Chapter 19

The rout of the White Guards at Visakagorka had not been as bad as appeared at first. The White Guards had fought up their ammunition and then under the instructions of their fiery Polish leader, Mozalevski, had melted into the forest and reassembled many versts to the rear and gone into the half-fortified village of Peligorskaya. Here the White Guards were taken in hand by their new commander, Capt. Akutin, and reorganized into fighting units, taking name from the villages whence they came. Thus the Trufanagora Company of White Guards rallied about a leader who stimulated them to drill for the fight to regain their own village from the Reds who at that very moment were compelling their Trufanagora women to draw water and bake bread and dig trenches for the triumphant and boastful Red Guards.

This was an intense little civil war. No mercy and no quarter. The Reds inflamed their volunteers and conscripts against the invading Americans and the Whites. The White Guards gritted their teeth at the looting Reds and proudly accepted their new commander’s motto: White Guards for the front; Americans for the city and the lines of communication.

And this was good. During the nine weeks of this successful defense of the city the Russian White Guards stood all the casualties, and they were heavy. Not an American soldier was hit. Yankee doughboys supported the artillery and stood in reserves and manned blockhouses but not one was wounded. Three hospitals were filled with the wounded White Guards. American soldiers in platoon strength or less were seen constantly on the move from one threatened spot to another, but always, by fate it seemed, it was the Russian ally who was attacked or took the assaulting line in making our advances on the enemy.

On January 8th and again on January 29th and 30th we tried the enemy’s works at Ust Pocha. Both times we took Priluk and Zapocha but were held with great losses before Ust Pocha. At the first attempt Pochezero was taken in a flank attack by the Soyla Lake two-company outguard of Soyla. But this emboldened the Reds to try the winter trail also. On January 24th they nearly took our position.

News of the Red successes at Shenkursk reached the Pinega Valley. We knew the Reds were now about to strike directly at the city. Capt. Akutin’s volunteer force, although but one-third the size of the enemy, was ready to beat the Reds to the attack. With two platoons of Americans and seven hundred White Guards the American commander moved against the advancing Reds. Two other platoons of Americans were on the line of communications and one at Soyla Lake ready for counter-attack. Only one platoon remained in Pinega. It was a ticklish situation, for the Red agitators had raised their heads again and an officer had been assassinated in a nearby village. The mayor was boarding in the American guardhouse and stern retaliation had been meted out to the Red spies.

The Reds stopped our force after we had pushed them back into their fortifications and we had to retire to Peligora, where barbed wire, barricades, trenches and fortified log houses had been prepared for this rather expected last stand before the city of Pinega. For weeks it had looked dubious for the city. Enemy artillery would empty the city of inhabitants, although his infantry would find it difficult to penetrate the wire and other fortifications erected by the Americans and Russians under the able direction of a British officer, Lieut. Augustine of a Canadian engineer unit. Think of chopping holes in the ice and frozen ground, pouring in water and freezing posts in for wire supports! Then came the unexpected. After six days of steady fighting which added many occupants to our hospital and heavy losses to the enemy, he suddenly retreated one night, burning the village of Priluk which we had twice used as field base for our attack on him.

From Pinega we looked at the faint smoke column across the forest deep with snow and breathed easier than we had for many anxious weeks. Our pursuing forces came back with forty loads of enemy supplies they left behind in the various villages we had captured from his forces. Why? Was it operations in his rear of our forces from Soyla, or the American platoon that worried his flank near his artillery, or Shaponsnikoff in the Mezen area threatening his flank, or was it a false story of the arrival of the forces of Kolchak at Kotlas in his rear? Americans here at Pinega, like the vastly more desperate and shattered American forces on the Vaga and at Kodish at the same time, had seen their fate impending and then seen the Reds unaccountably withhold the final blow.

The withdrawal of the Reds to their stronghold at Trufanagora in the second week in February disappointed their sympathizers in Pinega and the Red Leunova area, and from that time on the occupation of the Pinega Valley by the Americans was marked by the cordial co-operation of the whole area. During the critical time when the Reds stood almost at the gates of the city, the Pinega government had yielded to the demands of the volunteer troops that all citizens be drafted for military service. This was done even before the Archangel authorities put its decree forth. Every male citizen between ages of eighteen and forty-five was drafted, called for examination and assigned to recruit drill or to service of supply or transportation. There was enthusiastic response of the people.

The square opposite the cathedral resounded daily to the Russki recruit sergeant’s commands and American platoons drilling, too, for effect on the Russians, saw the strange new way of turning from line to column and heard with mingled respect and amusement the weird marching song of the Russian soldier. And one day six hundred of those recruits, in obedience to order from Archangel, went off by sleigh to Kholmogora to be outfitted and assigned to units of the new army of the Archangel Republic. Among these recruits was a young man, heir-apparent to the million roubles of the old merchant prince of Pinega, whose mansion was occupied by the Americans for command headquarters and billets for all the American officers engaged in the defense of the city. This young man had tried in the old Russian way to evade the local government official’s draft. He had tried again at Capt. Akutin’s headquarters to be exempted but that democratic officer, who understood the real meaning of the revolution to the Russian people and who had their confidence, would not forfeit it by favoring the rich man’s son. And when he came to American headquarters to argue that he was needed more in the officers’ training camp at Archangel than in the ranks of recruits, he was told that revolutionary Russia would surely recognize his merit and give him a chance if he displayed marked ability along military lines, and wished good luck. He drilled in the ranks. And Pinega saw it.

The Americans had finished their mission in Pinega. In place of the three hundred dispirited White Guards was a well trained regiment of local Russian troops which, together with recruits, numbered over two thousand. Under the instruction of Lieut. Wright of “M” Company, who had been trained as an American machine gun officer, the at first half-hearted Russians had developed an eight-gun machine gun unit of fine spirit, which later distinguished itself in action, standing between the city and the Bolsheviks in March when the Americans had left to fight on another front. Also under the instruction of a veteran Russian artillery officer the two field-pieces, Russian 75’s, had been manned largely by peasant volunteers who had served in the old Russian artillery units. In addition, a scouting unit had been developed by a former soldier who had been a regimental scout under the old Russian Government. Pinega was quiet and able to defend itself.

Compared with the winter story of wonderful stamina in enduring hardships at Shenkursk and Kodish and the sanguine fighting of those fronts, this defense of Pinega looks tame. Between the lines of the story must be read the things that made this a shining page that shows the marked ability of Americans to secure the co-operation of the Russian local government in service of supply and transportation and billeting and even in taking up arms and assuming the burdens of fighting their own battles.

Those local companies of well-trained troops were not semi-British but truly Russian. They never failed their _dobra Amerikanski soldats_, whose close order drill on the streets of Pinega was a source of inspiration to the Russian recruits.

Furthermore, let it be said that the faithful representation of American ideals of manhood and square deal and democratic courtesy, here as on other fronts, but here in particular, won the confidence of the at first suspicious and pinkish-white government. Our American soldiers’ conduct never brought a complaint to the command headquarters. They secured the affectionate support of the people of the Pinega Valley. Never was any danger of an enemy raiding force surprising the American lieutenant, sergeant or corporal whose detachment was miles and miles from help. The natives would ride a pony miles in the dark to give information to the Americans and be gratified with his thanks and cigarettes.

Freely the Pinega Russians for weeks and weeks provided sleighs and billets and trench-building details and so forth without expecting pay. An arrogant British officer travelling with a pocket full of imprest money could not command the service that was freely offered an American soldier. The doughboy early learned to respect their rude homes and customs. He did not laugh at their oddities but spared their sensitive feelings. He shook hands a dozen times heartily if necessary in saying _dasvedania_, and left the Russian secure in his own self-respect and fast friend of the American officer or soldier.

For his remarkable success in handling the ticklish political situation in face of overwhelming military disadvantages, and also in rallying and putting morale into the White Guard units of the Pinega area, during those nine desperate weeks, the American officer commanding the Pinega forces, Captain Joel R. Moore, was thanked in person by General Maroushevsky, Russian G. H. Q., who awarded him and several officers and men of “M” and “G” Russian military decorations. And General Ironside sent a personal note, prized almost as highly as an official citation, which the editors beg the indulgence here of presenting merely for the information of the readers:

Archangel, March 18, 1919. My Dear Moore: I want to thank you for all the hard work you did when in command of the Pinega area. You had many dealings with the Russians, and organized their defense with great care and success.

All the reports I have received from the Russian authorities express the fact that you dealt with them sympathetically under many difficult circumstances.

As you probably found, responsibility at such a distance from headquarters is difficult to bear, even for an experienced soldier, and I think you carried out your duties as Commander with great credit.

I am especially pleased with the manner in which you have looked after your men, which is often forgotten by the non-professional soldier. In such conditions as those prevailing in Russia, unless the greatest care is taken of the men, they lose health and heart and are consequently no good for the job for which they are here.

Believe me yours very sincerely,

(Signed) EDMOND IRONSIDE, _Major-General._

When the Americans left the Pinega sector of defense in March, they carried with them the good wishes of the citizens and the Russian soldiers of that area. The writer travelled alone the full length of the lower Pinega Valley after his troops had passed through, finding everywhere the only word necessary to gain accommodations and service was the simple sentence uttered in broken Russian, _Yah Amerikanski Kapitan, Kammandant Pinega_. The American soldiers, hastening Archangel-ward so as to be ready for stern service on another hard-beset front, found themselves aided and assisted cheerfully by the Pinega Valley peasants who were grateful for the defense of their area in the desperate winter campaign.

During those ticklish weeks of Bolshevik pressure of greatly superior numbers constantly threatening to besiege Pinega, and of a political propaganda which was hard to offset, the Americans held on optimistically. If they had made a single false step politically or if their White Guards had lost their morale they would have had a more exciting and desperate time than they did have in the defense of Pinega.

XIX THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE

Archangel Area—Occupations Of People—Schools—Church—Dress—In Peasant Homes—Great Masonry Stove—Best Bed In House On Stove—Washing Clothes In River Below Zero—Steaming Bath House—Festivals—Honesty Of Peasants.

To the doughboy penetrating rapidly into the interior of North Russia, whether by railroad or by barge or by more slow-going cart transport, his first impression was that of an endless expanse of forest and swamp with here and there an area of higher land. One of them said that the state of Archangel was 700 miles long by 350 wide and as tall as the 50-foot pine trees that cover it. Winding up the broad deep rivers he passed numerous villages with patches of clearings surrounding the villages, and where fishing nets, or piles of wood, numerous hay stacks and cows, and occasionally a richer area where high drying-racks held the flax, told him that the people were occupied chiefly in fishing, trapping, wood-cutting, flax raising, small dairying, and raising of limited amounts of grain and vegetables. He was to learn later that this north country raised all kinds of garden and field products during the short but hot and perpetually daylight summer.

Between villages the forest was broken only by the hunter or the woodchopper or the haymaker’s trails. The barge might pass along beside towering bluffs or pass by long sandy flats. Never a lone peasant’s house on the trail was seen. They lived in villages. Few were the improved roads. The Seletskoe-Kodish-Plesetskaya-Petrograd highway on which our troops fought so long was not much of a road. These roads ran from village to village through the pine woods, crossing streams and wide rivers by wooden bridges and crossing swamps, where it was too much to circuit them, by corduroy. North Russia’s rich soil areas, her rich ores, her timber, her dairying possibilities have been held back by the lack of roads. The soldier saw a people struggling with nature as he had heard of his grandfathers struggling in pioneer days in America.

To many people, the mention of North Russia brings vision of wonderful furs in great quantity. In normal times such visions would not be far wrong. But under the conditions following the assumption of central control by the Bolsheviks and the over-running of large sections of the north country by their ravenous troops, few furs have been brought to market in the ordinary places. In order to find the fur-catches of the winters of 1917, 1918 and 1919 before the peaceful security of the settled sections of Russia has been restored, it will be necessary to travel by unusual routes into the country far to the northeast of Archangel—into the Mezen and Pechura districts. There will be found fur-clad and half-starved tribes cut off from their usual avenues of trade and hoarding their catches of three seasons while they wonder how long it will be until someone opens the way for the alleviation of their misery. Information travels with amazing speed among these simple people, and they will run knowingly no risk of having their only wealth seized without recompense while en route to the distant markets. The Bolshevik forces have been holding a section of the usual road to Pinega and Archangel, and these fur-gathering tribes are wise and stubborn even while slowly dying. They absolutely lack medicine and surgical assistance, and certain food ingredients and small conveniences to which they had become accustomed through their contact with more settled peoples during the last half-century.

For those Americans in whose minds Russia is represented largely by a red blank it would mean an education of a sort to see the passage of the four seasons, the customs and life of the people, and the scenery and buildings in any considerable section of Russia.

In the north, the division of the year into seasons is rather uncertain from year to year. Roughly, the summertime may be considered to last from May 25th to September 1st, the rainy season until the freeze-up in late November, the steady winter from early December until early April, and the thaw-season or spring to fill out the cycle until late May. The summer may break into the rainy season in August, and the big freeze may come very early or very late. The winter may be extreme, variable or steady, the latter mood being most comfortable; and the thaw season may be short and decisive or a lingering discouraging clasp on the garments of winter. Summers have been known to be very hot and free from rain, and they have been known to be very cloudy and chilly. Indeed, twelve hours of cloud in that northern latitude will reduce the temperature very uncomfortably. The woodsmen and peasants can foretell quite accurately some weeks ahead when the main changes are due, which is of great help to the stranger as well as to themselves.

A little inquiry by American officers and soldiers brought out the information that the great area lying east, south and west of Archangel city has been gradually settled during four hundred years by several types of people, most of them Russians in the sense in which Americans use the word, but most of them lacking a sense of national responsibility. Throughout this long time, people have settled along the rivers and lakes as natural avenues of transportation. They sought a measure of independence and undisturbed and primitive comfort. Such they found in this rather isolated country because it offered good hunting and fishing, fertile land with plenty of wood, little possibility of direct supervision or control by the government, refuge from political or civil punishment, few or no taxes, escape from feudalism or from hard industrial conditions, and—more recently—grants by the government of free land with forestry privileges to settlers.

Notwithstanding all this, the Government of Archangel State, with its hundreds of thousands of square miles, has never been self-supporting, but has had to draw on natural resources in various ways for its support. This has been done so that there is as yet not noticeable depletion, and the people have remained so nearly satisfied—until recently aroused by other inflammatory events—that it is safe to say that no other larger section of the Russian Empire has been so free from violence, oppression and revolution as has the North.

It has been so difficult to visit this northern region in detail that knowledge of it has been scant and meagre. Although many reports have been forwarded by United States agents to various departments of their government ever since Russia began to disintegrate, such was the lack of liaison between departments, and so great the disinclination to take advantage of the information thus accumulated, that when the small body of American troops was surprised by orders to proceed to North Russia there was no compilation of information concerning their theatre of operations available for them. An amusing error was actually made in the War Department’s ordering a high American officer to proceed to Archangel via Vladivostok, which as a cursory glance at the map of the world would discover, is at the far eastern, _vostok_ means eastern, edge of Siberia, thousands of miles from Archangel. And similar stories were told by British officers who were ordered by their War Office to report to Archangel by strange routes. England, who has lived almost next door to North Russia throughout her history, and who established in the 16th century the first trading post known in that country, seems to have been in similar difficulties. The detailed information regarding the roads, trails and villages of the north country which filtered down as far as the English officers who controlled the various field operations of the Expedition turned out to be nil or erroneous. Thereby hang many tales which will be told over and over wherever veterans of that campaign are to be found.

The lack of transportation within this great hinterland of Archangel, as can be verified by any doughboy who marched and rassled his supplies into the interior, is an immediate reason for the comparative non-development of this region. It has not been so many years since the first railroad was run from central Russia to Archangel. At first a narrow-gauge line, it was widened to the full five-foot standard Russian gauge after the beginning of the great war. It is a single-track road with half-mile sidings at intervals of about seven miles. At these sidings are great piles of wood for the locomotives, and at some of them are water-tanks. While this railroad is used during the entire year, it suffers the disadvantage of having its northern terminal port closed by ice during the winter. After the opening of the great war a parallel line was built from Petrograd north to Murmansk, a much longer line through more unsettled region but having the advantage of a northern port terminal open the year around. These two lines are so far apart as to have no present relation to each other except through the problem of getting supplies into central Russia from the north. They are unconnected throughout their entire length.

Similarly, there is a paucity of wagon-roads in the Archangel district, and those that are passable in the summer are many miles apart, with infrequent cross-roads. Roads which are good for “narrow-gauge” Russian sleds in the winter when frozen and packed with several feet of snow, are often impassable even on foot in the summer. And dirt or corduroy roads which are good in dry summer or frozen winter are impassable or hub-deep in mud in the spring and in the fall rainy season. For verification ask any “H” company man who pulled his army field shoes out of the sticky soil of the Onega Valley mile after mile in the fall of 1918 while pressing the Bolsheviki southward. Good roads are possible in North Russia, but no one will ever build them until industrial development demands them or the area becomes thickly populated; that is, disregarding the possibility of future road-building for military operations. Military roads have, as we know, been built many times in advance of any economic demand, and have later become valuable aids in developing the adjacent country.