ANZACs in Arkhangel

by Michael Challinger

  Obozerskaya is about 140 kilometres south of Arkhangel. It took seven hours to reach, with many stops on the way.10 The township was of great strategic importance: one of the more passable east-west trails cut through it and to the north-west it was connected tenuously with Onega and Murmansk. Over the winter, the French and Americans had built dugouts and outpost trenches, laid telephone lines and installed an electricity generator. A narrow and hazardous airstrip had been cut into the forest.

  The garrison at Obozerskaya consisted of the British 2nd Hampshires, two Russian battalions (with two more in reserve) and two field batteries of artillery. In addition, there was a Polish machine-gun company, a troop of Cossack cavalry and an armoured train manned by Russian naval gunners. The train mounted three 6-inch guns taken from a Russian cruiser and its practice was to make forays down the line, loose off a few shells and then return.

  The railway station was Obozerskaya’s largest building. While the Bolsheviks held the township their commander, Mikhail Kedrov, based his staff here. The Allies took over in September 1918 and used the building as a temporary hospital. (US Army Signal Corps, Bentley Historical Library)

  Today Obozerskaya station continues in use and bears a small plaque in Kedrov’s honour. (Michael Challinger)

  Obozerskaya had a few streets dotted with rough timber houses, but it was dominated by the railway. The station was the biggest building and the Allies had requisitioned it as a first-aid post. The main line was kept open for the armoured train, but the rail sidings held lines of stationary carriages and boxcars which served as offices and quarters for pilots and officers. The Aussies were taken two stops beyond Obozerskaya and pitched their tents beside the line. The mosquitoes were bad and they slept under nets.

  The front line was about 30 kilometres south of Obozerskaya, at Verst Post 445. A versta (plural: verst) is a Russian measurement slightly longer than a kilometre and the posts were numbered consecutively from Vologda northwards to Arkhangel. Every verst along the line was marked with a post like a striped barber’s pole. The reserve line was at Verst 448 where a series of blockhouses were connected by a stockade, all bristling with Russian machine guns on small, wheeled carriages.

  Yeaman records his first ride on the armoured train when four Australian machine-gun teams got a lift on it, then went another kilometre by trolley and further still on foot. They set up their guns and shot off two belts apiece, drawing fire from the other side. Then they went back to camp and had tea.

  An armoured train improvised from a coal wagon. Both sides used such trains on the Railway Front and Australians rode them frequently. This photograph seems to sum up the whole North Russian campaign: while earnest Allied soldiers man the guns, the sole Russian is intent only on lighting his smoke. (US Army Signal Corps, Bentley Historical Library)

  Aged almost thirty-five, Wilfred Yeaman was older than most of his fellow Australians. He was born in Rochester, Victoria, and enlisted in 1915, giving his occupation as farmer. Yeaman kept a diary which covers the whole of his time in Russia. It is the only day-by-day account that survives and there is a strange sense of routine and normality about it. He writes of heading off on patrol as if it were as unremarkable as going out to milk the cows. No matter what action he sees during the day, his entry usually ends with a note such as, ‘Wrote letters and went to the cinema’.

  Other entries have the flavour of a school excursion. On 20 July, for example, Yeaman went on a scouting expedition through the forest. The ground was so swampy the men sank over the tops of their boots into the bog. Yeaman had a camera, something for which Diggers on the Western Front had once been court-martialled.

  We had to cross planking over a ditch. I waited with my camera for the first to tumble in. Baverstock walks right into it and I get a snap of him feeling for his rifle which is at the bottom of the ditch. We patrolled well behind the Bolshie lines but see no sight of him.

  This was the day news reached Ironside that the Russians on the Onega Front had mutinied and handed over their positions to the Bolsheviks. Now it also came to light that the Onega mutiny was just one part of a larger coordinated plan. Here on the Railway Front an engine-driver had been found with a letter plotting a mutiny: two Russian companies were due to murder their officers within hours, and surrender their blockhouses to the Bolsheviks.

  Ironside, who was in Arkhangel, immediately took a train to Obozerskaya. He writes of picking up ‘a party of 150 Australians belonging to Sadleir-Jackson’s Brigade who had just disembarked from England’, though it seems the Aussies were already on the spot. As usual, Ironside’s account omits much. He simply relates how a detachment of Poles disarmed the intended mutineers without much difficulty, and how two fellows bolted and were shot escaping. Later, when some younger soldiers were questioned, it was confirmed the two had been the ringleaders.11

  A 6-inch long-range naval gun, mounted on a coal wagon and manned by a White Russian naval crew. This picture was taken in April 1919 with Americans visible and a Union Jack in the background. The train, at Verst 455, is about to head south to shell the Bolos at Yemtsa. (US Army Signal Corps, Bentley Historical Library)

  Years later Baverstock published a more credible version.12 According to him the British officers at first withheld news of the plot for fear the Aussies would ‘do their blocks and [go] for every Russian on sight, Red or White’. The mutinous Russians were withdrawn from the front line on the pretext that cholera had broken out. Then, because the armoured train was blocking the line, they were ordered to continue on foot, leaving their arms behind on it. Meanwhile the Poles—who detested Russians of any colour—had been deployed in the forest.

  The mutineers were then told their plot had been discovered. They were given one minute to hand over the ringleaders or every tenth man would be shot. The minute passed. A Russian colonel walked along the lines, demanding an answer from each man in turn. None responded.

  He retraced his steps, counting off every tenth man. The men stepped forward on command and were taken into the forest by the Poles. ‘We waited for a few minutes in uneasy silence, then through the timber came the sound of shouted orders followed by staccato volleys of rifle fire.’13

  The colonel threatened to repeat the process but was again met with sullen silence. He then ordered the men to be held captive in a railway cutting (probably the siding at Verst 455). As they were being marched away under guard, two youngsters broke ranks and shouted that the ringleader was the Russian behind the field gun on the armoured train. This man was seized and shot on the spot.

  The next day the Bolsheviks mounted an attack. There was no preliminary bombardment but a good deal of shouting. Ironside wrote: ‘Obviously they were calling to the men they expected to come over to them. They got a rude awakening when the Australian machine-guns opened on them’.14

  Yeaman records waking to the crackle of rifle fire that day. He grabbed his rifle and bandoleer and dashed from the tent. Their own Russians had already got a machine gun in full swing and the field guns were bursting shrapnel just below the tops of the trees. Once the initial assault was repelled, Yeaman’s team went forward on the train, finding the line blown in two places. They continued on foot to Verst 448 which was being shelled by the Bolos (‘their shooting is very bad’), then helped repair the line.

  Our casualties only amount to one Ruskey. NZ flag in front of our tent gets three bullet holes through and the Aussie flag manages to get one. After tea go to pictures.15

  The following morning the White Russian colonel renewed his threat to shoot the prisoners in the cutting. Almost certainly some were tortured. New batches of men were singled out of each company and marched into the forest to be shot. The firing squad this time was drawn from the Russians’ own battalions, operating under the muzzles of the Polish machine-gunners.

  A blockhouse at Verst 455 with five Diggers from No. 2 machine-gun crew. Their grins and posture speak well for their morale and self-confidence. (AWM A03721)

  Some Austral
ians were detailed to keep an eye on the Poles and, according to both Baverstock and Yeaman, an unnamed Australian with a camera took pictures of the executions. Baverstock states the photographs were later destroyed by Charlie Oliver on instructions from the British War Office.

  On 25 July a patrol reported a large party of Bolos in a slashing (a track) only a few versts from the reserve line. It was surmised they had been waiting to join the mutineers had the mutiny succeeded. The British asked permission to attack but the Australians were detailed instead, about ninety of them from the 45th Fusiliers, plus nine of the machine-gunners.

  A British account has the Australians working their way stealthily down each side of the track until they drew level. ‘Then by sheer pluck and audacity [they] drove them away in a colossal rout, killing about 30 and bringing a few prisoners back.’16

  In a letter to his brother, Sergeant Charles (‘Chilla’) Hill, of Sydney, described it: Then came 3 sharp blasts of the whistle, the signal to charge. The boys sprang to their feet and rushed forward up the slashing and the surrounding forest, cheering and shouting at the top of their voices. The Bolo riflemen turned and fled into the forest, but their machine-guns, of which there were five … kept up a very brisk fire until they were put out of action or their crews abandoned them.17

  The report which reached Ironside was more embellished, perhaps to cheer him up. At the time he was preparing to fly to the Dvina Front, having just heard the news that Kolchak’s army was in full retreat and that there was no hope of its ever reaching Kotlas.

  Just as I was starting for the Dvina I received a wire from the railway to the effect that the Australians had made a successful raid. They had crept out in the dusk and surprised a Bolshevik relief of their front blockhouses, getting in amongst them outside the defences. They killed thirty with the bayonet and wounded a good many more. Then they set fire to four blockhouses and left them burning briskly. No prisoners were brought back. With this heartening information in my pocket I flew off.18

  Yeaman did not take part in the attack and his diary describes it only at second-hand.19 But a few days later he makes mention of something he experienced himself, and about which most histories have hitherto kept silent: poison gas. Its use in North Russia is not even mentioned by Ironside in his memoirs, and only in passing by Churchill. Yet gas was used extensively in North Russia and to significant effect. On 30 July Yeaman records taking a train 30 kilometres to the rear with his gas helmet.

  Get full details of the new gas used by us and have a test through it with our helmets … It’s very powerful and even our present masks are not proof against it. It renders one perfectly helpless, making one go quite silly for the time being. Also causes constant coughing for 3 days … return to camp in time for dinner, read all afternoon.

  Churchill had always embraced gas as a useful new technology and been an enthusiastic advocate of it. He must therefore have been delighted back in January to receive a report (possibly not even true) that the Bolsheviks had fired three gas shells. He issued a press statement that the Bolsheviks had resorted to gas, and promptly authorised its ‘fullest use’ against them.20

  Nineteen specialist gas officers were sent to North Russia, together with 50,000 cylinders of gas and 10,000 respirators. The cylinders were marked ‘Smoke Generator No 1, Mark 1’ and contained a new and secret gas in two variants.21 Officially, the gas was to be used only in the event of special necessity, but inevitably it was deployed almost at once.22 It was as a guinea pig for its use that Yeaman made his trip behind the front line.

  In fact, the dense forests of northern Russia and the lack of wind at that time of year were unsuitable for gas warfare. It took a lot of experimentation to come up with an effective means to deliver the stuff, in the course of which the gas expert in charge accidentally poisoned himself with his own wares.23 In the end aircraft fitters devised bombs to be dropped from the air and these proved highly effective. The DA gas was not deadly but it was a powerful incapacitant. Its victims were described as ‘lying practically helpless on the ground [with] the usual symptoms of bleeding from the nose and mouth’.24 Among the especially susceptible, the victim’s eyes and mouth turned yellow and he died.25

  Indirectly, the use of gas gave the North Russia campaign some unwelcome publicity in Britain. It came about through Lieutenant Colonel Sherwood Kelly VC, a highly decorated South African, who was in command of the Railway Front. In private letters Sherwood Kelly had been extremely critical of the entire campaign and was quoted as saying that he would not allow any more of his men to be ‘killed for the sake of this **** country’. Though he had no objection to gas in principle, he refused to allow his men to take part in one particular raid where gas was to be used. He was abruptly dismissed and ordered home.26

  Ironside described Sherwood Kelly as ‘very hot-headed and quarrelsome’, 27 but Attiwill, who by this stage was being evacuated sick from the Dvina Front, found him otherwise. The two sailed to Britain aboard the same ship, Attiwill as a casualty, Sherwood Kelly in disgrace. Attiwill remembers him as a tall man with a gentle voice and friendly manner, ‘more like a bishop than a lieutenant-colonel’.28 He used to visit Attiwill in his cot in the sickbay and talk about the English countryside.

  Back in England, Sherwood Kelly went public in the press, dismissing the so-called loyal Russian troops as utterly unreliable and branding them as mere Bolsheviks in khaki. He called the Relief Force a fraud which, far from saving embattled soldiers, was for ‘offensive purposes, on a large scale and far into the interior, in furtherance of some ambitious plan of campaign, the nature of which we were not allowed to know’. 29 On 6 September headlines in the Daily Express read:

  ARCHANGEL SCANDAL EXPOSED

  DUPLICITY OF CHURCHILL POLICY IN RUSSIA

  THE PUBLIC HUMBUGGED

  FAMOUS V.C. APPEALS TO THE NATION

  Many of the troops on the ground agreed with Sherwood Kelly, and left-wing and trade union circles in Britain gave him political support. Nevertheless, he was court-martialled for breaching the King’s Regulations by writing to the press. He pleaded guilty but, in view of his outstanding war record, was only reprimanded. Even so, he was forced to relinquish his commission and his military career was over.

  10

  THE FEELING

  BACK HOME

  THE Sherwood Kelly affair made a big splash in Britain. Since British soldiers were fighting and dying in Russia, the Intervention was a major issue and was hugely controversial. The British Labour Party and the union movement opposed military action in Russia and conducted a running campaign of protests and strikes. Trade unionists in Britain refused to load ships bound for Russia and some Royal Navy crews even disobeyed orders to sail.

  In Australia it was different. Almost nobody was aware that there were Diggers fighting in Russia and the Intervention was therefore of little immediate concern to most people. Opinion about Russia simply divided along class lines.

  On the left, radicals embraced Bolshevism and looked forward to world revolution and the overthrow of capitalism in Australia. Working people in general were less extreme but certainly followed events in Russia with a degree of sympathy and hope. Many were waiting to see what the Bolshevik experiment produced. At the very least, they thought it was the Russians’ own business how they chose to govern their country.

  On the right, Australia’s middle classes feared and detested Bolshevism. In their eyes the Reds had betrayed the Allies by pulling out of the war and then by repudiating Russia’s debts. Bolsheviks were seen as godless barbarians who were destroying the fabric of civilisation. The mainstream press indulged and fed these fears.

  Ironically, it was Bolshevism that had made Russia newsworthy. During the war, news from Russia had been played down because the Russians were something of an embarrassment to the Allied cause. The Allies claimed to be fighting for freedom and democracy, yet the Tsar’s Russia was a byword for tyranny and cruelty. Furthermore, the news from the Eastern Front was generall
y so bad it did not bear telling.

  When the Tsar was deposed in March 1917, Western journalists were taken by surprise. They were so out of touch they pinned their hopes on Kerensky and naively expected him to reinvigorate the Russian war effort. When the opposite happened and the Russian army disintegrated, the press could scarcely believe it. London’s Daily Mirror published a photograph of deserters crowding the roofs of railway carriages under the heading, ‘Russian troops hasten to the front’!1

  In November when the Bolsheviks ousted Kerensky, the newspapers were taken aback again. For a time they insisted the Bolshevik regime wouldn’t last long and that Lenin was a flash in the pan. In the two years between November 1918 and November 1920, the New York Times reported ninety-one times that the Bolsheviks were about to fall from power or had already fallen!2

  As soon as it seemed the Bolsheviks were there to stay, the press changed tack. It was bad enough that the workers had overthrown their betters in Russia; now they were threatening to spread their revolution through the rest of the world. The press began an anti-Soviet campaign which soon became fanatical. Bolsheviks were portrayed as thugs, murderers, thieves and blasphemers. When Russia withdrew from the war, the hatred knew no bounds. One editorial in The Times read: ‘The remedy for Bolshevism is bullets’.3

  Australian papers echoed the anti-Bolshevik line. With no reporters of their own in Russia, they received all their news second-hand from British or American sources. It was very clear, however, that the foreign wire services were utterly lacking in both accuracy and balance. Indeed, the standard of journalism was lamentable and some of the better papers acknowledged as much.4 The Sydney Morning Herald assured its readers it took all reports from Russia with a grain of salt, while the West Australian said it took them with ‘bushels of salt’!