ANZACs in Arkhangel Read online

  For Churchill, the consequences of the Intervention were drastic. The North Russia campaign was a major political and strategic blunder on his part and confirmed his reputation as a reckless military adventurer. Such was his unpopularity that at the 1922 election, the hard-drinking voters of Dundee dumped him and replaced him with an advocate of prohibition! Churchill languished in the political wilderness for the next fifteen years.

  As for the Australians, they first returned to Britain. The hospital ship with Yeaman’s group stopped off at Alexandrovsk, north of Murmansk, to pick up some stretcher cases. The Aussies were transferred to the Cape Verde, a former German ship, where they were herded into a hold already crammed with troops and spent the next few days prostrate with seasickness.

  The Kildonan Castle with most of the Australians reached Plymouth on 9 October. The troops felt they had earned some leave and were impatient for drink and female company. Disembarkation was painfully slow and when it was finally completed the soldiers were ordered onto special trains direct to camp. Some rebelled; about 150 men broke out and headed for the pubs. When police tried to round them up a riot ensued.10 Troops from a nearby barracks had to restore order at bayonet point. This time Australians weren’t singled out as the instigators.

  Wilfred Robinson (left) and Ernest Gaffey were both badly wounded in North Russia. Robinson would probably have died but for the New Testament in his breast pocket which took the force of one Bolo bullet. Apart from their slouch hats, the two wear the uniform of patients at Netley Military Hospital, an enormous, poorly designed facility, built just after the Crimean War. (AWM A05012)

  Leave was not long in coming, though, and the Diggers took off to make the most of it. One of the original attractions of enlisting in the AIF had been the chance to see the world—to be ‘six-bob-a-day tourists’. Though Yeaman enjoyed his share of drinking and billiards he, for one, played the tourist with determination.11 He inspected cathedrals, looked over a captured German submarine and joined the crowds for the state visit of President Poincaré of France. At Northolt aerodrome he paid to loop the loop on a joy flight. But he took in some culture too: he saw Othello and Macbeth and attended a concert at the Albert Hall.

  Yeaman had fought in France during the war and now got himself a passport to make a return trip. In Paris he climbed the Eiffel Tower, visited the Louvre and took a day trip to Versailles. A tour of the battlefields followed: Ypres, Hellfire Corner, Poperinghe. Where there were no buses or trams, he hitchhiked. He was the counterpart of today’s backpacker. In November he returned to camp in England and recorded ‘a wild night smashing up things and firing revolvers’!

  The Aussies were entitled to a free passage home from the British government and some left at the first opportunity. Sullivan took ship even before he had been presented with his VC. With a handful of other North Russia veterans, he sailed from Britain on 1 November aboard the troopship Nestor. Though officially British soldiers, they were indistinguishable from the thousand AIF men on board except for the white stars on their shoulder patches.

  The rest of the Aussies returned in various small batches. Yeaman came home on the Solfels in 1920 with at least nine other North Russia men. Wilfred Robinson, who was badly wounded at Yemtsa, wasn’t fit to return till later and came back on the Bahia Castilla in June 1921.

  Some didn’t make it home at all. Bernard Watts jumped ship in Cape Town and disappeared. Newbould, the Kiwi, was said to have gone to Mexico to fight in its long-running civil war at £2 a day and to have died there. James Parsons from Horsham, the second-oldest of the North Russia Diggers, never returned to Australia. In 1921 his family received a letter giving an address care of a San Francisco hotel. Twenty years later Parsons was married and living in Portland, Oregon; he sent a letter to Army Records, saying his sister could have his unclaimed medals.12

  The men had no illusions about what they had achieved in Russia. Almost all who committed their thoughts to writing acknowledged the futility of the venture. Attiwill conceded that at the time they knew nothing of the merits of their cause and wondered in retrospect why England had sent troops to Russia at all. He thought their presence had done ‘more harm than good to Russia, for it made the Bolsheviks more determined than ever to pillage the peasants after we left’.13 John Kelly of Elope asserted: ‘We were all of the opinion that the revolution was a civil thing … none of us had any heart for [the Russian campaign], I can assure you’.14 Years later he expressed himself even more strongly. ‘We had no right to be there. Had I known beforehand what the aim and nature of the mission was, I for one, would never have volunteered for the job.’15

  Mostly the North Russia Diggers came home a few at a time. A sizeable batch did return with other AIF troops aboard the Solfels in December 1919 and a pencilled note on the back of this photo lists, in no particular order, John Fagan, Ernest Heathcote, Ernest Goates, John Roche, George Mabbott, Harry Rea, Leslie Lee, William Burrow and a Stephenson (probably Alfred). (Courtesy Elgar Charles)

  For those Diggers who had not previously experienced combat, Russia was an intense experience. They had gone as soldiers whose job it was to fight. They had wanted to prove themselves game, and fight was what they did. Attiwill says they saw themselves as soldiers of fortune.16 But for being members of the British Army, the word ‘mercenary’ would not be too strong.

  In Russia the Australians had little close contact with the inhabitants and, apart from the interpreters, of whose opinions we know nothing, none spoke the language. They indulged in ‘skolkering’—trading, from the Russian word skolko meaning ‘how much?’ But bargaining for furs and souvenirs isn’t exactly profound culture contact, and the men remained ignorant of things Russian even to the end. Days before departure Yeaman still refers to Arkhangel’s Orthodox cathedral as ‘the principal mosque’.

  Politics did not impinge at all. The Relief Force wasn’t in Russia long enough for Bolo propaganda to have any effect and, though most of the Diggers were manual workers, the issue of international working-class solidarity simply didn’t cross their minds. Indeed, the Aussies displayed little understanding of the aspirations of the Russians they fought against or the predicament of those they fought with. They were oblivious to the fact that many White Soldiers had wives and children living in Bolshevik-controlled areas and were therefore at the mercy of the enemy. It did not strike them that once the British had decided to leave, every friendly Russian was fighting under a death sentence. Nor did they appreciate that where choosing the wrong side meant death, a man’s safest course was to come to terms with his new masters at the expense of the departing British.

  Except as it affected their personal security, the Diggers ignored the fact that they were fighting in a civil war and seemed indifferent to the moral issues it raised. The shooting of prisoners appears not to have perturbed them. This is not altogether surprising for on the Western Front Australians were notorious for their cavalier treatment of prisoners. As between White Russians and Reds, the hatred engendered by civil war precluded any mercy and men on both sides committed ghastly atrocities. The British attitude was to turn a blind eye; the Aussies seem barely to have noticed.

  The personal service records of the Russian Diggers throw some light on what manner of men they were. They seem to have been a bit wilder than the Anzac norm—more absences without leave, more disobedience, more disciplinary offences (one strange one: ‘masquerading as a sergeant’). It is noticeable, too, how many were treated for venereal disease. At 144 cases per thousand men, the VD rate in the Australian army was said to be the highest of any national group during the war.17 For the Aussies in the Relief Force the rate is more than double that. It is another indication that these Diggers were not just restless and unsettled men, but that they were gamblers, adventurers, risk-takers.

  From what we can tell, the men fitted back into civilian life no better or worse than any other group of ex-servicemen. Some did well: Sullivan had a job waiting for him with the National Bank; Bob Allis
on became mayor of Marrickville in Sydney. Chilla Hill, who lost a leg at Yemtsa, qualified as an accountant. Baverstock and Attiwill both succeeded as journalists. Albert Bennett joined the Victoria Police.

  Wilfred Yeaman’s luck was mixed. On the ship home he met an English girl who was on her way to join her Digger fiance in Brisbane. When the romance turned sour, she made contact with Yeaman, who hurried to Brisbane and married her himself. They settled in Newcastle, New South Wales, where Yeaman worked on the wharves. When the Depression hit they made ends meet by renting out rooms in the house they were buying. Yeaman was always too proud to draw the dole. By 1941 he was working as a commercial traveller in Sydney, where he died of a heart attack at the age of fifty-seven.18

  Ernest Heathcote, having resumed his real name, joined the police force. Stationed at Broken Hill, New South Wales, and then in Cobar, he rose to the rank of sergeant. He and his wife raised four daughters, but he rarely spoke of Russia with them and his family never learned how he came to choose the alias he did.19 Frederick Manning Whatson was a real person, born in Bellingen, New South Wales, as Heathcote claimed to have been. It remains a mystery whether the real Whatson agreed to Heathcote’s borrowing his identity—or even knew of it. Heathcote died in 1984, having outlived the real Whatson by four years.

  Wilfred Yeaman kept a diary in both France and Russia, but once back home rarely spoke of either. Yeaman’s family were reminded of his Russian service only when his souvenir Cossack sword was brought out to slash the grass in the backyard of their home in Newcastle, NSW. (Courtesy Yeaman family)

  Of the Elope team, Perry returned to Horsham and resumed farming, while Kelly finished his working life as the town clerk of the municipality of Burwood in Sydney. Their mate Rainbow Graham did less well and was down on his luck when he cadged a quid from John Kelly some years later.

  Some of the veterans of the Relief Force also fared less happily. Some of them died early. At least one, James Flinton, ended up in gaol. Olaf Andersen, the Danish-born Aussie who won the DCM at Tulgas, turned into a loner.

  How badly ex-servicemen fared was sometimes not apparent. Many returned from war suffering severe psychological injury from which they never recovered. Unlike physical injuries, psychological ones were neither visible nor understood. Medical opinion at the time held that ‘nervous breakdown’ was always caused by some underlying weakness of personality. Even the term ‘shell shock’ implied a collapse due to a single violent episode rather than the accumulated effects of months of stress.20

  Compared with the Western Front, the fighting in North Russia was almost inconsequential. Nevertheless, Andersen’s experiences there may have contributed to the social isolation of his later life. In World War II he barely made the height limit but served a couple of years as a guard at Murchison POW camp in Victoria. Discharged at age forty-one as too old, he returned to work on the railways. He never married and had no family in Australia. In the tiny Mallee wheat town of Woomelang, he took to drink and grew unkempt and irascible. His English deteriorated and few could understand him. By the 1960s he was living in a humpy, rejecting offers from the RSL to build him something better or place him in a hostel. He was found dead in his shack one day in 1973. His only possessions of value were his medals and $11 cash.21

  Perhaps it was only in the army that Andersen felt wanted. Of the Russian Diggers, he wasn’t alone in volunteering in World War II. Bert Perry of Elope became a captain in the Home Defence Forces. Basil Brewster, now an Australian, captained a ship. Harry Harcourt had migrated to Tasmania and served in the Second AIF at Kokoda. Rainbow Graham re-enlisted in 1941, but was charged with desertion the following year! He must have somehow talked his way out of it, as he remained on the roll till 1946.

  Olaf Andersen won a DCM in North Russia. During World War II, when this picture was taken, he guarded German POWs at Tatura, Victoria. After the war he ended up a loner. (National Archives of Australia)

  John Guinea looks a rough character in 1941. Discharged from the Second AIF, he rejoined under an assumed name, with tragic consequences. (National Archives of Australia)

  One ill-fated man was John Gerard Guinea from Murwillumbah, New South Wales. Before Russia, his record in the AIF was poor, with many black marks for misconduct and general slackness. In 1940 he joined up again, failed to change his ways, and was discharged as ‘unfit for the duties of the corps’. Within months he rejoined under the alias ‘John Denis Gerard’, a deception which cost him his life. He was sent to Borneo, taken prisoner there in 1942 and died in Japanese captivity.22

  Many Diggers returning from the war were uncommunicative about their experiences and those from North Russia were no exception. Bert Perry never spoke of his time there. When he died in 1984, his obituary in the local paper noted that he had been part of a mystery task force in Russia, but had resisted all attempts to get him to speak of it.23 Perry was a thoughtful man and his reluctance may have come from an exaggerated sense of military security—or perhaps a conviction that the entire undertaking was something not very creditable.

  West Australian Michael Greatorex, a vicar’s son, was another who didn’t speak of what he did in Russia, nor even mention that he had ever been there. After his death in 1963, his widow had to formalise some details for a war-service loan. She found a Relief Force identity disc with the words ‘Crashed at Obozerskaya’ scratched on the back. She wrote to Army Records: ‘My husband was very reticent about his earlier experiences and the words scratched on the back of the disc intrigue me … I am at a loss to understand in what war he was fighting’.24

  She wasn’t alone in her ignorance. In Australia, the North Russia campaign simply didn’t register in the public consciousness. The North Russia veterans, though fighting as Australians, had been members of the British Army. On their return they were scattered across the whole of Australia, with little chance of keeping contact or attending reunions. Few in number, they never formed an association. They simply lost touch with each other.

  No official history of the campaign was ever compiled; no medal was ever struck. The Australian soldiers who fought in North Russia received little publicity and no recognition. The role they had played was not so much forgotten as unknown.

  16

  THE MEDALS

  ONLY one thing brought the Intervention to passing public notice: the Victoria Cross. In 1919 it was the British Empire’s highest award for bravery, as it remains today for the Commonwealth. It was instituted in 1856 during the Crimean War—another bungled British invasion of Russia. Each medal is forged from melted-down guns captured from the Russians at the siege of Sevastopol. Only 1354 men and women have won the VC, ninety-seven of them Australians.1 During the Intervention only two VCs were awarded. Both were won in North Russia; both went to Aussies.

  By an amazing coincidence the two winners had consecutive service numbers in the British Army: Sam Pearse at 133002 and Arthur Sullivan at 133003. Both men were twenty-two when they served in North Russia. But while Pearse was a seasoned veteran, Sullivan was a novice.

  Sullivan had grown up in Crystal Brook, South Australia, where he passed the Intermediate Certificate and left school to join the National Bank. He was an only child and his parents wouldn’t let him enlist.2 He joined up only when he turned twenty-one and no longer needed their consent. By then he had a good job as a teller in nearby Maitland. The bank, as a patriotic employer, promised to keep Sullivan’s job open for him till the war ended. It also topped up his army pay, as it did for all bank employees who had enlisted.

  Sullivan signed his attestation paper on 27 April 1918, thereby swearing to well and truly serve his ‘Sovereign Lord the King’ and resist His Majesty’s enemies. His civic send-off was combined with a welcome home for an earlier Maitland volunteer who had recently been invalided home. The mayor, in his speech, thanked the returned man for his services to the country and expressed the hope that his wounds (multiple bullet wounds to knee, leg and arm, plus severe fever) ‘would cause him no i
nconvenience’!3 Sullivan was presented with a wristwatch by the Maitland Patriotic Society and the evening closed with songs (Sullivan sang a couple of solos), the national anthem and supper.

  Sullivan’s enlistment papers bear the notation, ‘Flying corps preferred’, but he was posted to the army’s 3rd General Service Reinforcements. He sailed for Europe on the troopship Marathon via South Africa and Sierra Leone. By coincidence the ship also carried the ailing Sir John Forrest— explorer, former Western Australian premier and federal minister—who was on his way to London for medical treatment. Forrest died as the ship reached Freetown and he was buried there with military honours. Only the shore garrison attended the funeral; the Australians were kept on board due to the outbreak of ‘Spanish influenza’ in the town.

  After sixty-seven days at sea, the Marathon docked at Tilbury on the Thames. To the disappointment of the men, they were sent straight to a camp in Wiltshire and saw nothing of London. A week later Sullivan and 160 others were transferred for artillery training. Earlier in the war a gunner could be trained in about four weeks, but the standard of recruits had fallen and it now took closer to seven. Sullivan was still in training when the Armistice was signed. He never made it to France and had seen no action before going to Russia.

  Sullivan earned his VC by rescuing four drowning men. Ironically, he might not have qualified had he been serving in the AIF rather than the British Army. The AIF’s view was that rescue attempts often led to the death of both rescued and would-be rescuer and thereby depleted the fighting strength. An order in August 1916 had directed that the VC was to be recommended only for bravery which materially contributed to attaining a victory.4