Russian Sideshow

by Robert L Willett

  Stewart’s report on March 12 closed that chapter of the AEFNR: “Trench mortar platoon carried out usual routine without casualties until March 11 when the platoon was relieved by Russian troops and left for rest at Archangel leaving no American troops on this front.”54

  There are no further references to the Seletskoye/Kodish front in American reports.

  While the railroad front was concentrating on the narrow confines of the double track and its two protecting fronts were fulfilling their missions, the other major force, the Dvina River Force, was finding its path to Kotlas blocked by increasing numbers of Red troops.

  8

  The Dvina Front

  March 4, 1919—Drew up Resulution to request reason Why We are fighting Boloes and Why We haven’t any Big Guns and Why the English run us and Why we haven’t enough to eat and Why our men can’t get proper medical and mail.

  —Sgt. Silver Parrish

  THE Dvina River front was one of the major fronts devised by Gen. F. C. Poole. It was his plan to take his few troops up the Dvina River as far as Kotlas, then at Viatka to connect with the Czech troops, who supposedly would be routed through to Archangel.1 Early on, General Poole wrote of his goal:

  I hope with this force I may be able to bring off a coup which will sink or capture the enemy [river] fleet annihilate the force and capture the guns. If I can bring this off successfully at an early date I do not think I shall meet with any more serious opposition before reaching Kotlas which I am reckoning on being able to occupy by September 20th and push on toward Viatka during the winter.2

  It would cost a number of Allied lives to realize the errors in that plan. As late as July 1919, that same proposal was again put forth by Poole’s successor, General Ironside, but with requests for seasoned troops, adequate gunboat support, and other qualifications.

  It all began with great expectations. The Bolsheviks had quickly departed Archangel as the Allied invaders swept in with their fleet covered by seaplanes, appearing to be a powerful fleet. With the American sailors, some Polish troops, and the Royal Scots chasing the enemy up the river with little opposition, and another of Poole’s task forces headed south on the railroad, there was reason for optimism. Force B was the first to realize that Bolos could fight; it was virtually destroyed trying to cut off the Reds near Obozerskaya. By early September 1918, the Allies had occupied both Bereznik on the Dvina River and Obozerskaya on the railroad. But gradually the Reds discovered that the invaders were only a small expedition, not nearly sufficient to make any incursion into the vast interior of Russia.

  As the First Battalion lay on their Nagoya bunks in the harbor near Archangel, they knew nothing of the Dvina Force or the role they themselves would play. On September 7, they debarked at the Bakharitza dock across the river from Archangel and headed straight for a fleet of coal-carrying barges. These clumsy, filthy, uncomfortable conveyances were to be their home for the next five days. There were many concerns as they filed off the ship and loaded onto their transports. One sergeant expressed his thoughts:

  On a coal barge going up Dvina River to face many hardships & trying times in pursuit of the Bolo as they are called. But as I know beter they are working men trying to through off the yoke of Capitalism & gain for their selves and family nessicaties of life & a few pleasures.3

  On the barges, the sick mingled with the well, and the flu continued to riddle the ranks. On September 8, the little convoy stopped by the riverbank to bury one of the flu victims, Pvt. Joseph Gresser, Company C. Another private from the same company wrote, “Today another man died named Dresser [sic] from Wyandotte, Michigan. He was on guard and told the corporal he was sick but was not relieved.”4 Another diary entry notes, “Man from Company C [Private Gresser] dies on barge. Left in improvised coffin on open front of barge. Blood from underneath coffin trickles across floor of barge while we eat our hard tack and black tea.”5

  The next day Sgt. Henry Gariepy from Company C succumbed and was buried in the little riverside village of Armorge on September 11.6 Still on the barges, Pvt. Carl Jordan of Company B died quietly, and a military funeral was held over another riverside grave. Finally, on September 12, the string of barges arrived at Bereznik at the junction of the Vaga and Dvina Rivers, more than 150 miles from Archangel. Death had taken one more on the barge, Pvt. John T. Westerhof of Company B; many others would join him in the little cemetery near the Bereznik church.

  Poole decided that Bereznik would be his supply base as he moved his eight-hundred-man force farther up the river: Royal Scots, Russians, Serbs, Poles, and Americans were all poised to move south. Bereznik was a more prosperous city than Archangel, and there was evidence of some cultural activities. One of the late tsar’s hunting lodges was located there, which had attracted some of the Royalist elite. Shortly after Company A set up camp, the men were awakened by gunfire. The Scots had spotted a boat coming up river and waded out to greet it; however, it held Bolos instead of Scots. Three Scots were picked up by the boat and stripped of weapons and clothes, then turned loose. When the Scots got about fifty yards from the boat, the Red sailors opened fire, killing two and wounding one.7 The doughboys, watching the affair, anxious to get their first taste of combat, immediately opened fire on the riverboat. The gunboat then moved out of range and began shelling the shore. At that point, a British patrol boat rounded the bend and, with three shells, set the Red boat on fire.

  The Royal Scots, mostly category B1 men unfit for field duty, performed well throughout their stay in North Russia. On the Dvina front, they were assigned the east side of the riverbank, with the Americans on the west. In September the Scots moved rapidly through the towns of Pless, Turgomin, and Topsa and got as far as Nizhni-Tiomski, even farther upriver than the Americans from B, C, and D companies.

  The conditions on both sides of the river were miserable: swamp and forests, few houses of any kind between villages, and winter fast approaching. Leaving Company A in Bereznik, the rest of the battalion moved farther south on September 15, up the Dvina River to Chamova, replacing some Royal Scots.

  On September 18, two platoons of Company A, left at Bereznik, marched along the scenic Vaga River to Shenkursk, joining thirty Russians of the SBAL already in the village. Company A was to be the vanguard of the second river front, the Vaga front, moving almost due south along the river. Their units would establish outposts farther from Archangel than any other Allied post during the entire expedition.

  Meanwhile, Companies B, C, and D continued south on the west bank of the Dvina, and on September 18, approached the village of Seltso. So far, the Bolsheviks had just kept retreating, giving the Yanks a false sense of superiority. The Bolos decided Seltso was the place to stop their retreat.

  The Dvina River in that area is a sprawling, slow-moving river that overflows its ill-defined banks on many of its courses. Consequently, flooding leaves swamp and marsh for a considerable distance inland from the river. Such was the case with Seltso, a village on the river virtually surrounded by waist-high water. On September 19, Company D easily took the village of Yakovslevskaya, one mile north of Seltso, separated from it by a mile of open swamp. They moved slowly through the muck and water toward Seltso in a skirmish line, getting only part way across an open field before they were stopped by a hail of Soviet gunfire. They dug in as best they could, waiting for darkness, and for their battalion commander, Maj. James Corbley (later lieutenant colonel), to give them directions. He had been held up by Bolo artillery as he helped push forward the guns of the Russian artillerists. Fortunately for the battalion, the artillery was on the way, while the men, weary and soaking wet, tried to keep from slipping into the swamp waters as they endured the night of September 19 with no supporting artillery. During the night Companies B and C were brought up to dig in and pass the wet and rainy night in the woods on the right flank.

  On September 20, Major Corbley joined them, bringing Russian artillery that had been mired in hub-deep mud, delaying its arrival. The newly arrived guns softened
up the town and intimidated the Red boats that had been shelling the Allies. Then Corbley ordered Company B’s Lt. Walter Dressing with Sgt. Simon Davis’s squad to scout the area. They came upon Bolo trenches and were scattered by Soviet fire. On this patrol, Cpl. Herbert Schroeder disappeared. At noon, another advance was ordered, partly to escape the steady Red artillery fire that plagued the dug-in troops. Corbley sent two platoons on the assault, but after three men were killed and eight men wounded, the attack bogged down.

  Finally, Corbley ordered a barrage on the town by the Allied Russian artillery, which was highly effective; the three companies advanced without further loss, taking the town about 5:00 P.M.8 The twoday fight, however, was costly: Pvt. John Van Herwynen of Company D was killed, and Cpl. Morris Foley, Pvt. John Van Der Meer, and Pvt. Peter Kudzba, all of Company B, died there too.9 Lt. Albert Smith was wounded, shot in the side, and Archie Perry was hit at the same time.10

  Before the attack, after their soggy night, Corporal Foley shared breakfast, a British can of bully beef, with his buddy Bill Henkelman. Henkelman said to Foley, “Hey, Morris, let’s save some for after awhile.” Foley’s response was prophetic as he ate the last of the beef: “There might not be no after while.”11 Unfortunately, Foley was right.

  The Dvina casualties came just four days after the Railroad Force had its first battle deaths. Pvt. Edwin Arkins wrote in his journal, “The sight of that first casualty I’ll never forget: the lower part of the face a bloody mass; the eyelids swollen and blue and the head resting on the inside of the upturned helmet.”12 Sgt. Silver Parrish held the right flank for one period, mounting his machine guns to flank the Soviets. When he found and rejoined his company, Company B, he wrote with tongue in cheek, “But we should worry we had Lewis Guns now, and all the enemy had was gun-boats, Pom ________ Me Guns [Machine guns] rifles and field pieces and trenches but orders were to keep on for about 52 hours.”13

  As the doughboys entered Seltso, the Bolsheviks were actually retreating once again, but with a purpose. With their dominant artillery, the Reds needed no troops to hold the Allies at bay. The Allied infantry units no sooner entered Seltso than they found themselves under artillery fire from the long-range Red guns and from gunboats on the river. Allied artillery was unable to cross the swamplands to give the support necessary to offset the enemy guns, so Corbley ordered the men to withdraw to Yakovlevskaya. They managed the retreat without casualties, struggling through the waist-deep water, wondering what their previous day’s work had been all about.

  With their first combat behind them, the three companies rested and tried to dry out and get warm. Their barracks bags with winter clothing had not yet arrived at the front, and nights were turning cold. A few days later, September 26, all three companies made a fifteen-mile march farther upriver to the town of Puchuga. They slogged through mud up to their ankles in a drizzling cold rain, arriving about 7:00 P.M.14 Moore’s book said:

  [T]he rest of the company was scattered in billets all over the village, being so tired that they flopped in the first place where there was floor space to spread a blanket. Then came an order to march to the main village and join Major Corbley. At least a dozen of the men could not get their shoes on by reason of their feet being swollen, but we finally set out on a pitch black night through the thick black mud. We staggered on, every man falling full length in the mud innumerable times, and finally reached our destination.15

  On September 27, Allied GHQ in Archangel issued orders to cease active operations on the Dvina and dig in for winter. The Americans of First Battalion were then detached from the Dvina River front and sent to the Vaga River, where increased enemy activity troubled Allied headquarters. With the new organization of the fronts, Companies B and C of First Battalion moved by barge up the Vaga River to Shenkursk, arriving on September 28, with First Battalion headquarters following on October 2. On September 28, Company D went even farther up the Dvina River to Kodima, which would be the end of the southward movement of the Allies on the Dvina.16 Later, on October 2, Company D was pulled out, put on barges, and sent north to the Emtsa River to join Force D in Seletskoye.17

  Throughout all of the campaigns on the various fronts, the 310th Engineers were a part of each battalion. Companies B and C of the 310th stayed in the Archangel area during most of the fall and winter, constructing all the different kinds of buildings required by the Allied command. The Engineers’ Company A was split up and sent to the three infantry forces. Although they were few in number, they were vital to the defenses of the outposts, building and repairing blockhouses, dugouts, railroad bridges, and anything else that was needed. Their efforts were not without cost. On October 8, 1918, while they were working with the Americans and British on the Dvina River, Lt. C. B. (Doc) Hill, Sgt. Elmer Bloom, and Pvt. Arthur Dargan of Company A were drowned in the Dvina River. They were trying to free a boat stuck on a sandbar when they were fired on by the Bolsheviks. The three decided to swim for it, leaving three others on board. Lt. Ray Mc-Curdy of the 310th wrote, “They were all husky men and good swimmers. . . . Strong swimmers though they were, the cold water of the Dvina was too much for them and none of them made it to shore.”18 Engineer Thomas Hancock’s diary noted:

  Routed out at 4 A.M. to go to rescue of Leut & party in river aground. Caldwell and I in rowboat took off survivors—3 were rescued by Caldwell and I under heavy shell fire. They were Privates Munich, Thompson and Kury. Lt & 1st Sgt and cook all reported drowned. Gloom over all.19

  While the regiment’s reports show no other casualties that day, the AEFNR casualty list indicates Cpl. Lloyd Connor, Company A, 310th, was also drowned that same day, presumably in the same incident. However, individuals of his unit wrote that he died on June 8, 1919, while working on a bridge on the railroad front.20 October proved to be the worst month in terms of engineer casualties. Bloom, Dargan, and Hill were lost on October 8, and perhaps Corporal Connor. Cpl. William Ziegenbein died on October 16 of wounds suffered in Seletskoye; John Morris also died of his wounds on October 16; Myron Assire of Company A was killed in action on October 26; and Alfred Lyttle died of wounds on October 31.21

  In November parts of the RAF moved up to an advance field on the Dvina front to man a primitive airstrip and to offer some support to the Allied troops on the river. Using sleds and ponies to manhandle the Nieuport 17s, the Sopwith Strutters, and their old DH. 4s, they arrived at the strip in time to begin limited strafing and reconnaissance flights against the Bolos. One of their squadrons was led by a loyal Russian, Capt. Alexander Kozakov, who was the first to shoot down a Bolshevik plane in January 1919 and was Russian’s leading ace from the eastern front, credited with shooting down twenty German planes. He was a veteran of the eastern front, flying frequently, and a favorite of all the Allies.22 The tiny air force played a small part in the Dvina campaign, but as the weather turned colder, planes were less effective.

  Despite being sent to other sectors, the 339th First Battalion was not finished with the Dvina Force. As the Bolos moved northward toward Seltso after their earlier retreat, B Company was ordered back to Seltso on October 7, arriving there on October 10, just in time to attack the Bolo trenches south of Seltso. Sergeant Parrish was in the fore-front “in a scurmish line through Woods and in Water up over our Knees and lots of places up to our Hips and over them.” Parrish volunteered to lead a platoon across a road to clear some enemy lean-tos. He crossed the road while his men waited, drawing fire to locate the Bolos. “I wanted to draw the enemys fire and see Where they Were and I damd soon found out for they Were every Where.”23 He added, “I had a personal incounter with a Officer and took his Saber from him and he is now asleep.” American losses were only two wounded.

  The next day was a repeat performance, charging the Bolos, but this time Sergeant Parrish and Company B ran into an ambush and were driven back to Seltso. Again they had light casualties, just one wounded. “My friend Tom Downs got his Eye Shot Out and after he got it he Walked through Swamps and timber to Camp Without kic
king.”24 Only three days later Company B found itself being pounded by Red artillery and snipers. The Soviets attacked late in the afternoon on October 14, and the British commander ordered Seltso abandoned that night. The evacuation was completed without casualties, as the Americans, the Royal Scots, and the Canadian artillerymen left their positions and retreated to Toulgas. That same day, Capt. Robert Boyd was designated commander of the so-called Left Bank Force.25

  While the evacuation was without casualties, it was not without danger. Capt. (Doctor) John Hall of the 339th Medical Corps was assigned to take a hospital ship, the Vologjohnin, up the river to evacuate wounded from Seltso. He tried to find wounded Royal Scots, but could not locate anyone in the area to give any information, so on the night of October 10, he sailed back to Toulgas. Doctor Hall, not ready to give up, went back up to Seltso, braving more artillery fire. The Russian crew was very unenthusiastic about a return to the fighting zone, but Hall convinced them (with a drawn revolver) that it was necessary to make the trip. He found the wounded and several female Russian nurses and headed back to Toulgas. “On this night [October 12] medical supplies were handed over to Captain Griffiths, R.A.M.C., and casualties were safely placed on board. The Vologjohnin proceeded to Beresnik, where all casualties, totaling forty-three, were handed over to the 337th Field Hospital.”26