ANZACs in Arkhangel Page 5

  Of the Americans, the luckiest were those of the 2nd Battalion, which was assigned to guard duty (and tram duty) in Arkhangel. Facilities were soon organised for them: film shows, band parties, boxing matches, a YMCA library and canteen and, in winter, a toboggan run. Prohibition feeling was strong in the United States and in theory American troops were ‘dry’. In practice things were different: alcohol was the one thing Arkhangel didn’t lack and the city was awash with vodka. In fact it was chocolate that was in short supply and at one stage the YMCA canteen curtailed its issue because so much was being resold to Russian civilians. Indeed, most American stores were available on Arkhangel’s black market. Colonel Stewart’s successor refused to recommend him for a meritorious service decoration on the grounds that he’d failed to prevent the wholesale theft of American supplies.18

  Other comforts were also available in Arkhangel. In his diary, one American private, Donald Carey, records being told how cheap and easy it was to procure Russian women. ‘Accounts by our men of the immorality of the Russian girls were startling and disgusting,’ he wrote.19 Carey himself chose to stay in his barracks studying the Bible.

  The Australians were probably less prudish. John Kelly’s Bible is held at the Australian War Memorial. According to its inscription, it was presented to him by St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Glen Innes, on the occasion of his departure for the war. While the cover is worn, the pages show no sign of ever having been opened.

  Sexual activity, of course, was no subject for letters home, nor even for open reference in a diary. Any rare mention of prostitution in soldiers’ writings usually expresses shock and disapproval—probably just for home consumption. In their surviving letters, the Australians of Elope make no reference to sex, and certainly not to the official brothel set up by the British, conveniently close to the tram line.20

  Bert Perry later became a stalwart of the Methodist Church, but an entry in his diary is intriguing. On 18 October 1918, he records walking in the moonlight in the central city. ‘Walking back; a snowball hit me. Looking back, a girl. Walked on. Another snowball, so I went to the girl and asked her …’ The next page has been torn out.

  The Americans’ arrival added new uniforms to a city already crowded with them. The Americans joined kilted Scots, Cossacks with fur hats and sabres, Russian officers from the old Imperial army with rows of glittering medals. In addition there were French, Poles, Serbians and Italians (who had the smartest uniforms), all in their military plumage with shining boots and jingling spurs. There was even a solitary Japanese officer who, it was said, hadn’t taken off his boots or lifejacket during the entire voyage from England.

  Besides the military, the city teemed with strange and shady characters: speculators and black marketeers, political fugitives, sinister types with assumed names, unkempt priests with beards and shaggy hair. Philip Jordan, the American Ambassador’s major-domo, cut a striking figure; a black American, he generally appeared in public dressed in spats and top hat. A former actress from Petrograd, known only as ‘Dolina’, courted Allied officers so keenly she was reported as a spy, though her willingness to entertain guests in her room suggests a different motive.21

  Another female, of course, was the newly arrived Maria Bochkarova. Bert Perry attended a lecture by her in which ‘she spoke of the outrages on the women soldiers of her battalion’.22 He does not mention her appearance, though others unanimously commented on her plainness. Whatever her looks, she hovered around Allied headquarters, embarrassing the officers by offering to show them her battle scars. The Americans referred her to the Russian General Marushevsky, who pronounced female soldiers a stain on the honour of North Russia and ordered her stripped of her uniform.

  General Vladimir Marushevsky was the commander-in-chief of the Russian army of the North. He was barely 5 feet tall and tried to make up for his lack of stature with bursts of furious energy. He seldom arrived at his headquarters before midday, by which time there was always a crowd of visitors waiting for him. He would then rush through a series of hectic interviews, urging his visitors to be brief on the grounds he was so busy.

  Though Marushevsky had served under Kerensky, his real sympathies were monarchist. He was known as a strict disciplinarian but in terms of achieving military results he was almost useless. Instead of fighting Bolsheviks, he spent his time personally drafting outlandish, rambling Orders of the Day, such as this one:

  Order to the Forces of the Northern Region No 78,

  of 11 December 1918

  Yesterday, the 10th December at 10 o’clock pm, I was walking near the Lomonosov School. From the direction of the cathedral I heard a disgusting flow of gutter language. Going nearer, I met two sailors and approaching one of them, I called his attention to the absolute impermissibility of such filthy language in the street. In a slovenly manner, the one to whom I addressed myself declared himself to be drunk, and with a broad gesture he blew his nose on the pavement …23

  The order goes on to lament how one of the sailors was wearing a woman’s locket, thereby ‘disgracing the uniform of our native land’. It concludes: ‘How pitiful all this is and how deeply disgusting’.

  In theory the Russian army of the North was an autonomous anti-Bolshevik force, but in practice it was totally dependent on the Allies. Most of its officers were former officers in the Tsarist army whose politics were reactionary and whose treatment of their men was arrogant and neglectful. While many were personally brave, collectively they were disorganised and incompetent. Plagued by indolence and jealousy, they talked much but showed little will to fight.

  A month after the Tchaikovsky episode, a new officer arrived from Britain as Poole’s chief of staff: Major General Edmund Ironside. Within a few days Poole himself left for London ‘for consultations’. It was an open secret that he was being withdrawn and would not be returning. Ironside was ordered to take over.24

  At thirty-eight, Ironside was one of the youngest major generals in the British Army. A daring soldier, he had been the model for John Buchan’s hero in his novel The Thirty-Nine Steps. He was a giant of a man, 6 feet 4 inches tall and weighing almost 20 stone (1.93 metres and 127 kilograms). Ironside possessed ability, energy and a commanding personality. He charmed and impressed everyone. Bizarre rumours added an almost legendary aura: that he was directly descended from the last Saxon king of England, that he had been expelled from school at the age of ten for thrashing his teacher!25

  Ironside was also a gifted linguist who spoke five languages well, and had a working knowledge of ten others. His Russian was serviceable26 and he could swear fluently enough to impress the local population. His language skills came in handy in other, unexpected ways. On one occasion over the summer the Muslim lascar seamen on some of the British ships became so weak they could scarcely work. It was Ramadan and they refused to eat until the sun set—which it barely did in North Russia at that time of year. Ironside got them eating by giving them absolution in Urdu!27

  Spot the General. Ironside, the British commander, was 6 ft 4 in tall and weighed more than 20 stone (1.93 m and 127 kg). His Russian counterpart, General Marushevsky, was 5 ft 1 in and must have looked a pygmy in comparison. The two did not get on well. (IWM Q 16349)

  But the damage to the Allied cause had been done before Ironside arrived. Bolshevik propaganda warned that the foreigners planned to do away with democratic government and restore the monarchy. The working classes of Arkhangel had always been suspicious of the foreigners, but after Tchaikovsky was deposed the Allies lost support among the middle class too.

  Arkhangel became a dangerous place. Bolshevik sympathisers abounded and the British were forced to treat every male civilian as suspect. Occasional shoot-outs took place in the streets and troops were ordered to be armed at all times. If a soldier wasn’t carrying a rifle or pistol, he was directed to keep a Mills grenade in his pocket.

  On one occasion John Kelly was cornered by a group of hostile Russian sailors. ‘I whipped out my Mills, pulled out the pin
and told them in my limited Russian, plus some plain English, that if I went, I would take some of them along with me for company.’28 He kept the grenade as a souvenir.

  Perry’s diary was more laconic:

  5 November: Rumour has it the bolshies have issued a proclamation that any British or Americans seen out after the tenth will be shot.

  10 November: Nobody shot.

  A month later Perry was called out to help quell a mutiny by Russian troops. On 11 December two companies of the 1st Arkhangel Regiment refused to leave for the front and barricaded themselves in their barracks. Perry was among those who poured shot over the building. The mutineers came to the front door, waving handkerchiefs and with their hands up. Two British NCOs lined them up, but a trigger-happy American opened fire, seriously wounding three Russians. Perry was full of contempt for the mutineers who, though armed and inside a solid building, had given up so easily. He noted: ‘There are now rumours that one in every 10 of the rioters are going to be shot’.29

  It is worth recounting the several versions of this incident. They illustrate not only the morale problems on the anti-Bolshevik side, but also the difficulty at this distance in time, in unravelling what actually happened.

  General Ironside’s version comes from his memoirs, which were published as late as 1953.30 He records going to inspect the two companies who were to parade before leaving for the front. They refused to turn out and stayed in their barracks, shouting and waving red flags, and firing at random from the roof. General Marushevsky took charge and ordered up some Russian Lewis-gunners who were doing a course at the machine-gun school. The pint-sized general exhorted the mutineers through a megaphone but was met with more shouting and flag-waving.

  Two Stokes mortars were then brought up, also manned by Russians. Their first shot landed in the courtyard on a civilian, the second exploded on the roof. At this, the occupants came out with their hands up. General Marushevsky ordered the ringleaders to step forward and thirteen owned up, all elderly men or NCOs. No Allied troops took part, except to cordon off a street. There were no casualties—except for the unlucky civilian, of whom there was nothing left to identify. Later, the remaining men entrained for the front, singing lustily.

  According to Ironside, the ringleaders were court-martialled and sentenced to death. However, as all had been prisoners of war in Germany, their sentences were commuted to terms of imprisonment. Later, by arrangement with the Bolsheviks they were allowed to cross the lines and ‘I believe all were sent to their homes’.

  John Kelly provides a different account.31 The 1st Arkhangel Regiment were inside the Alexander Nevsky Barracks. It was a massive masonry building so machine-gun fire had no effect. A Stokes mortar was mounted by Russians who were being trained by Elope Force. The first shot fell short, but the second was ‘a beauty’, bursting on a window ledge.

  The mutineers surrendered, a number having been injured. The men were ordered to identify the ringleaders, but refused to do so. Every tenth man was then numbered off to be executed, whereupon names were divulged. Twelve ringleaders were taken away and shot the same afternoon.

  An American version is different again.32 It has Russian and American troops dealing with the emergency and the British dawdling up long after it was over. It does mention one of the Russians’ grievances: Marushevsky had recently authorised officers to wear epaulettes again which, to the men, were a hated relic of the old regime. It doesn’t mention their other grievances, none of which were entirely unreasonable: they would not fight for the English king, they would not salute, they wanted bigger rations.33

  Ironside’s account clearly plays down the whole incident and in one respect is quite untrue. Men were indeed executed, thirteen in fact. Ironside himself signed the death warrants.34

  4

  THE WINTER

  CAMPAIGN

  DECEMBER 1918 – MARCH 1919

  BY now—December 1918—it was winter. The hours of daylight had become shorter until, by the winter solstice, Arkhangel saw the sun for just three minutes. The days, though, weren’t just one long blackout; it was still possible to read by natural light for about three hours a day. Moonlight on the snow often created a scene almost as clear as daytime and sometimes there was the eerie beauty of the northern lights, the aurora borealis.

  The Australians were unanimous in finding the winter forests wonderful, the trees laced with snow and everything ‘so clean and pure and delicate’.1 The silence of the forests was almost absolute. The uncanny stillness was broken only by the soft plop when a mass of snow was dislodged from a branch—or, at night, by a sudden crack like a rifle shot when a tree branch shattered in the intense cold.

  At Christmas, Perry was invited to the home of some ‘very nice people’, a well-to-do Arkhangel family. The Christmas tree was lit with electric lights, presents were exchanged and toasts were drunk at midnight. Perry felt homesick, sang eight songs and danced till three o’clock in the morning. ‘Have spent the best Christmas in my soldiering travels. Meeting a better class of Russians than previously. I’m beginning to feel for them more.’2 A week later, he enjoyed another round of partying for Orthodox Christmas.3

  The Aussies found the Russian winter extreme but exhilarating. Temperatures of minus 30 degrees were common, when the hairs in their nostrils froze instantly, frost formed on their eyebrows and their eyelids stuck together. Sometimes the temperature was even lower. Kelly reports that it twice dropped to minus 70 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 56.7 degrees Celsius).4 Breathing at that temperature felt as if a blowtorch was being aimed down his throat, and the air was rarefied to the point of suffocation. Touching metal objects with a bare hand was like grasping a red-hot iron; skin and flesh would adhere to the metal and produce horrible wounds.

  Sir Ernest Shackleton, the Antarctic explorer, had been brought to Russia as an adviser and given the honorary rank of major. Under his supervision, Elope members were issued with a complete polar outfit which included a heavy overcoat lined with sheepskin, blizzard goggles, a fur hat and fur-lined leather gloves. In addition, there were oversized mittens which were strung around the neck, kiddie-fashion, on a harness. The men kept their gloved hands inside the mittens, slipping them out only for brief periods.

  The kit was excellent except for the boots, which were made of canvas and had oversized wooden soles without heels. To wear them, the men first put on two or three pairs of woollen socks, then lumbermen’s woollen stockings reaching to the top of their thighs. Next came fur-lined boots and then the Shackleton boots, with any empty space being packed with rags or straw. With their feet done up like this, the men could barely walk, much less fight.5

  Frostbite was a constant danger and was signalled by a patch of white skin and a loss of sensation. Immediate massage was needed to restore the circulation, taking special care not to break the skin. For this, a lubricant was needed and, paradoxically, snow was often the only thing available. The body warmth of the masseur’s hands melted the snow to form a film between the fingers and the victim’s skin.

  Sergeant Perry in winter kit. The polar outfit was designed by the famous Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton and was very successful except for the boots, which were almost impossible to walk in. Gloved hands were protected by the oversized mittens. Note Perry’s AIF badge on his fur hat. (AWM A05184)

  Perry records how he felt his fingers start to freeze one morning in January 1919. He rushed into a house to thaw them out and when he felt them tingling again, set out anew. After a while they lost all feeling and he pulled off his gloves to find all his fingers white and frozen stiff.

  He put them into the snow and was rubbing them hard when a Russian policeman offered to have a look. ‘Straightaway he took me inside, got some snow and rubbed them for an hour … [It] undoubtedly saved my fingers except for one which would not come to life. It’s 28 below zero.’6

  In the winter conditions the Australians had to acquire new skills themselves. Some found it tricky learning to ski and were un
nerved the first time they crossed the Dvina on the ice. They needn’t have worried for ice on the rivers could form 30 centimetres thick in a single night. In midwinter the ice on the Dvina was 3 metres thick and supported a railway line across it.

  Waging war in the extreme cold created unforeseen problems. Grenades failed to explode. The fuses on trench mortars didn’t function properly. The propellants in shells lost so much power their range almost halved and the artillery range-tables had to be recalculated. The lubricant in firearms froze, the metal became brittle and parts broke off. Machine guns froze solid and had to be thawed with boiling water before they could be stripped and reassembled.

  The British and Americans built blockhouses, low log buildings in traditional North Russian style but more strongly constructed. They were sited to give each other fire support and clearings were cut on all sides, then staked out with barbed wire entanglements. If a heavy snowfall destroyed a clear field of fire, it was easier to add another storey to a blockhouse than try to clear the snow.7

  The defence enjoyed one enormous advantage. The blockhouses were relatively warm and comfortable and weapons could be manipulated easily in them. This meant the defenders’ firepower was always superior because machine guns were pretty well unusable in the open. Attacks in any case were generally brief, because nobody could survive for long without shelter. In such low temperatures wounds were clean and there was no gangrene, but an injured man outside would die of exposure in minutes.

  From Arkhangel the lines of communication spread outwards like the ribs of a fan. There were few connecting links between them and each could be properly reinforced only from the hub at Arkhangel. The most important were the railway due south towards the city of Vologda, and the Dvina River south-east towards Kotlas. In addition, there were the Pinega and Vaga rivers, both tributaries of the Dvina, and a trail to Onega. During the winter Arkhangel was linked with Murmansk by a reindeer trail across the White Sea, over which mail for the troops was carried.