ANZACs in Arkhangel Page 14
Rawlinson arrived in Arkhangel on 9 August, the day before the Dvina Offensive began. He had made almost no changes to Ironside’s plans, except to postpone the date by nine days in the hope the river level would rise.14 He was famous for his composure and was reputed never to have lost a night’s sleep, even in the carnage of the Western Front. An amateur painter, Rawlinson spent his evenings in Russia in his quarters, paintbrush in hand. Ironside grew to admire his equanimity and ended up getting along well with him.
Rawlinson was popular with all ranks and his appointment inspired confidence among the troops. The Aussies might have welcomed him less warmly had they known some of his views about them. Australian troops had formed part of Rawlinson’s army in France where their lack of discipline exasperated him. Alone of the belligerent armies, the AIF had no capital punishment for desertion and in his diary Rawlinson recorded wishing he could shoot a few Diggers to teach the rest not to go absent without leave. He lobbied to bring the Australians into line with British practice, but without success.15
The planned offensive was not what Churchill had really wanted, but it was the next best thing. Ironside always knew Churchill’s aim was to reach Kotlas but the Admiralty did not. For political reasons Churchill had played his cards close to his chest and neither he nor the War Office had told the navy of their real intentions. In making their arrangements, the navy had relied on Churchill’s public position that the Relief Force was defensive only and that no forces would advance beyond the positions they then held.
This meant that when the flotilla was asked to advance towards Kotlas it simply couldn’t do so. Quite apart from the lack of charts and the presence of minefields, the navy didn’t have the necessary vessels. South of Troitsa the Dvina’s depth fell to 3 feet 4 inches or less, while even the smallest British gunboat drew 4 feet and the monitors between 6 and 8 feet. Indeed, far from being able to advance, the flotilla was trapped where it was by the low level of the river that year. The navy could not advance above Troitsa, while the army could not advance without naval support.16
So the offensive had to be more limited in its objectives. It was termed a ‘disengaging blow’. Its aim was to break the Bolshevik front so the British could withdraw safely. The front was about 10 kilometres wide, half on each side of the river, held to a depth of about 16 kilometres. The Bolos occupied blockhouses and fortified villages and their morale was good. The British plan was to drive down both banks of the river and dislodge them. In theory, the Russian Whites would then take over and, in due course, press south to Kotlas and beyond. Nobody on the spot believed this last step would ever happen.
Ironside’s orders were distributed to the British officers on 5 August, but for security reasons were not passed on to the Russians until the last minute. Nor, in marked contrast to normal procedure in the AIF, were the British troops at first told what was expected of them.17 Apparently the planning was less thorough than some wished. Captain Allfrey commented: ‘Everything to do with this coming show is very vague and a good deal is left to chance’.18
In preparation for the offensive, steps had been taken to mislead enemy intelligence. British troops were sent to work on forest roads far from areas selected for the attacks. Bombing raids were scaled down and only an occasional shell was fired at Bolshevik targets. The Bolshevik command realised an attack was imminent, but not knowing where or when the blow would fall, they found it impossible to reinforce every potential target.19
For the necessary transport, the British in Bereznik sent out requisitioning parties for kilometres in all directions. Pack animals, as well as horses and carts, were pressed into service, together with their owners. The peasants drew on their famous Russian capacity for long endurance. They were resigned to obey whichever army gave them orders. Bolshevik armies conscripted them in exactly the same way.
Both sides conscripted peasants into providing transport. Some of the carts were on the verge of falling apart and fodder took up half their carrying capacity. (US Army Signal Corps, Bentley Historical Library)
The British calculated payment from the day a man left his village until his return. The daily rate was a pound of flour and a little sugar and tea.20 The peasants preferred payment in kind as the monetary situation in North Russia was a complete mess.21 Tsarist currency and Kerensky roubles had been driven out of circulation by Bolshevik roubles. These in turn had lost all value in an explosion of inflation. The only reliable currency was the pound sterling and even lowly peasants had their own tiny hoard of it.
The British had tried to stabilise the Russian currency under a scheme devised by none other than John Maynard Keynes. They introduced a new ‘Northern Rouble’, which was pegged at 40 to the British pound and secured against the entire timber resources of North Russia. The new currency caused confusion among the peasants and resentment among the French and Americans, who saw it as a device to make North Russia a British financial protectorate. In more settled times the scheme might have worked.22
The British imported large stocks of the new currency but by a terrific blunder the double-headed imperial eagle had been incorporated into the design of the notes. The eagle had been the emblem of the Russian tsars since the fifteenth century and represented everything the country had rejected in March 1917. Rubber stamps had to be made and the detested symbol laboriously obliterated on each note. Furthermore, the notes had no serial numbers and lent themselves to flooding the whole region without restraint—quite apart from the ample opportunities for forgery, theft and fraud.
Prices were very high in North Russia and a rouble (not worth the label off a tin of flea powder, declared John Kelly!) bought next to nothing. In fact, for the troops as well as the Russians, the rate of exchange was a swindle. With their pay books debited £1 for every 40 roubles, British troops avoided drawing any pay in Russia. Kelly commented, ‘We were not quite so lacking in intelligence as to fall for that’.23
Transport for the big offensive was assembled on the day before zero day. Over 1100 horses and ponies gathered. Some of the droshkies were held together by wire, and in all of them fodder took up half the carrying capacity. Rain was incessant as the equipment was issued and loaded: battle rations, ammunition, picks and shovels, telephone cable, signal flares, SOS rockets, grenades.
The loads were heavy. A 3.7-inch mountain gun weighed over 700 kilograms. Dismantled into parts, a single gun took six mules to carry. A Vickers machine gun weighed about 12 kilograms but also needed a tripod (another 20 kilos) and accessories—condenser can, metal tubing, shackles, mountings, range-finder. A 250-round belt of ammunition, which could be expended in half a minute, weighed 10 kilograms. All of it had to be carried.
The British had access to the latest technology. In addition to wireless sets, telephone lines were to be laid so the attacking columns could maintain communication with headquarters. Gunboats and land batteries were to support the frontal assaults, while observation balloons and aircraft spotted for the guns. On the east bank gas was to be used.
Part of a 3.7-inch mountain gun at Troitsa on the east bank. It took another five mules to carry the rest of the gun and ammunition. On the west bank, the mules failed to get through the mud and the Diggers had to make do without artillery of their own. (IWM Q 16177)
The plan of attack itself was the same on each bank. While one column from each force was to assault a strong point directly, others were to advance through the forest to take the villages beyond, then turn back to attack from the flank and rear.
The Australians were deployed on the western bank. There the force was divided into three separate columns, each assigned to take one of three villages: Seltso, Sluda-Lipovets and Chudinova. D Company with the Australians was to attack the villages of Sluda (also called Sludka) and Lipovets (also Lipovskoye) from the rear. The column included machine-gun sections, mortars, mountain guns and some cavalry support. The men faced an approach march through the forest of 50 kilometres, a distance which had to be covered undetected. Success
was to depend on secrecy and good timing.
12
THE DVINA
OFFENSIVE
AUGUST 1919
TROOPS and supplies for the western bank were ferried across the river and assembled at the village of Yakovlevskoye. The force moved off on the afternoon of 7 August. Signallers went ahead with the advance guard to lay the telephone line. They had hoped to lay it from a barrow drawn by a pony, but fallen trees and exposed roots made this impossible. So two men carried the cable drum on a spindle, while a third unwound the cable. Others followed, raising the wire on crooked sticks to keep it clear of those following.1
Behind the signallers came the main body of troops, strung out in a long column, with the pack animals at the rear. The detachment of cavalry was to catch them up later. In the northern summer vegetation grows with almost tropical urgency and the forest was dense with debris and undergrowth. The terrain was flat insofar as there were no hills, but it wasn’t without slopes and shallow ridges. Underfoot the ground was uneven, with many bogs and unmapped watercourses. The column marched for most of the night, then called a halt and set up camp.
A group of Fusiliers take a spell on a forest track. At least one slouch hat is visible among them. (AWM A04894)
The next afternoon they set off again. Many trees were felled to help the pack animals get through. It was raining and soon the ground was so marshy the tracks became almost impassable. Though a great hindrance, the rain brought one advantage: by raising the river level, it improved the prospects of the river fleet getting out. The Dvina was at its lowest for twenty years.
The column heading for Seltso now split off while the other two continued south.2 These were the Sluda-Lipovets column, with the Aussies of D Company, and the Russian battalion heading for Chudinova. Surprise was crucial, so smoking was forbidden and talking kept to a minimum. To avoid accidental shots, rifles were carried unloaded. Ironically, it was the day the Acting Prime Minister of Australia was disclaiming to Parliament any knowledge of the Diggers in Russia.
On the night of 8 August, the Sluda column camped by a disused tar kiln with their mules. Discipline was tight. There were no fires and no hot drinks. Dinner was biscuits and bully beef. Emergency rations had to be issued for the next day because the pack animals with the rest of the supplies had failed to arrive. Wireless contact had also been lost with headquarters and the Seltso column, but the men were all-in and no runners were sent out. After midnight two separate Bolshevik deserters were brought in. Their news was good: both said the enemy had no inkling of their presence.
The next morning the column moved off again. From now on the route had not been reconnoitred. The tracks narrowed and the going was even tougher. The mules with the heavy weapons became bogged down in the long stretches of mud and swamp and could get no further. The machine guns had to be taken off and carried by hand. The men chose to forego part of their rations to carry more ammunition. When they pitched their final camp it was around midnight. They were wet through and exhausted, and uneasy that the mountain guns had not got through. Unknown to them, the cavalry support had also turned back. The attack was still twelve hours away.
Scouts went out. They returned to report yet more deep swamps, criss-crossed with fallen trees. Moreover, a swamp on the direct route to Sluda was completely impassable. So the plan was changed. Instead of assaulting Sluda first, the column would go further south to attack the village of Kochamika, then turn north along the river.
Russian mud hasn’t changed. The author’s son gets a hand from Alexey Suhanovsky while crossing a gas pipeline near the former front line in 2008. (Aleksandr Orlov)
Meanwhile, the Russians of the Chudinova column had neared their objective. They were commanded by a British officer and their instructions were to take the village and hold it until further order. In the event, they did capture the village but they held it for only a short time. When their British captain was wounded they withdrew without orders and retired back the way they had come. Colonel Davies wrote later that the entire Russian battalion ‘were not worth ten British soldiers’.3
For the Sluda-Lipovets column the final approach march started at 6 am on 10 August. The track was the worst yet and the men staggered knee-deep in mud under the weight of their weapons and equipment. By 11 am they lay in wait at the edge of the forest, 400 metres from Kochamika. Nerves were taut. A British plane flew over the village and the Bolos opened fire on it. Then everything went quiet again.
At 11.30 am the British bombardment started. Artillery and the monitors on the river opened up on the Bolo positions with shrapnel and high explosive. Aircraft dropped bombs. It lasted thirty minutes: short, but intense and overwhelming.
The guns ceased fire at noon. On the ground, the whistle blew and the men charged. The heavy shelling had demoralised the Bolos and the ground assault took them completely by surprise. Ernest Heathcote wrote: ‘[They] were terrified and they completely got the wind up for a while when they were charged with bayonets fixed by the battle-scarred heroes of France and Belgium’.4 In shorts and shirt sleeves the Aussies and the British took the village of Kochamika with ease.
Heathcote’s comment about the bayonet echoes similar boasts from the Western Front—that the enemy did not care to face Anzac steel. But the bayonet charge itself is something he does not even try to describe. His earlier phrase ‘the bayonet soon got to work’ is a formula which avoids recounting anything of the violence and horror.5
Nor do any of the other Diggers spell out what a bayonet charge really meant, or reveal anything of their deeper feelings. They write nothing of the fear beforehand or—when it was all over—the numbness, the bewilderment or the guilt some must have felt. At Kochamika the Aussies charged with fixed bayonets and killed whoever stood in their way. Emotions afterwards were concealed in bravado and male banter.
Almost as soon as Kochamika was in their hands, the British started to take heavy fire from the Bolshevik gunboats and barges at midstream. The column engaged them with machine guns and rifles and the Bolos raised a white flag. But there were no boats on which to send out boarding parties and after a while the Bolos thought better of it and resumed firing.6
At 17, Ernest Heathcote was the youngest Australian to serve in North Russia. His shoulder patch, a white star on a dark blue ground, was the insignia of the Relief Force. Some members of the force spoke of themselves as ‘White Star liners’, an ironic reference to the White Star shipping line and its ill-fated ship the Titanic. (AWM PR89/140)
With the Australians leading, D Company continued its advance, taking Zhitma and Zaneiskaya, Maguka and Portuga. The succession of names might suggest these were villages, but really they were just clusters of homesteads, barely hamlets. Here and there the enemy offered fierce resistance, but many surrendered en masse. As D Company worked its way northwards, prisoners accumulated in unexpected numbers.
The shelling from the gunboats continued. At Zaneiskaya the riverbank was 10 metres high and the British were forced to expose themselves on the crest before they could return fire. As they began to do so, a 6-inch Bolo gun scored a direct hit on the column headquarters, killing the commander, Major Shepherd, and some of his staff. Another shell hit Heathcote’s machine-gun team, wounding him and killing others.
Meanwhile, scouts reconnoitred Sluda, the next village. Private Norman Brooke, a plumber from Canterbury in Melbourne, was one of them. He worked his way forward, ascertained the enemy’s positions and made it back under fire. He earned a DCM for his effort. Captain Allfrey of A Company later complained to his diary that most of the medals that day went to D Company.7
With another bayonet charge, D Company took Sluda, holding it while Allfrey’s company advanced to secure Lipovets. A reconnaissance aircraft reported to Sadleir-Jackson that an ‘obviously tired column, 400 strong, probably short of ammunition’, had been seen advancing on Lipovets. Not knowing whether Lipovets was taken or not, Sadleir-Jackson dared not use his heavy artillery against the position.8
At Sluda the fire had intensified from the gunboats and the Aussies were taking shrapnel from the Bolo guns. So they too moved on to Lipovets, where Allfrey’s men were unearthing Bolos from under mattresses and up chimneys. Among them were the Red commander and his orderly, who were promptly seized and shot dead.9
With Lipovets now held, a party scouted north towards Seltso, hoping to meet the British coming from there. But after five attempts the British had not succeeded in taking Seltso and the scouts reported it still in Bolshevik hands.
By now about a hundred Red sailors had landed from the enemy gunboats, cutting off the column’s northward advance. The sailors were linking up with Bolo troops from the direction of Seltso and starting to work their way inland to encircle the British. Small groups were already skirmishing among the pine trees.
With Major Shepherd dead, the remaining officers faced a choice. They could try to press on towards Seltso or break out through the encircling Bolos. Ammunition was short and the men had been on the move for more than three days. The decision was taken to break out. Several Russian civilians volunteered themselves as guides.
By this stage the column was encumbered with about five hundred prisoners, plus their own wounded. Carts and horses were commandeered, with women to drive them. And, since any villager who stayed might give information to the enemy, the remaining civilians, including children, were forced to join the march. Some of the prisoners were refractory and a few were shot as a precaution. The rest settled down.10
Ruined houses at Seltso. The village was a Bolo stronghold and the British made five unsuccessful attempts to take it. The Australians in the Sluda–Lipovets column had hoped to join the British at Seltso but were forced to withdraw inland instead. (GAOPDF)