Russian Sideshow

by Robert L Willett

  A couple of guys were stationed deep in the Trans-Baikal, waiting, waiting for something to happen. They rarely talked for they’d each spoken their piece.

  Finally one day the major arrived and called one of them up.

  “What under the sun made you beat up your buddy the way you did?” he asked.

  “Oh, he gets on my nerves,” was the answer.

  “Well, what has he done now?”

  “The Soldat: ‘He tore the leaf off the calendar and it was my turn.”14

  One of the ways to cope was with vodka. A doughboy wrote of its many uses:

  Vodka is a liquor discovered about A.D. 1918 by the American soldiers. Its qualities are varied; its virtues many. It has the appearance of oily water and the effects of a young volcano. One little can will cause more men to come to parade rest in less time than two Major Generals. One can is capable of producing any number of Carusos, several pugilists and lots of dancers and many jail-birds. It is great to moderate the weather, makes bees hum and causes little birdies to flit among the trees. . . . As a cleanser it has no equal, for it is the finest thing ever known to remove the stripes from a non-com’s sleeve.15

  Wartime prohibition restrictions at home made liquor hard to get, so the wild abundance of the local vodka made the drink even more attractive to bored and lonely young men.

  The sanitary systems in Russia were strange and sometimes embarrassing to the new arrivals, but they found that necessity overcame modesty at times. One of the men was in town and suddenly needed to find a toilet facility. He found one nearby, went in and seated himself. Shortly afterward a young lady came in and seated herself beside him. In spite of the awkward situation, they struck up a minimal conversation, neither knowing much of the other’s language. Then a young Russian man came in and sat next to the young lady and they began to talk. The American was put out and told his buddies later, “We were getting along okeh until he showed up!”16

  There were duties that kept them busy some of the time—machine gun school, Officer Candidate School (until the armistice, when OCS was discontinued), guard duty, drills, and parades—but there really was little to do to fulfill the expedition’s elusive mission.

  Dull and boring as it was, the troops were able to find amusements in several ways. The YMCA had several fine canteens, which were usually crowded. One of the women at the Y wrote in her diary:

  Several afternoons I have helped at the International Hut canteen, and now recognize tea, coffee, cocoa with or without milk or sugar, in Russian, German, French, Czech, and Italian, to say nothing of the welcome sound of our own boys’ voices which range from the Southern boy’s “Coffee with cream an’ sugah, please M’am,” to Tony from Chicago’s South side who always cuts a pigeon wing and then says, “Good evening, Miss Boig. Got a hand-out fer me?”17

  There were books, games, movies, and sometimes concerts by the POW orchestras. The prisoners were primarily housed in the prison compound on Russian Island, a short ferry ride from the Vladivostok docks, but they had a variety of assignments throughout the area. One of the men from Company E of the Thirty-first Infantry, Russell Swihart, was assigned the duty of guarding prisoners and found them a congenial group, well-mannered, polite and helpful in many of ways. Once there was a concert at a nearby orphanage on Russian Island, which had young women as counselors. One of the American guards, against all orders, took several POWs to the concert. They had a wonderful time; after the evening was over, one German prisoner told the doughboy with a great deal of emotion, “I will never forget this night!”18

  Music was plentiful for everyone, with the orchestras, the military bands from the Thirty-first Infantry, the USS Brooklyn, and the HMS Kent, plus some improvised jazz groups. Some of the members of the Thirty-first put together a performing group that successfully toured the various bases.

  And there were always the boy-girl friendships that sometimes blossomed into romance. One story went this way:

  She leaned tantalizing across the table toward him; gloriously youthful, vivacious and trim. Wagging a worn spoon around in her tea, she bewildered him with a sun-shiney smile:

  “Pochimo vi niet gavareet po Russkie?” she challenged.

  He moved to his feet uneasily, adjusted his neck, and answered:

  “I niet habla Ruskie ochen much. Ya cachew to though”

  They both laughed, relapsed into silence and drank chai.

  And the people about thought:

  “How quickly these Russians learn English.”

  “How quickly these Americans learn Russian.”19

  Love frequently blossomed in the months the doughboys spent in Siberia. At the end of the expedition, the chaplain had rush orders from the general to sanctify seventy-eight marriages of doughboys with local ladies.20 The officers did not encourage the couples, but did not forbid the marriages. Not all of the dalliances ended in marriage. One soldier wrote, “Was interested in a Russian girl but never asked permission to marry. Didn’t think it would be granted so I forgot about it. People there were broadminded. I made love to a girl with her parents right there in the house.”21

  There was a show called “Roadhouse Minstrels,” including several Royal Canadian Mounted Police, starring Raymond Massey, who later became a Hollywood star.22 There were lectures, plus sing-alongs that featured still-popular classics like “There’s a Long, Long Trail,” “I Want to Go Home,” “Over There,” and “I Didn’t Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier.”

  As winter approached, the summer recreations were no longer available: swimming in the bay, walking along the waterfront, and outdoor games. With the lack of alternatives, boys began to frequent the ladies of Kopeck Hill. There the ladies of the evening provided their own form of entertainment, but along with it, diseases that plagued the expedition. Kopeck Hill did more damage to American youth than any Bolshevik, Cossack, Japanese, or Chinese bandit. Venereal disease was more common than the flu or even gunshot wounds.23

  The Navy provided some entertainment for both officers and men. For officers there were frequent dances and dinners on board the various naval vessels. Each morning certain ceremonies began the day. On the Brooklyn, Marines raised the American flag, while the sailors stood at rigid attention. The flag raising was accompanied by the playing of the American national anthem; when that was finished, the British played their anthem, followed by the Japanese and any other ships that might be in the harbor. One sailor, Ernest Hoskins, wrote with some candor, “It would take some time before we could carry on.”24 Added to that symphony of sound were the Japanese bugles, the British bagpipes, and the U.S. whistles that continued throughout the day. On still days, the sound carried throughout the district. Winter made these ceremonies difficult, however, as a Filipino band discovered.

  When the icebreaker made our passageway through to the dock at Vladivostok and we tied up it was time for the band to play the Star Spangled Banner and the lowering of the flag. We had a Filipino Band who never saw snow before. They came out to play nary a toot of their instrument froze on their lips and the marines had to carry them inside the ship.25

  On May 14, 1919, the British cruiser HMS Kent with the Russian steamer Georgie went on a mission that was as confusing as it was successful. The mission was to remove Russians who wanted to evacuate from two areas, Olga Bay and Tethue, on the coast several hundred miles north of Vladivostok. The plan was to have a committee of Allied representatives interview the refugees and meet with a partisan committee to assess the state of affairs. The Allied committee was made up of an Englishman, a Czech, and U.S. Maj. Sidney Graves, son of the commanding general. Graves pointed out in his May 17 report that both the British officer and the Czech seemed determined to spread propaganda for Kolchak.26 The ships visited the two areas and discussions were held with local Red committees. While the delegations in both areas expressed some friendship toward American troops, they detested Japanese policy and behavior. They were unanimous in hoping for the withdrawal of all Allies.27 Those Russians from b
oth Olga Bay and Tethue who wished to leave their homes stayed on the ships as they all returned to Vladivostok.

  General Graves had difficulty charting a course, as pressures continued to mount. He clung rigidly to the one clear message of Wilson’s Memoire: stay out of Russian affairs. The problems might have eased after the German surrender, but just a week later, Admiral Kolchak came to power, producing a government that went from bad to barbaric. The U.S. State and War Departments seemed to have no communication with each other as messages sped across the Pacific. Secretary of War Newton Baker, in the forward to Graves’s book many years after the war, said:

  I cannot even guess at the explanation of the apparent conflict between the War Department and the State Department of the United States with regard to the Siberian venture, nor can I understand why the State Department undertook to convey its ideas on Siberian policy, as it seems to have occasionally done, directly to General Graves.28

  Graves himself attributes the rift to a State Department message sent to the War Department and then forwarded to Siberia. In essence, it said that local consular officials were free to give advice and counsel to any local governments along the railroad. Since the railroad and its supporting communities were basically controlled by the Whites, it became obvious that the United States was, in fact, interfering in Russian internal affairs. Graves said, “The instructions above referred to, in my judgment, were the entering wedge to, what proved to be, a distinct cleavage between the representatives of the State and the War Departments in Siberia.”29

  It was not only his own government that tried to move Graves off his neutral course. In the last message he received from Britain’s General Knox, Knox sounded peeved, but resigned to the American position on the Intervention:

  I wish we could see more eye to eye in matters here. The objects we wish are undoubtedly very similar but we are falling into different ruts. The policy of our Government is to support Kolchak, and I believe in that policy, for if he goes there will be chaos. I don’t pretend for a moment that Kolchak is the Angel Gabriel, but he has energy, patriotism and honesty, and my eight years in Russia has taught me that when you get these qualities combined in one man he is a man to keep.

  There is a widespread propaganda to the effect that your Countrymen are Pro-Bolshevik. I think in the interest of Allied solidarity, and of the safety of Allied detachments, you should try to contradict this.30

  According to Graves, this was Knox’s last attempt to convince him of the error of his ways; Knox, in Omsk, turned his efforts toward the American diplomats there.31 It would probably be safe to place the blame for the utter confusion on the original Aide Memoire with its vagueness and subsequent lack of clarification. That vagueness turned Graves into a Bolshevik in the eyes of the Whites and a White in the eyes of the Bolsheviks. Graves cabled Washington on November 21 that conditions were growing steadily worse. General Horvat had just been appointed as the Omsk government’s east Russian representative; Graves considered him to be another monarchist. Graves felt the only thing allowing the Kolchak government to continue was the presence of the Allies. “I think some blood will be shed when the troops move out but the longer we stay the greater will be the blood shed when the allied troops do go.”32

  Soon after his arrival in Russia, Graves had made it a point to visit all of the units along the railroad to evaluate conditions and get a feeling for the land. On several of his stops, the general asked the troops what they were doing in their mission. Most replied they were ordered to fight the Bolsheviks. Graves, each time, explained:

  Whoever gave you those orders must have made them up himself. The United States is not at war with the Bolsheviki or any other faction of Russia. You have no orders to arrest Bolsheviks or anybody else unless they disturb the peace of the community, attack the people or the Allied soldiers. The United States army is not here to fight Russia or any group or faction in Russia. Because a man is Bolshevik is no reason for his arrest.33

  As in North Russia, one of the aggravations of the troops was censorship. The chief of the censorship section was Kenneth Roberts, who had no liking for the duty. But he was to enforce the requirements of the censorship restrictions as outlined in AEFS Memorandum #4 (Censorship Regulations). Roberts was told emphatically by Colonel Robinson that censorship was to concern itself not only with military information, but with political information as well. Roberts pointed out the dangers of such a policy to the colonel:

  Colonel Robinson couldn’t see it. Correspondents, he held, had no call to come uninvited into the sphere of influence of an expeditionary force and criticize things they didn’t understand; and he, as chief of staff, wouldn’t tolerate such criticism. And my orders were to see that no such criticism was sent.34

  Pvt. William Johnson wrote his sister in February 1919, “I don’t have the least idea of what was in that letter of Dec. 12 that wouldn’t pass the censor. I must have told the truth about something.”35

  The end of censorship happened as a result of a single soldier’s letter. Pvt. Willard Simonton wrote to his father about some of the conditions in Siberia. He told of being punched out by his sergeant and how, after he reported the assault to his commanding officer, no disciplinary action was taken against the sergeant. In general, he said that the recruits in Siberia were worse off than slaves before the Civil War. Then he said they were told by the American consul that they were in Siberia because Wall Street had money invested there “and they don’t give a dam about you.” The letter, after his father read it, was sent on to U.S. Senator Hiram Johnson of California, an avowed advocate of bringing the boys home. He lost no time in sending a copy of the letter to Graves in Vladivostok. That began an investigation that lasted for several weeks, with the results announced on July 27 that the following action would be taken:

  1. Simonton was to be reprimanded for violating Memorandum #4.

  2. Sgt. John Powers was to be reprimanded for laying hands on a private.

  3. Capt. Laird Richards was to be ordered before an efficiency board to determine his fitness to remain in the service.

  4. Memorandum #4 was to be rescinded.

  Thus ended censorship, but not until nine months after the Armistice, and one month after the AEF in North Russia had abandoned its campaign.

  There was a censorship of local media as well, although not in the early days of the expedition. As time passed, local papers became more critical of the Allies and Kolchak; on two occasions local newspapers were closed by Allied orders. The Echo, a paper owned primarily by the British, was shut down in July 1919 by the Kolchak government after it published articles critical of the government. The Kolchak officials carried it one step further by ordering the arrest of the editor, Mr. Lopatin, who fled the area. In a confusing series of events, the British deputy high commissioner in Vladivostok heard of the editor’s difficulty and arranged to have him stowed away on a British vessel. Lieutenant Gruner, the British military control officer, reported that plan to the British police, who then arrested Lopatin and turned him over to the Russians.36

  A second closing took place in late August of the same year when the Russian newspaper Golos Primoria was closed by order of the commander of the Vladivostok fortress, Colonel Butenko, one of the few officials consistently friendly toward the Americans. He gave the order, apparently, because of an article entitled “Yankee,” which was critical of the Americans. On August 29, Major Johnson of the IMP called on the newspaper office with Maj. Sidney Graves and ordered the paper closed. The editor was not arrested, but a guard was placed around the premises, supposedly to make sure the paper remained closed.37

  While there was little actual fighting for the Americans in Vladivostok, occasionally snipers fired at the sentinels manning outposts around the city, and there were sometimes clashes between Allied, Russian, and Chinese forces within the city. For the most part, the duty there was reasonably peaceful, comfortable, and boring. Mail was the main morale booster, and in Vladivostok, mail came very prompt
ly and very efficiently. However, the farther from Vladivostok the soldier was stationed, the smaller his chances for frequent contact with home. In spite of the efforts of the RRSC, trains were constantly disrupted by the partisans and the Bolsheviks. The trains provided the delivery system for all of the basic goods and the personal mail of those up the line, and for passenger movement as well. When train service was disrupted for any length of time, as it frequently was, deliveries and passenger services were halted.

  Units were stationed in various locations outside Vladivostok in the early days of the Intervention. The Americans came into frequent contact with the Japanese, particularly on the railroad; on these occasions, doughboys were alarmed by the Japanese troops’ actions and conduct. By January 1919, the Japanese had firmly established themselves all along the railroads and in key Siberian locations.

  The closest post outside the big city was Razdolnoye, about thirty miles north of Vladivostok on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Duty there had its benefits, with a YMCA canteen, some free time, and a chance to see Russians in a more natural setting than that of the big city. After their brief baptism by fire early in the expedition, life remained quiet in this little village. However, one particular day provided considerable excitement. It was reported that partisans were planning to stop a train and seize a Kolchak officer. According to Pvt. Joseph Ahearn, one platoon of Company F, Thirty-first Infantry was called out to man the station to stop the partisans from taking the officer. As the train approached, tensions mounted; the doughboys crouched behind a hastily put together barricade. The train thundered into the station without a pause, and the men breathed a sigh of relief. Captain Bishop ordered the platoon commander to unload the rifles. The lieutenant’s sheepish reply was, “Golly, captain, I forgot to have them load!”38 Ahearn wrote that it was a dull, boring existence, but he was convinced he was there to avoid a Japanese takeover of Siberia.