not be sufficient. Oh no! All the truth must not be told at once either. It's not done, you know. Certainly not. Soldiers and the soldiers' government might ask questions. British War Office experts must hand out the news to feed the troops. And they did.

Guard duty in Archangel, as we have seen, speedily became a fall offensive campaign under British military command. And right from the jump off at the Bolshevik rearguard forces, British propaganda began coming out. Does anyone recall a general order that came out from our American Commanding officer of the Expedition? Is there a veteran of the American Expeditionary force in North Russia who does not recall having read or hearing published the general orders of the British G. H. Q. referring to the objects of the expedition and to the character of the enemy, the Bolsheviki?

"The enemy. Bolsheviks. These are soldiers and sailors who, in the majority of cases are criminals," says General Poole's published order, "Their natural, vicious brutality enabled them to assume leadership. The Bolshevik is now fighting desperately, firstly, because the restoration of law and order means an end to his reign, and secondly, because he sees a rope round his neck for his past misdeeds if he is caught. Germans. The Bolsheviks have no capacity for organization but this is supplied by Germany and her lesser Allies. The Germans usually appear in Russian uniform and are impossible to distinguish." Why was that last sentence added? Sure enough we did not distinguish them, not enough to justify the propaganda.

Immediately upon arrival of the Americans in the Archangel area they had found the French soldiers wildly aflame with the idea that a man captured by the Bolsheviks was bound to suffer torture and mutilation. And one wicked day when the Reds were left in possession of the field the French soldiers came back reporting that they had mercifully put their mortally wounded men, those whom they could not carry away, out of danger of torture by the Red Guards by themselves ending their ebbing lives. Charge that sad episode up to propaganda. To be sure, we know that there were evidences in a few cases, of mutilation of our own American dead. But it was not one-tenth as prevalent a practice by the Bolos as charged, and as they became more disciplined, their warfare took on a character which will bear safe comparison with our own.

The writer remembers the sense of shame that seized him as he reluctantly read a general order to his troops, a British piece of propaganda, that recited gruesome atrocities by the Bolsheviks, a recital that was supposed to make the American soldiers both fear and hate the enemy. Brave men do not need to be fed such stuff. Distortion of facts only disgusts the man when he finally becomes undeceived.

"There seems to be among the troops a very indistinct idea of what we are fighting for here in North Russia." This is the opening statement of another one of General Poole's pieces of propaganda. "This can be explained in a very few words. We are up against Bolshevism, which means anarchy pure and simple." Yet in another statement he said: "The Bolshevik government is entirely in the hands of Germans who have backed this party against all others in Russia owing to the simplicity of maintaining anarchy in a totally disorganized country. Therefore we are opposed to the Bolshevik-cum-German party. In regard to other parties we express no criticism and will accept them as we find them provided they are for Russia and therefore for 'out with the Boche.' Briefly we do not meddle in internal affairs. It must be realized that we are not invaders but guests and that we have not any intention of attempting to occupy any Russian territory."

That was not enough. Distortion must be added. "The power is in the hands of a few men, mostly Jews" (an appeal to race hatred), "who have succeeded in bringing the country to such a state that order is non-existent. The posts and railways do not run properly, every man who wants something that some one else has got, just kills his opponent only to be killed himself when the next man comes along. Human life is not safe, you can buy justice at so much for each object. Prices of necessities have so risen that nothing is procurable. In fact the man with a gun is cock of the walk provided he does not meet another man who is a better shot."

Was not that fine stuff? Of course there were elements of truth in it. It would not have been propaganda unless it had some. But its falsities of statement became known later and the soldiers bitterly resented the attempt to propagandize them.

The effect of this line of propaganda was at last made the subject of an informal protest by Major J. Brooks Nichols, one of our most influential and level-headed American officers, in a letter to General Ironside, whose sympathetic letter of reply did credit to his respect for other brave men and credit to his judgment. He ordered that the propaganda should not be further circulated among the American soldiers. It must be admitted that the French soldiers also suffered revulsion of feeling when the facts became better known. The British War Office methods of stimulating enthusiasm in the campaign against the Bolsheviki was a miserable failure. Distortion and deception will fail in the end. You can't fool all the soldiers all the while. Truth will always win in the end. The soldier has right to it. He fights for truth; he should have its help.

Our own military and government authorities missed the main chance to help the soldiers in North Russia and gain their most loyal service in the expedition. Truth, not silence with its suspected acquiescence with British propaganda and methods of dealing with Russians; truth not rumors, truth, was needed; not vague promises, but truth.

In transmitting to us the Thanksgiving Day Proclamation, our American diplomatic representative in North Russia, Mr. Dewitt Poole, published to the troops the following: "But so great a struggle cannot end so abruptly. In the West the work of occupying German territory continues. In the East German intrigue has delivered large portions of Russia into unfriendly and undemocratic hands. The President has given our pledge of friendship to Russia and will point the way to its fulfillment. Confident in his leadership the American troops and officials in Northern Russia will hold to their task to the end." This was a statement made by our American Charge d' Affairs after the Armistice, it will be noted.

The New Year's editorial in The Sentinel, our weekly paper, says, in part: "We who are here in North Russia constitute concrete evidence that there is something real and vital behind the words of President Wilson and other allied statesmen who have pledged that 'we shall stand by Russia.' Few of us, particularly few Americans, realize the debt which the whole world owes to Russia for her part in this four years struggle against German junkerism. Few of us now realize the significance that will accrue as the years go by to the presence of allied soldiers in Russia during this period of her greatest suffering. The battle for world peace, for democracy, for free representative government, has not yet been fought to a finish in Russia."

With the sentiment of those two expressions, the American soldier might well be in accord. But he was dubious about the fighting; he was learning things about the Bolsheviks; he was hoping for statement of purposes by his government. But as the weeks dragged by he did not get the truth from his own government. Neither from Colonel Stewart, military head of the expedition, nor from the diplomatic and other United States' agencies who were in Archangel, did he get satisfying facts. They allowed him to be propagandized, instead, both by the British press and news despatches and by the American press and political partisanships of various shades of color that came freely into North Russia to plague the already over-propagandized soldier.

Of the Bolshevik propaganda mention has been made in one or two other connections. We may add that the Bolos must have known something of our unwarlike and dissatisfied state of mind, for they left bundles of propaganda along the patrol paths, some of it in undecipherable characters of the Russian alphabet; but there was a publication in English, The Call, composed in Moscow by a Bolshevik from Milwaukee or Seattle or some other well known Soviet center on the home shore of the Atlantic.

These are some of the extracts. The reader may judge for himself:

"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 principle reason the British-American financiers have sent you to fight us for, is because we were sensible enough to repudiate the war debts of the bloody, corrupt old Czar?

"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 commission of your common soldiers to meet our own workingmen, and find out yourselves what we stand for."

All of which sounds like the peroration of an eloquent address at a meeting of America's own I. W. W. in solemn conclave assembled. Needless to say this was not taken seriously. Soldiers were quick to punch holes in any propaganda, or at any rate if they could not discern its falsities, could clench their fists at those whom they believed to be seeking to "work them." Fair words and explosive bullets did not match any more than "guard duty" and "offensive movements" matched.

Lt. Costello, in his volume, "Why Did We Go To Russia.", says: "The preponderant reason why Americans would never be swayed by this propaganda drive, lay in their hatred of laziness and their love of industry. If the Bolsheviki were wasting their time, however, in their propaganda efforts directed at effects in the field, it must be a source of great comfort to Lenin and Trotsky, Tchitcherin and Peters and others of their ilk, to know that their able, and in some case, unwitting allies in America, who condone Bolshevist atrocities, apologize for Soviet shortcomings, appear before Congressional committees and other agencies and contribute weak attempts at defense of this Red curse are all serving them so well."

"Seeing red," we see Red in many things that are really harmless. In Russia, as in America, many false accusations and false assumptions are made. We now know that of certainty the Bolshevik, or Communistic party of Russia was aided by like-minded people in America and vice versa, but we became rather hysterical in 1919 over those I.W.W.-Red outbursts, and very nearly let the conflict between Red propaganda and anti-Red propaganda upset our best traditions of toleration, of free speech, and of free press. Now we are seeing more clearly. Justice and toleration and real information are desired. Propaganda to the American people is becoming as detested as it was to the soldiers. Experience of the veterans of the North Russian campaign has taught them the foolishness of propaganda and the wisdom of truth-telling. The Germans, the Bolsheviks, the British War Office, Our War Department and self-seeking individuals who passed out propaganda, failed miserably in the end.



XXX

REAL FACTS ABOUT ALLEGED MUTINY

Mail Bags And Morale—Imaginative Scoop Reporters And Alarmists—Few Men Lost Heads Or Hearts—Colonel Stewart Cables To Allay Needless Fears—But War Department Had Lost Confidence Of People—Too Bad Mutiny Allegations Got Started—Maliciously Utilized—Officially Investigated And Denied—Secretary Baker's Letter Here Included—Facts Which Afforded Flimsy Foundation Here Related—Alleged Mutinous Company Next Day Gallantly Fighting—Harsh Term Mutiny Not Applied By Unbiased Judges.

Four weeks to nine or twelve weeks elapsed between mailing and receiving. It is known that both ignorance and indifference were contributing causes. We know there is in existence a file of courteous correspondence between American and British G. H. Q. over some bags of American mail that was left lying for a time at Murmansk when it might just as well have been forwarded to Archangel for there were no Americans at that time on the Murmansk.

Many slips between the arrival of mail at Archangel and its distribution to the troops. How indignant a line officer at the front was one day to hear a visitor from the American G. H. Q. say that he had forgotten to bring the mail bags down on his train. Sometimes delivery by airplane resulted in dropping the sacks in the deep woods to be object of curiosity only to foxes and wolves and white-breasted crows, but of no comfort to the lonesome, disappointed soldiers.

Ships foundered off the coast of Norway with tons of mail. Sleds in the winter were captured by the Bolos on the lines of communication. These troubles in getting mail into Russia led the soldiers to think that there might be equal difficulty in their letters reaching home. And it certainly looked that way when cablegrams began insistently inquiring for many and many a soldier whose letters had either not been written, or destroyed by the censor, or lost in transit.

And that leads to the discussion of what were to the soldier rather terrifying rules of censorship. Intended to contribute to his safety and to the comfort and peace of mind of his home folks the way in which the rules were administered worked on the minds of the soldiers. Let it be said right here that the American soldier heartily complied in most cases with the rules. He did not try to break the rules about giving information that might be of value to the enemy. And when during the winter there began to come into North Russia clippings from American and British newspapers which bore more or less very accurate and descriptive accounts of the locations and operations, even down to the strategy, of the various scattered units, they wondered why they were not permitted after the Armistice especially, to write such things home.

And if as happened far too frequently, a man's batch of ancient letters that came after weeks of waiting, contained a brace of scented but whining epistles from the girl he had left behind him and perhaps a third one from a man friend who told how that same girl was running about with a slacker who had a fifteen-dollar a day job, the man had to be a jewel and a philosopher not to become bitter. And a bitter man deteriorates as a soldier.

To the credit of our veterans who were in North Russia let it be said that comparatively very few of them wrote sob-stuff home. They knew it was hard enough for the folks anyway, and it did themselves no good either. The imaginative "Scoops" among the cub reporters and the violently inflamed imaginations and utterances of partisan politicians seeking to puff their political sails with stories of hardships of our men in North Russia, all these and many other very well-meaning people were doing much to aggravate the fears and sufferings of the people at home. Many a doughboy at the front sighed wearily and shook his head doubtfully over the mess of sob-stuff that came uncensored from the States. He sent costly cablegrams to his loved ones at home to assure them that he was safe and not "sleeping in water forty degrees below zero" and so forth.