Part 4

On the railway front, there was an armored train, with one eighteen pounder, one seventy-seven millimetre and one hundred fifty-five millimetre Russian naval howitzer. Then came early in the campaign the Sixteenth Brigade Canadian Field Artillery consisting of the 67th and 68th Batteries, each with six eighteen pounders and tough gunners seasoned and scarred by four years of barrages and bombardments in France, rather keen for the adventure of North Russia while the fighting was on, and thoroughly "fed up" when there was a lull in the excitement.

These Canadians, in peace, had probably been kindly disposed farm folk, gathering the rich bronzed harvests of Saskatchewan fields.

But four years of war had wrought a transfiguration of many things and no longer did life have its exalted value of peace times. No, life was a very cheap affair, but, cheap as it was, its taking often made exhilarating sport. At the end of a battle these quiet Saskatchewan swains passed among the enemy dead like ghoulish things, stripping bodies of everything valuable, and adorning themselves with enemy boots and picturesque high fur hats, with abounding glee, like school boys on a hilarious holiday.

Yet there was nothing debased or vicious about these Canadians. They were undeliberate, unpremeditated murderers, who had learned well the nice lessons of war and looked upon killing as the climax of a day's adventure, a welcomed break in the tedium of the dull military routine. Generous hearted, hardy, whole-souled murderers; I wonder how they have returned to the prosy days of peace, where courage counts for little, and men are judged not by the searching rules of war, but by the superficial standards of secure being; and living is soft and slow, an affair of rounding chores, with few stirring moments to illumine the dull routine of most of us.

At the outset, the Canadians and a few inaccurate Russians were our only artillery. Two months after the commencement of the campaign, two Four Point Five howitzers, with British personnel, joined the Allied Forces, and there were several airplanes, considered obsolete for use in France, but good enough for the Arctic sideshow.

The air pilots were daring and courageous men, but, besides being hopelessly handicapped by defective machines, they complained that the forests of North Russia made definite discernment of the ground a very difficult thing. The facts are that they dropped several bombs on our own lines, and twice with tragic disaster. There was never any apparent reason to believe that the airplanes caused the enemy even passing uneasiness, but we were always agitated as their menacing drone approached, always grateful when they trailed off to distant skies.

The complete combat command of the Commanding General of the Allied North Russian Expedition at the outset of the campaign was then:

One regiment of American Infantry, One brigade of British Infantry, One battalion of French Infantry, Two sections of French Seventy-Fives, Two sections of French machine gunners, One brigade (487 men) Canadian Field Artillery, One armored train, One 155 millimetre and One 77 millimetre Russian howitzers.

There were a few groups of Russian Infantry with the Allied troops, but at the outset these did not number over three hundred men. In all, there were approximately nine thousand five hundred combat troops.

With this force, the Allied Commander proposed to engage in an aggressive campaign, to drive the enemy before him and follow up along the two main ways of ingress to the interior. Troops were at once dispatched down the railway to penetrate as far as the city of Vologda four hundred miles to the south, and other troops were sent by tug and barge up the Dvina River, with Kotlas, three hundred miles southeast, as their immediate objective. From Kotlas, there is a branch railway leading two hundred fifty miles further south to the Trans-Siberian at Viatka.

When their missions were accomplished, the Railway Force at Vologda would be nearly due east of the Dvina Force at Viatka, and distanced four hundred miles across the Trans-Siberian railway.

Beyond this stage, the Allied plan was somewhat hazy. It contemplated rather vagrantly a fusion with the Czecho-slovaks along the Siberian railway, after penetration south to this trunk line.

A volunteer brigade of these adventurous soldiers who had been Austro-Hungarian prisoners, but whose whole-souled sympathy was with the Allies, organized in their native Bohemia and Moravia, and joined General Broussiloff in the spring of 1917 to take part in the victory of Zborow near Lemberg. Moving to the railway between Kiev and Poltava in the Ukraine, the brigade recruited more Czech prisoners in Russia until it had grown to the strength of two divisions.

After the peace of Brest-Litovsk, this army corps pushed forward to the middle Volga in the direction of Kazan and Samara intending to reach Vladivostok and sail from there to join the Allied Command in France.

The Soviet authorities promised them safe convoy over the Siberian railway, but instead, treacherously attacked at Irkutsk in Siberia on 26th May, 1918, and the Czechs then divided into two groups, one determined to fight through to Vladivostok, the other under General Gaida bent upon joining the Allied invasion from Archangel.

Although this last aim was not realized (and would have profited little if it had been) the Czechs performed a service of inestimable consequence to the Allies by acting in conjunction with the Anti-Bolshevik Siberian troops, and with the small Allied Eastern Expedition of Great Britain, Japan and the United States, in holding the Trans-Siberian open from Omsk to the coast, so preventing the transportation of many thousands of German prisoners back to Germany. When the Archangel fiasco was brought to a close they withdrew to their own country in October, 1919. And, reviewing the whole unproductive Russian effort in retrospect, the Czechs came closest towards a realization of the mythical "Eastern Front," for, while they could not engage in aggressive action, they did much by negative methods, denying Germany great numbers of returning soldiers that might have been welded into a considerable effective combat force for the Western theatres of war had they been free to enter their country from the Eastern frontier.

The hopelessness of a junction between the Archangel Expedition and the Czechs became certain at the beginning of the northern campaign, and General Poole was advised by the British War Intelligence that Gaida had been driven back in Samara five hundred miles from Viatka and could advance no farther before the commencement of winter.

Still the optimistic Allied Staff clung tenaciously to the belief that all the Anti-Bolshevik Russians could be joined, the Czechs, the Cossacks that General Denekin had organized between the northern Caucasus and the sea of Azov, and a group of loyal officers of the Imperial Army with General Korniloff along the Don. It was within the Allied range of possibilities that all these scattered groups might join the British, French and Americans on the Siberian railway, and after the Staff was thoroughly committed to an offensive campaign, there arose the hope of cooperation from the friendly Russian forces in Siberia. On 18th September, 1918, at Ufa, there was a meeting of representatives from the Governments of Archangel, Eastern and Western Siberia, Samara and Vologda, which purported to form a Central government of all Russia, and to restore the Constituent Assembly.

On 25th October, this group moved to Omsk, created Admiral Kolchak Military Dictator 18th November, and proposed to raise a strong armed force to purge Russia of Bolshevism for all time.

The Allied governments were quick to recognize this Omsk group as the de facto government of Russia.

It was hoped that the armies of Admiral Kolchak could get in communication with the Allied Forces working down from the Arctic.

This, then, was the culmination of the first stage of the campaign: There was to be a junction of the Americans, French and British from the North; Czecho-Slovaks, and the armies of Kolchak from the East; Korniloff and Denekin from the South. Tens of thousands of patriotic Russians were to join the colors of these armies, converging somewhere on the Trans-Siberian, between Perm and Vologda; from Vologda the way would be unopposed to Petrograd, and from Petrograd the Allied-Russian legions would move on and reconstruct the Eastern front, threatening Germany from the northeast!

There was nothing lacking in the imagination of the plans of the Allied High Command, whatever else might be said about them.

The Northern Expedition with great combative esprit set forth vigorously to traverse Archangel the whole length of the province by river and railway with two "Columns" which were even to penetrate well into Vologda Province. Starting from Archangel, the Dvina river and the Vologda railway rapidly diverged east and west, so that at the first point of contact with the enemy, the two main bodies of the invader were seventy-five miles apart; and if their object, i.e., to reach the Trans-Siberian had been realized, they would have been four hundred miles apart on that railway.

There was no wire communication between these Allied Railway and River Forces, and of course liaison over the lateral terrain impassable swamp in fall, and a field of deep floundering snow in winter, was impossible.

As the invasion developed, the two columns of necessity operated as independent expeditions, with no attempt at establishing connection.

To reach their joint objective, the Siberian railway, it was necessary for the River Force to travel one hundred fifty more miles than the Railway Force. Moreover ice was expected during the first part of November, and if Kotlas was to be taken by the river, it was necessary to advance the three hundred miles in scarcely six weeks from the time of leaving Archangel.

When forced to assume the defensive in the late fall, the Dvina Column was nearly fifty miles in advance of the Railway front position, and the Vaga Column, an intervening force that was found necessary to prevent an enemy rearward movement on the river, was fifty miles in advance of the Dvina Column.

Lacking any effective communication between bodies of troops, the military incursion was expected to penetrate an unknown alien country, where there proved to be far more hostile sentiment than friendly cooperation.

There was no reconnaissance of the country; no physical inventory of the lay of the land; no reliable military maps; no knowledge of the paths through the swamp-bottomed forests; no information of the roads. Many an early attack was lost because the frontal advance failed to get support of the flanking party that became hopelessly mired in the deep marshes and never got to the fight.

The climatic conditions were a permanent obstacle to an offensive campaign. When the snow came and the weather grew intensely cold, even if we had possessed the necessary men, it would have been madness to think of an offensive in the open. Then it was possible only to dig in and hold on.

Yet despite the intense sub-zero weather there was little trouble with the field guns which during the most severe days recoiled and ran up without any jar. Moreover, there was not so much suffering from the cold as might be supposed. The Command thought that the Siberian railway would be reached before the serious winter set in, nevertheless the expedition was excellently well equipped for the Arctic weather. Soldiers were issued long fur lined coats, fur hats and had an abundance of other good warm clothing and plenty of blankets. The men from Northern Wisconsin and the Michigan peninsula did not mind greatly the severe winter days. There was some frost bite from unavoidable exposure, and much terrible privation in the defensive actions; but on the whole the Allied soldiers withstood the cold as well as the Bolsheviks.

The strength of the enemy was an unknown factor. So were his positions and his dispositions. There were no supports, no reserves. The base of the invading army in Russia was Archangel, a fortnight's journey from the far-most front and nearly three thousand miles from the main base in England; Archangel, in complete isolation during the six months of winter.

There were no reinforcements at Archangel ready to relieve the jaded soldiers so far away, who had to continue doing double duty and fighting against greatly superior numbers with no promise of relief. More important than the objective fact was the thought of being thus forsaken that froze the soldier's heart and numbed his brain and never left him through the long blackness of the days. It was the same feeling of palsied hopelessness that comes over the city bred man who finds himself lost in the wilderness. The soldier felt he was abandoned by his country, that he was forgotten and left to his fate in the grisly plain of pitiless, white Russia.

Then there was no diversion, no break in the gloomy, monotonous, despairing hours; no relaxation from the ceaseless vigilance in the guard against surprise attack; no respite from the constant threat of annihilation. The drear, sorrow freighted clouds menaced death. There was the message of Death across the bleak, endless, desolate snows. Death haunted the shrouded, hopeless days, and in the shadow of the encircling forests, Death waited. It was the most severe strain to which human intelligence could be subjected.

Many lessons were learned in the war, and none so clearly as the one that human endurance cannot be taxed beyond capacity without a resultant of diminishing military returns.

In France it soon became a corollary, universally accepted by all the Staffs, that men could not be subjected to the strain of continuing horrors and uninterrupted drain of physical resources without a pronounced lowering of fighting morale. It was calculated to a nicety how long a soldier could endure mental shocks and suffer hardships until his nervous system snapped and his distraught brain could tolerate no more.

These things were all weighed in the precise scales at the laboratories of the war establishment and provision was made for human limitations, so that there grew up three units in every combat army. One of them attacking, or standing the brunt of enemy assault; another in the supporting trenches, to be used in great emergency, but most important of all to become accustomed to the terrifying effect of the big guns; and a third that was far back, where there was a warm bath and clean clothes, peace in the sky and the soft grass still grew green, where men drank deep their little day of life, and found oblivion from the animal filth and unspeakable griefs, the awful hideousness of modern warfare. It came to be recognized that reliefs of troops on the combat first lines were as necessary as ammunition and ration supply.

But there were few and in some cases there were no reliefs for fighting men in North Russia, because there was no support unit from which to draw reliefs, and no reserve unit to call forth from the rear for those at the front.

The Russian Expedition, if its object was to drive the Bolsheviks clear of Archangel Province and south of the Siberian railway, required for execution of this object an army corps with entire component of artillery, and in this war with Russia, Great Britain and France and the United States failed because of:

1. Inadequate forces in the Allied Command.

This was not only true with respect to numbers, but also with respect to armament and equipment.

We had no artillery support. We were outgunned from the outset and continued to have marked artillery inferiority throughout the campaign. Time after time, the infantry, after gallant success, was shelled out of position, while our own guns were silent because outranged. The effect on the morale was most disastrous.

On the River Front, there were three Allied gunboats which cooperated effectively during the first days, but during the latter part of October, when the fight began, these withdrew to Archangel in fear of becoming caught by the ice which formed at the mouth of the Dvina, and then moved slowly upstream against the strong current.

It took a week for this ice barrier to travel one hundred miles against the course of the river, so that the enemy had unhindered opportunity to bring up his artillery mounted on watercraft, which he did, and blasted our positions for two weeks after the Allied boats had gone back to winter quarters.

Nothing was more discouraging than this hopeless inferiority in long range guns. Assaulting troops, no matter how spirited and courageous, cannot hold their advance in the teeth of a bombardment that scatters emplacements like chaff before the wind and shocks men into a state of insensibility. The stunning effect of massive, high explosives is more important than the casualties caused by direct hits. Nerves are palsied, then fly from control under unremitting blasting salvos. Fortifications are blown to atoms, and debris thrown up like vomit in a deafening belch, a bolt of hottest hell; while the earth quivers like a frightened living thing. And if modern warfare has demonstrated one thing more than any other, it is the prime necessity of artillery support, especially during the attack. After three years' experience, the French and British Staffs laid down the rule that for an offensive to be made with any hope of success, there should be a field gun covering every ten yards of the objective and a heavy gun every thirty yards.

The British provided fifty-six heavy guns and howitzers per division, and of these twenty-nine were six inch and over.

The French had fifty-eight guns in each division, forty-six of which were six inch and over.

These divisions were made up of two brigades of two regiments each, a total of fourteen thousand four hundred men.

The Americans in France had two regiments of 75 mm. guns and one regiment of 155 mm. guns for every combat division on the first lines. At Archangel there was not a six inch gun in the Allied Command until the late days of spring when the Americans were evacuated. There was only the Russian naval howitzer on the armored train. And the only other heavy guns were two Four Point Five howitzers of the 41st Royal Field Artillery.

Besides this fatal lack of artillery, the Allied Command was miserably supplied with other armament. In the early days we had only a few machine guns and these were Vickers, with water cooled system, that became frozen and would not function in the severe cold. We had few Trench Mortars and no rifle grenades or hand grenades. But most disheartening of all were the Russian rifles issued to the infantry. They were manufactured in our country by the million for use of the Imperial Army; long, awkward pieces, with flimsy, bolt mechanism, that frequently jammed.

These weapons had never been targeted by the Americans, and their sighting systems were calculated in Russian paces instead of yards. They had a low velocity and were thoroughly unsatisfactory. The unreliability of the rifle, prime arm of the infantry, was an important factor in the lowering of Allied morale.

2. Underestimation of the enemy forces and his military capacity.

The Allied military authorities looked with contempt upon the Bolshevik movement, and viewed it as simply a sporadic outburst of outlawry that would pass like all disorganized brigandry.

The facts were that this war was waged against the government of the Russian people. The de facto authority was in the hands of Lenine and Trotsky at Moscow. The Omsk group was distinctly an expression of the minority and the ancient Imperialists who were obstinately impervious to the new Russia flaming in revolution against age long abuses and tyrannies of the old order that could never be returned. The Omsk group never quickened any popular response. It lacked essential authority. The spectacular success of Admiral Kolchak before Perm was not followed through, and his government waned while the Bolsheviks grew in strength every day.

The Soviet army was despised as an undisciplined rabble, without equipment or officers or commissary organization. But the Bolshevik soldier was as well equipped as we were, and incomparably superior in the larger arms. He was often better rationed, and sometimes led better.

During the winter of 1919, Trotsky, an outstanding military genius, raised from the Kerensky rabble an army of one million men, which William C. Bullit of our State Department saw in March of that year at Moscow, and described as thoroughly soldierly looking, thoroughly trained, well rationed, and well provided for.

From Moscow to Vologda, is less than three hundred miles by the railway which continues straight to Archangel. Why the Soviets did not concentrate a division on the railway, move straight to Archangel and leave the scattered Allied battalions bottled up in the interior is one of the many mysteries of the Expedition.

In February, Omberovitch, the Commander of the Bolshevik Northern army, announced that he would hurl the foreign invader into the White Sea and concentrated over seven thousand men in an attack on Shenkurst, the Allied position on the Vaga river. This force was ten times the strength of the defenders, who were driven back verst by verst over the deep snows to Kitsa, sixty miles down the river, and the Allied Staff prepared rearward positions in anticipation of withdrawal about Archangel and a last stand there a few weeks later. The enemy struck again with overpowering numbers at Bolshie Ozerki near the Railway.

But he never consolidated his success. For some inscrutable reason withheld the knockout blow, and, before he could reorganize for another advance, spring came with the _nasta_ or thaw, and he had to pull back his artillery or abandon it in the bog. He also brought great forces in November to the assault of the River position, and attacked the Railway in spring with large numbers and with great vigor; but despite his vast superiority in guns, and his great advantage in strength, he could not, or _did not_, break through to complete victory and destroy our scattered, weakened battalions.

Perhaps one reason the Bolsheviks did not massacre the puny Allied forces was because the nature of conditions in North Russia did not permit the concentration of great masses for the attack. The little villages, even with greatest crowding, could only house a few hundred men. Except at Shenkurst, where the most ambitious thrust was made, there was shelter for only a few thousand soldiers, and shelter was as essential as rations in this war of the Arctic.

Another reason may have been that Lenine had sagacity and imagination enough to know that a complete massacre would have fired the people of Great Britain and France and America with burning indignation and a demand for revenge which their governments could not deny. Better to whittle away the little Allied company by methods of attrition. There was no prize in Archangel. The Bolsheviks had stripped that city of everything valuable long before the Allies came to Russia.

3. Ignorance of the military commitment.

The difficulties of conducting an offensive campaign in Archangel province were at the outset not understood or realized by Allied Headquarters.

Military men have asked me why the Commanding General did not, if determined upon an aggressive warfare, concentrate his small numbers for an advance on the Vologda railway, leaving a cordon of well fortified outposts about Archangel, sufficiently distant to protect the city from artillery bombardment.