by Giles Milton
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE LETHAL M DEVICE
Five weeks after the founding of the Comintern, Winston Churchill made a keynote speech at the Connaught Rooms in London.
He had only been recently appointed Secretary of State for War, yet he was outspoken in his approach to Bolshevik Russia. He viewed Lenin and his commissars as an enemy that needed to be fought and crushed before it was too late.
‘Of all the tyrannies in history,’ he said, ‘the Bolshevist tyranny is the worst, the most destructive, and most degrading.’
He surprised many in his audience by declaring that ‘it is sheer humbug to pretend that it [Bolshevism] is not far worse than German militarism.’
He contended that the revolutionary atrocities being committed by Lenin and his comrades were ‘incomparably more hideous, on a larger scale and more numerous than any for which the Kaiser is responsible.’ Now they were intending to export those atrocities right around the globe.
Churchill would have liked to send large numbers of British troops into Soviet Russia with immediate effect, but his ministerial colleagues demurred. They had little appetite for renewed warfare and they were acutely aware that public opinion would not support large-scale military intervention. Prime Minister David Lloyd George listened to Churchill’s Connaught speech with consternation: ‘He has Bolshevism on the brain,’ he later remarked, ‘[and] he is mad for operations in Russia.’
Churchill’s anti-Bolshevik speeches were to grow increasingly strident in the months to come as he sought to persuade colleagues of the absolute necessity of major intervention in Russia, including the deployment of ground troops.
‘Bolshevism is not a policy, it is a disease,’ he told the House of Commons shortly after his Connaught speech. In an address to his constituents he went even further, warning that ‘civilisation is being completely extinguished over gigantic areas while Bolsheviks hop and caper like troops of ferocious baboons amid the ruins of cities and the corpses of their victims.’
Churchill warmed to his baboon theme and used it on a number of occasions. ‘I will not submit to be beaten by the baboons,’ he thundered to one audience; he also spoke of the need to fight ‘against the foul baboonery of Bolshevism.’
In another speech, equally colourful, he described the new regime in Russia as ‘a league of failures, the criminals, the morbid, the deranged and the distraught’, while those who supported them were ‘typhus-bearing vermin.’
Churchill’s choice of language offended many. Even The Times baulked at his turn of phrase. Churchill was unrepentant. ‘I did not expect to encounter the hostile criticism of The Times,’ he wrote in a haughty response to their lead article.
Churchill continued to argue the case for armed intervention: he said it was Britain’s moral duty to throw military support behind the White armies that were locked in a desperate struggle against the Bolsheviks. In Churchill’s eyes, they represented the last hope of destroying the dangerous regime in Russia. But he also knew that parliament could not consider any intervention until it had a hard-headed assessment of the strengths and qualities of the White armies.
Military intelligence now became a priority. Britain had already landed small numbers of troops in both Archangel and Siberia and a delegation had been sent to serve alongside General Denikin, the commander of the Volunteer Army in the Ukraine.
It was in order to gather intelligence on these latter forces that Mansfield Cumming had sent Sidney Reilly and George Hill back into Russia at the same time as Paul Dukes. Their task was to report on General Denikin’s strengths and weaknesses and determine if he was the right horse to back in the battle against Bolshevism.
Reilly was under sentence of death when he made his way back to Russia in the company of George Hill. The Bolshevik Revolutionary Tribunal had tried him in absentia in November 1918, along with everyone else involved in the attempted coup. Reilly (together with Lockhart) was found guilty of conspiring to overthrow the Bolshevik government. He knew that he too would be executed if ever he were to be apprehended on Soviet territory.
Reilly was unfazed by the death sentence; indeed, he was rather looking forward to returning to Russia. George Hill was less enthusiastic, if only because he had been given so little time to prepare for the voyage.
Reilly had noticed Hill’s reluctance to leave England and chided him for it. ‘Hill,’ he said, ‘I don’t believe you want to catch that train. I bet you fifty pounds you won’t be on it.’ In the event, Hill jumped onto the train just seconds before it was due to pull out of Victoria station. Ever the sportsman, Reilly paid up the fifty pounds.
There was a brief stop in Paris, where the two men indulged themselves with a gastronomic dinner ‘with marvellous wine and the oldest brandies served as brandy should be served, in crystal goblets.’ They then continued southwards to Marseilles, Malta and Constantinople before eventually arriving in Rostov in Southern Russia.
There was no need for them to travel in disguise, for the area they were visiting was firmly under the control of General Denikin’s anti-Bolshevik Volunteer Army. Yet the situation remained volatile and they faced considerable danger. Reilly and Hill followed Mansfield Cumming’s advice and posed as English merchants attempting to forge trading links with Russia’s Black Sea ports. It gave them a cover of sorts.
General Denikin’s ultimate goal was to sweep the Bolsheviks from power and install a new government in their place. He was not alone in fighting for such an outcome. In Siberia, a second army headed by Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak (formerly of the Tsarist navy) was also hoping to drive the Bolsheviks from power. It numbered some 200,000 men, almost a quarter of whom were nationals of the Allied powers, including 7,500 Americans and 1,600 British.
The British had been landed in batches over the previous six months. They were not there to fight; rather they were ‘to assist the orderly elements of Russian society to organise themselves under a national government.’
Most of the troops were hopelessly unfit for active service: they nicknamed themselves the Hernia Battalion. It was a far cry from the sort of intervention being suggested by Churchill.
There would soon be a third White Russian general fighting the Bolsheviks. Nikolai Yudenitch had his headquarters in the Baltic States and presented a serious threat to Petrograd. He was hoping to advance on the city and capture it before the Red Army could reinforce its defences.
At the time of Reilly and Hill’s arrival in Southern Russia, British interests were focussed on General Denikin. He seemed to represent the best hope for a future, non-Bolshevik Russia, and Reilly and Hill were keen to meet him as soon as possible. But they were told that any meeting would have to wait until the New Year festivities had come to an end.
The two men took themselves to the Palace Hotel in Rostov where they joined a glittering soirée in the hotel’s spectacular ballroom. Arriving at the dance amid a sea of fur and diamonds, Hill had a sudden flashback to pre-revolutionary Russia. The revellers were dancing to a lively rendition of? ‘The Merry Widow’ and in the centre of the ballroom a fountain splashed water into a carp-filled pool.
Some of the men were in imperial evening dress, dusted off for the evening and last worn at the pre-war winter balls of St Petersburg. But the turmoil of revolution had left its mark on everyone present. ‘Beautiful women wore threadbare blouses [and] down-at-heel shoes,’ wrote Hill, ‘yet on their fingers displayed rings, or on their necks collars that would have made even a Cartier’s assistant’s mouth water.’
The glamour of these former ladies of the court was rarely more than skin deep. Most had forsaken all their worldly belongings when they had fled their palaces in fear of their lives. They had ‘the air of duchesses’, wrote Hill, and wore ‘luxurious fur coats’, but they ‘took good care to keep [them] fastened, for in most cases anything worn beneath was scanty and painfully shabby.’
Hill welled up with melancholy as he gazed upon the faded glory. Reilly, however, was heartened to see that t
he old ways had not been entirely extinguished. He clicked his heels and stood to attention as the band gave a rousing performance of the Russian national anthem.
‘I watched Reilly’s face,’ wrote Hill, ‘with its long, straight nose, dark penetrating eyes, large mouth and black hair brushed back from his forehead – as he sipped Turkish coffee, took an occasional drink of iced water and with precision smoked one Russian cigarette after another.’
Hill noticed that Reilly was observing everyone like a hawk and making a mental record of everything he saw. ‘These, I knew on the morrow, would appear carefully analysed in his meticulous written reports.’
As midnight approached, the trumpets of the united Cossack regiments saluted the New Year and suckling pigs were released into the ballroom to increase the merriment. Hill eventually staggered to his room, bleary eyed and much the worse for wear. But as he was preparing to go to bed, he heard the strains of ‘The Old Hunters’ March’, the regimental tune of the Preobrajensky regiment, which revived happy memories. He dashed downstairs to the ballroom dressed in only pyjamas and a Jaeger dressing gown.
‘Something possessed me,’ he later recalled. ‘Without a word, I beckoned to the leader of the band to follow me. Which explains how it came about that the massed bands of the Don Cossacks, followed by a crowd of visitors, marched up and down the corridors and stairs, into the attics and through the kitchens of the Palace Hotel, Rostov, led by a short, plump Englishman in a flowing Jaeger dressing gown, on New Year’s morn, 1919.’
No one among the crowd of revellers would ever have guessed that this short, plump Englishman was in the employ of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service.
Still reeling from the New Year festivities, Reilly and Hill headed to Ekaterinodar in order to meet with General Denikin and his senior staff.
Reilly was immediately struck by the fifty-year-old general’s demeanour. He was dignified, cultivated and spoke with great clarity. ‘He gives one the impression of a broad-minded, high-thinking, determined and well-balanced man,’ wrote Reilly. Yet he had his doubts about Denikin’s leadership qualities and wondered whether he could control his subordinate generals who were constantly jostling for power.
Most troublesome was General Krasnoff, leader of the formidable Don Cossack regiments. A high-minded and egocentric autocrat, Krasnoff had been persuaded into an uneasy alliance with Denikin.
Reilly feared that the alliance would not last. ‘Louis XIVs maxim, l’etat, c’est moi, has been so completely assimilated by General Krasnoff . . .’ he wrote, ‘that any attempt at portraying the situation must naturally start from him.’
Reilly and Hill investigated many of the key people serving under Denikin and grew increasingly concerned by their sheer ineptitude. There was widespread evidence of torture throughout the general’s fiefdom and abuses of power were everywhere to be found.
‘Such a state of things,’ concluded Reilly, ‘cannot be viewed otherwise than with grave apprehension.’
Not included in his report, but later given much attention, was the malignant antisemitism of Denikin’s senior officers. Pogroms were justified on the grounds that many of the leading Bolsheviks came from Jewish backgrounds.
Reilly and Hill travelled widely during their time in Southern Russia. Their reports for Mansfield Cumming, written mostly by Reilly, were accurate and balanced. They provided an excellent assessment of Denikin’s requirements and his chances of victory.
The general had told the two men that he needed no fewer than fifteen British divisions to fight alongside him, as well as Whippet tanks and aeroplanes.
Hill agreed that aeroplanes would benefit Denikin’s forces. ‘The effects of bombing, contour chasing and machine-gun strafing would be of the greatest value,’ he wrote. ‘The risks to our pilots’ life would, in view of the primitive state of aviation amongst the Bolsheviks, be practically nil.’
The British ground forces requested by General Denikin would, however, have faced considerable risks on the battlefield. The Red Army had swelled significantly over the previous months and now had some 500,000 men under arms. ‘Mobilisation of troops is in full blast,’ wrote Reilly, ‘and by spring an army of over 1,000,000 is expected to take to the field.’ The majority of these were to be thrust against General Denikin’s Volunteer Army.
Reilly’s sober report did nothing to dampen Churchill’s enthusiasm for military intervention in Russia. Over the months to come, he managed to persuade the government to ship large quantities of munitions and supplies to all three of the White Russian armies fighting the Bolsheviks. The British press, overwhelmingly hostile to intervention, dubbed it ‘Mr Churchill’s private war.’
Yet only a tiny inner circle of people knew quite how private – indeed secret – his war had become. For at the same time as Reilly and Hill were compiling their reports, Churchill took the highly controversial decision to sanction the use of chemical weapons against the Bolsheviks.
Scientists at the governmental laboratories at Porton in Wiltshire – known to insiders as the Experimental Station – had recently developed the top secret ‘M Device’, an exploding shell that released a highly toxic gas derived from arsenic. The man in charge of developing the M Device, Major General Charles Foukes, called it ‘the most effective chemical weapon ever devised.’
The active ingredient in the M Device was diphenylaminechloroarsine, a highly toxic chemical. A thermogenerator was used to convert this chemical into a dense smoke that would incapacitate any soldier unfortunate enough to inhale it.
Trials at Porton suggested that the M Device was indeed a terrible new weapon. The symptoms were violent and deeply unpleasant. Uncontrollable vomiting, coughing up blood and instant and crippling fatigue were the most common features.
‘The pain in the head is described as like that caused when fresh water gets into the nose when bathing, but infinitely more severe . . . accompanied by the most appalling mental distress and misery.’ So wrote the biologist J.B.S. Haldane in his boldly titled book, Callinicus: A Defence of Chemical Warfare. Victims who were not killed outright were struck down by lassitude and left depressed for long periods.
Major-General Foukes had originally hoped to use his deadly new weapon against the German Army. Indeed his ‘favourite plan’, as he termed it, ‘[was] the discharge of gas on a stupendous scale.’ This was to be followed by a British attack, bypassing the trenches filled with suffocating and dying men.
The war came to an end before Foukes could use his weapons. He was left with a stockpile of chemicals and thermogenerators. Churchill now wanted the British forces stationed in small numbers in the ports of Northern Russia to deploy this stockpile against the Bolsheviks.
In the greatest secrecy, 50,000 M Devices were shipped to Archangel, along with the weaponry required to fire them. ‘Fullest use is now to be made of gas shell with your forces, or supplied by us to [White] Russian forces,’ wrote Churchill to the commander in chief in Archangel, Major-General Ironside.
One member of Britain’s Imperial General Staff expressed concern about the use of such weapons becoming public knowledge. Churchill was also anxious about secrecy, but he was prepared to take the risk. He said that he would ‘very much like the Bolsheviks to have it [a chemical attack], if we can afford the disclosure.’ He believed it to be the quickest and most efficient means to crush the Bolshevik enemy before it was too late.
His head of chemical warfare production, Sir Keith Price, was in full agreement. He declared it to be ‘[the] right medicine for the Bolshevist’ and said that in the forests of Northern Russia ‘it will drift along very nicely.’
Like Churchill, he thought it could lead to the rapid collapse of the Bolshevik regime. ‘I believe if you got home only once with the Gas you would find no more Bolshies this side of Vologda.’
There was considerable hostility in the Cabinet to the use of chemical weapons, much to Churchill’s irritation. He wanted the M Devices used not only in Russia but also against the rebelli
ous tribes of Northern India, to prevent them entering into a pact with the Bolsheviks.
‘I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes,’ he declared in one memorandum written at the time. He criticised his colleagues for their ‘squeamishness’, declaring that ‘the objections of the India Office to the use of gas against natives are unreasonable. Gas is a more merciful weapon than [the] high explosive shell, and compels an enemy to accept a decision with less loss of life than any other agency of war.’
He ended his memo on a note of ill-placed black humour: ‘Why is it not fair for a British artilleryman to fire a shell which makes the said native sneeze?’ he asked. ‘It is really too silly.’
Churchill ignored the concerns of his colleagues and instructed the government’s Chemical Warfare Department to press on with their research into creating weapons suitable for use in the mountainous areas of the North-West Frontier. According to an internal War Office memo, ‘experiments are to continue with a view to discovering a suitable gas bomb for use in India against insurgent tribes.’
India could not be dealt with immediately; Russia could. British aerial attacks using chemical weapons commenced at 12.30 p.m. on 27 August 1919, targeting Emtsa Station, 120 miles to the south of Archangel. Fifty-three M Devices were dropped at lunchtime and a further sixty-two in the evening. The Bolshevik soldiers on the ground were seen fleeing in panic as thick green clouds of toxic chemical gas drifted towards them.
More M Devices were dropped on the next day, followed by a chemical attack on nearby Plesetzkaya Station. One of the devices landed close to a Russian soldier named Private Boctroff of the 49th Regiment. He managed to escape from the looming gas cloud, but not before inhaling some of its poison. Captured by the British, Boctroff described the effect that the gas had on him.
According to his medical notes, he was ‘affected with giddiness in head, running from ears, bled from nose and cough with blood, eyes watered and difficulty in breathing. Said he was very ill for 24 hours.’
