FIGHTING WITHOUT A WAR: AN ACCOUNT OF MILITARY INTERVENTION IN NORTH RUSSIA
_An Account of Military Intervention
in North Russia_
BY
RALPH ALBERTSON
ILLUSTRATED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
NEW YORK
HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE
1920
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY
HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE, INC.
THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY
RAHWAY, N. J.
TO THE AMERICAN, BRITISH AND
CANADIAN MEN WHO LAID DOWN
THEIR LIVES IN NORTH RUSSIA THIS
BOOK IS REVERENTLY DEDICATED
*PREFACE*
The writer of this book went to North Russia as a Y.M.C.A. secretary
assigned to work with the army, landing at Murmansk just before
Thanksgiving, 1918. I reached Archangel December first and was sent at
once to Shenkursk and Ustpadenga, the southernmost points of the
expedition. I was in charge of the Y.M.C.A. work for the Vaga column
until June first when I went to Yemetskoye and later to Archangel with
the departing American troops. As the British Y.M.C.A. was not prepared
to take over all the work at that time several Americans remained with
the British and Russian armies. As one of these I returned south to
Berezniki July first. On August first I was made responsible for the
evacuation of the entire Allied Y.M.C.A. personnel, supplies, and
equipment from the forward Dvina and Vaga areas. This enabled me to be
the last American to leave. I returned to Archangel August thirtieth
and sailed with the last of the embassies, consulates, military
missions, etc., on September second.
This book does not assume to tell the whole story of that expedition. I
did not see all of it. No man did. In addition to what I saw, however,
I had the advantage of meeting constantly men who had seen and been in
the various other fights and locations. Under the overstimulating
circumstances of army life the very air seems full of wild rumors. This
was particularly true in the isolations of the Russian fighting. I have
felt the necessity therefore of exercising great care not to accept as
true uncorroborated army rumors. The matters of chief interest in this
book, moreover, are matters of my own personal observation and
knowledge.
The various censorships imposed by the American and British governments
have prevented the publication of so much important and significant news
of this expedition that no number of books that may be published now
could cover the whole story. Most of it, moreover, has ceased to be
news. However, those censorships accompanied by the official propaganda
have left the country in a state of gross misinformation regarding the
expedition. Mistakes were made, abuses suffered, heroisms performed, and
tragedies enacted which it is the right of the American and British
people to know about. In respect of the mistakes and abuses the
publication of this account has devolved upon me as a not altogether
pleasant duty.
While I have been compelled to criticize the attitude and actions of
British officers as a class in order to tell the truth of what happened
in North Russia I should regret to have my words taken as applying
equally to all of them. I wish also to say that some who fall most
squarely under the criticisms of this book were among my warmest friends
and I cherish for them a genuine personal regard. To certain British
and Canadian officers I undoubtedly owe my life and they gave me
(especially the Canadians) the utmost coöperation and courtesy
throughout the entire campaign.
As to the Yanks, God bless them, it wasn't their show.
E.A.
*CONTENTS*
CHAPTER
I. THE EXPEDITION
II. THE ARCHANGEL GOVERNMENT
III. MANAGEMENT
IV. THE FALL CAMPAIGN
V. THE WINTER CAMPAIGN
VI. KITSA
VII. FIGHTING WITHOUT A FLAG
VIII. "AMERICA DOBRA"
IX. AMERICA EXIT
X. THE NEW BRITISH ARMY
XI. THE NEW RUSSIAN ARMY
XII. MAKING BOLSHEVIKI
XIII. THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN
XIV. ATROCITIES
XV. THE MUTINIES
XVI. THE DÉBÂCLE
XVII. MILITARY INTERVENTION FINANCE
XVIII. PROPAGANDA
XIX. CONCERNING MILITARY INTERVENTION
XX. CONCERNING RUSSIAN PEASANTS
*ILLUSTRATIONS*
Map showing area of the Archangel Campaign . . . _Frontispiece_
Archangel has many excellent and substantial buildings
The Archangel water-front has miles of good docking facilities
The American engineers built scores of block houses like this
This was our only possible communication with Archangel, 300 miles to
the north
The "Y" was always on the job
These Canadians fought in France before they went to Russia
The Canadian artillery got there every time
This Russian gun crew on the railroad front enjoys warmer weather
The church at Yemetskoye is visible for many miles up the Dvina
Shenkursk is a quiet and romantic spot on the Vaga River
The new British army entered Archangel in June with great pomp and
ceremony
The Duma building at Archangel was decorated in honor of the new army
that came to finish the Bolsheviki
Canadian soldiers with two captives, having changed caps
Bringing Bolsheviki prisoners into Malobereznik
The women work in the fields with the men
Russians love their homes and their villages devotedly
*FIGHTING WITHOUT A WAR*
*I*
*THE EXPEDITION*
The North Russian Expeditionary Force consisted of men from America,
England, Canada, France, Italy, and Serbia. England sent the largest
number of men, America the second largest, the other countries being
represented by only a few companies each.
The expedition was under the command of the British War Office, which
sent out a large number of unattached British officers to take charge of
the Russian armies that were to be formed and to supervise all American
and other officers that had been attached to the expedition.
The first landing of troops of the North Russian Expeditionary Force was
in August, 1918. The German armistice was signed November 11. Fighting
continued all winter. The American troops were withdrawn in June, 1919.
A much larger British army landed in June. Our Russian conscripts
mutinied against the English in July, making it impossible for the
English to remain. The last man of the North Russian Expeditionary
Force was withdrawn in September, 1919. The "washout" was complete.
England had spent five hundred million dollars and lost thousands of
men. The cost to America and the other countries had been less in men
and money, but considerable in other ways. The cost to Russia in every
way had been incalculable.
When this expedition was sent to Russia the Allies were at war with
Germany. Russia was not. She had signed the Brest-Litovsk treaty. We
did not declare war on Russia, nor on any section of Russians. We went,
it was reasonable to suppose, to guard the military stores we had
shipped to Archangel and save them from falling into German hands, and
to prevent the Germans from establishing a submarine base at Murmansk.
When we got there, however, the Bolshevik Russians, viewing the
expedition as one of enmity to them, had removed practically all of the
millions of dollars' worth of stores to points far south of Archangel
and had themselves left for points of from one to two hundred miles
south. We pursued them and war began,--war with the de facto government
of Russia, whom indeed we had not recognized and against whom we had
made no declaration.
There was no war technically speaking in North Russia. There surely was
no legal basis of war. But there was plenty of fighting. News of this
fighting does not seem to have reached America very freely. The double
English and American censorship was very effective.
First we had declared we would not engage in a military intervention in
Russia, then having gotten into it we declared we were not doing it,
then we depended on the censorship.
No mention was made of this expedition in the armistice of November.
Hence it had in some subtle way ceased to be a part of our war against
Germany. It had become a new war, a war against Bolshevik Russia, an
unlegalized war, and this it continued to be as long as the expedition
lasted. Yet no declaration was forthcoming, either of war or of peace.
Particularly wanting was a declaration of purpose. Weary months of
stubborn fighting for our men were unrelieved by any single word of
definition of the fight from their government.
There consequently was antagonism to the campaign on the part of the
soldiers. I do not say loss of morale, because the term would be
misunderstood. Our men fought. Our infantry never lost a foot of
ground. But they hated the fight, they resented fighting without a
cause.
I made a trip in December, speaking to the men in their billets and the
Y.M.C.A. huts over a stretch of five hundred versts. Everywhere, on
every occasion, I was asked persistently and importunately, "What are we
here for?"
"The armistice is signed. Why are we fighting?"
"Did they forget about us in Paris?"
"We don't want Russia. What have we against the Bolsheviki?"
Of course I tried to answer these questions, but I found it easier to
convince myself than I did to convince these men. They were not
convinced that I knew. The American and Canadian troops were
particularly outspoken in their resentment at being at war in a futile
fight against nobody and for nothing in particular when the rest of the
world had stopped fighting.
A real cause of this grand débâcle therefore was the silence of our
governments. I could not answer their questions. Nobody who came to
them could answer their questions. Their governments would not.
*II*
*THE ARCHANGEL GOVERNMENT*
When our governments sent out this expedition the government of
Archangel as of all Russia was Bolshevik. It was not a strong
government, that is, it did not have a strong and dependable army and
navy. It had not been regularly instituted by the people, nor had it
been recognized by other governments than those with whom we were at
war. We had no dealings with it, except the undeclared war of this
expedition. We negotiated with certain individual Russians in London,
took them to Archangel with us, and there set up a government to our own
taste.
[Illustration: Archangel has many excellent and substantial buildings.
The Archangel water-front has miles of good docking facilities.]
This was a military job. Even the military, however, find it necessary
to consider popular opinion to some extent. So this new government was
composed of democratic men. Tschaikowsky was made President. The people
knew him and trusted him. His government failed to realize at first
that it was only the creature of foreign military authority and began to
function sincerely. It was kidnaped for discipline and put on an island
for a few days of meditation. The allied military did not come to
Archangel to set up a pure democracy nor to encourage socialism nor to
listen to theories. They came to fight the plans of Germany, to fight
the Bolsheviki, to guard stores, to teach Russia to fight. Beyond this
the military mind goeth not. So the venerable Tschaikowsky was
gradually put aside and ignored and before long sent to London on an
important mission, never to return, but still a valuable figurehead,
while a Russian military government grew up under the aegis of the
British army, composed of monarchists and military men of the old
school. The head of this government was General Miller (Mueller) a
militarist and monarchist who is without popular Russian support and
whose position is entirely due to his standing with the British military
establishment.
*III*
*MANAGEMENT*
It was a British show. The British were in absolute command. Whole
shiploads of British officers were sent there to perform all possible
functions of management and to cover all possible needs. The Americans,
Russians, French, Italians, and Serbians all obeyed the British
officers, and found British officers duplicating their own at every
juncture. Even at that there was a surplus, and I have had several of
them, from a colonel down, tell me that they were hanging around
Archangel waiting for something to do.
It was British responsibility to decide where we should stand, when we
should move, and who should do what. They never neglected this
responsibility in any detail. If they could avoid it, they never
delegated any detail of authority to any officer of any other
nationality. If they took counsel with their associates of other
nationalities it was never heard of in the ranks. I have heard an
American officer of high rank speak very bitterly of the fact that the
British never consulted him except to give him orders, and made him feel
quite useless.
*IV*
*THE FALL CAMPAIGN*
As our ships rode into the mouth of the Dvina River with the first
troops of the expedition, and the last train pulled out of Archangel
Preestyn bearing the last of the Bolsheviki away to the south, the
people of Archangel came out to the river bank and the docks to see the
incoming fleet and to welcome their deliverers from Bolshevist
proletariat tyranny and prolonged political and industrial unrest. The
Russians were tired of war, and as they lined up on the river banks in
front of the hundreds of peasant villages bordering a thousand versts of
rivers to express their welcome it was Peace and Prosperity that they
thought they were welcoming.
In fact, however, it was war, war such as that part of Russia had never
known before, and most expensive war.
The expedition had been sent "to guard stores at Archangel." Since
these stores had been taken by those whom we assumed to be friends of
Germany we must pursue them. We did. We took guns along. We found
them, with guns also, at several points about a hundred miles from the
city. Their forces were weak. So were ours. But we drove them, or
they led us, down the Murmansk railroad past Kem, down the Vologda
railroad beyond Obozerskaya, up the Onega River to Chekuevo, up the
Pinega River, up the Emtza River, up the Dvina River past Toulgas, and
up the Vaga River to Ustpadenga.
We did not capture our enemy nor the stores we had come to guard. The
early Russian winter came and found us thrown out to seven points in a
form that was like a seven-fingered hand with one finger three hundred
miles long and with no lateral communication between the fingers. In
driving these lines out there was some fighting, mostly of a guerrilla
type. We lost a number of men, but our casualties were comparatively
small. We had been on the offensive and had followed lines of not very
great resistance. The positions in which winter found us may not have
been planned by the Bolsheviki, but I doubt if any English record exists
of such a plan or if any officer will confess to having made such a
plan. We just happened to be there. We were scattered as far as
possible. Each position was practically isolated from all the others.
Our lines of communication were weak and inefficient. The only
protection to our flanks and our rears was the hoped-for snow which came
early and abundantly.
*V*
*THE WINTER CAMPAIGN*
The winter was spent on the defensive. The Bolsheviki at first
attempted to cut us off at Yemetskoye by using his excellent
communication on the Vologda railroad and attacked Kodish and Shredn
Makrenga. He was held here by the Americans and Canadians, who did not
know when they were defeated and who now fully realized the desperate
character of the fight that they were launched upon. He also attacked
on the Murmansk railroad, where he was met by seasoned Serbians against
whom he shattered himself in vain. He attacked at Pinega and at
Chekuevo also without success. We were fighting at Toulgas on Armistice
Day, and with Kotlas as his base the Bolshevik managed to keep up his
attack here practically all winter while Co. B, 339th Infantry, U.S.A.,
took the brunt of the work of holding him off.
[Illustration: The American Engineers built scores of block houses like
this.
This was our only possible communication with Archangel, 300 miles to
the north.]
The most serious fighting of the winter, however, was on the Vaga River.
Our forward position at Ustpadenga was held by one company of American
infantry, one platoon of American engineers, three eighteen-pounder guns
manned by Canadians, and occasional units of Russian conscripts. The
position had no peculiar advantages, and all the disadvantages of
isolation and exposure that could make it a bad choice. It is doubtful
whether it had been chosen. We got there and we stayed there. We were
there because we were there. So we entrenched and built block houses
and strung wire and chopped away a clearing a few hundred feet from our
billets and laid in such stores and ammunition as a few ponies could
pull down, and waited. This was twenty-seven versts south of Shenkursk,
and Shenkursk was one hundred versts south of Bereznik, and Bereznik was
three hundred versts south of Archangel.
Shenkursk was our advanced base. Here we had one company of American
infantry, one platoon of American engineers, one section of Canadian
artillery, American headquarters for 1st battalion, 339th, British
headquarters for the Vaga column with all the attendant service units,
an American hospital, and miscellaneous units of Russians numbering
about a thousand, poorly organized, badly officered, and of doubtful
morale. Shenkursk is the second largest city in the Archangel
government, having a normal population of about three thousand people, a
cathedral, a monastery with two churches, and three other churches. It
was something of an educational center and summer resort. We found a
number of Petrograd and Moscow people here whose summer vacations had
been prolonged by the exigencies of Russian politics. There were many
excellent houses here, some mansions, some interesting people, a most
comfortable place to spend the winter.
Here we fortified, quite thoroughly, better perhaps than anywhere else
in North Russia. To be sure we were outflanked by Kodema, a Bolshevik
village on our left and Tarniya, a Bolshevik village on our right, a
little to the rear. But otherwise we were quite comfortable. We made
several attacks on these villages, but always found it necessary to
retire.
On January 19, 1919, the big fight began. The Bolsheviki five thousand
strong attacked Ustpadenga. They had three or four times as many guns
as we had, including some long-range artillery that was far beyond the
reach of our guns. They had perfect observation on our positions and
telephone wires clear around to our rear. They picked off every billet,
up one side of the street and down the other. We had no secrets. And
their infantry came up in excellent form and spirit, covered with
perfect white camouflage and supported with machine-guns and pompoms.
Our men drove them back and held them off for days until the British
command ordered them to fall back to Shenkursk. One platoon of forty
men had thirty-two casualties, and every man in that small force had to
do the work of ten men throughout that terrible week. Fighting all the
way back, Company A, 339th American Infantry, and the Center Section
38th Battery, Canadian Field Artillery, dragged themselves minus two
guns into Shenkursk on the night of the 25th. During that day Shenkursk
had been bombarded from four sides and we knew that we were completely
surrounded, although no Bolshevik infantry had attacked here. There
were no reinforcements to be had. Some of our Russian conscripts had
gone over to the enemy. There was no hope of relief from the north in
case we should be besieged. There was nothing to prevent his big guns
reducing Shenkursk to ruins. We had Company C here as well as Company A
and felt confident of our ability to hold off the Bolshevik infantry in
any numbers, but his artillery had us beaten, because outranged, from
the start.
So it was decided to evacuate that night by an unused road that we hoped
the Bolsheviki had overlooked. By very clever and efficient work on the
part of the British command the evacuation of Shenkursk was successfully
carried out without the loss of a man, and we were f