ANZACs in Arkhangel Read online

  There was no continuous front line. The Allied defences extended several kilometres astride the railway line and river, then petered out in the endless forests. The Bolsheviks probed those defences, making sudden attacks wherever they found a weakness. Patrols from both sides penetrated behind each other’s positions, setting ambushes and skirmishing. The battle front was simply wherever the two forces chanced to meet.

  Over the winter a daily train operated to the Railway Front, bringing in rations and taking out the sick and wounded. Once the rivers had frozen, however, the troops elsewhere depended on horse and sleigh—with the advantage that a sleigh could carry double the weight of an equivalent horse and cart.8 Convoys of sleighs were manned by local villagers and were able to cover 40 to 60 kilometres in twenty-four hours. The system worked well, but it was a massive logistical effort. To keep all the outposts supplied, over nine hundred sleighs were on the move in relay every day.9 In the four months from December 1918, there were 28,209 sleigh-loads carried on the route between Arkhangel and Bereznik alone.10

  Moving arms and ammunition was a Herculean task. As a general rule guns could be moved only about 20 kilometres a day because advance teams were needed to cut trees and level the snow. When a Canadian artillery battery needed to move its two giant 60-pounder guns, special sleighs were built in the naval workshops in Arkhangel. Each gun, each gun carriage and each set of wheels needed a ten-horse sleigh; each gun buffer took a six-horse sleigh; while the ammunition followed in fifty single-horse sleighs.11

  Ironside himself had to rely on a pony sleigh to reach the front line because aircraft were undependable in winter and there wasn’t a riding horse in Arkhangel which could carry his weight. Drawn by a relay of hardy Siberian ponies, he travelled at night, swathed from head to foot in furs and cushioned in a bed of hay. Often his only escorts were his driver and a Russian teenager, Kostya, who later accompanied him back to England and remained in his service for twenty years. Ironside’s surprise arrival in isolated outposts added enormously to his popularity with the Allied troops of all nationalities.

  Eskimo sleighs on the frozen river, with Solombala Barracks in the background. Eskimos descended upon Arkhangel every winter, wearing furs dyed ‘every colour of the rainbow’. John Kelly was surprised the reindeer were so small and was struck by the way the drivers controlled them by poking them with long poles. (US Army Signal Corps, Bentley Historical Library)

  Over the winter, troops at the front depended on sleighs to keep them supplied. On the Dvina Front, hundreds were needed in a constant relay. Sometimes the ponies were so encrusted with frost they looked like polar bears. On this leg of the route to Bereznik a single log cabin was the only habitation in 44 kilometres. (US Army Signal Corps, Bentley Historical Library)

  By January 1919 these troops numbered about 15,000 in the Arkhangel command. The biggest contingents were the British with 6300 men, the American with 5300 and the French with 1600. In addition, there were about 10,000 White Russian troops of dubious value. The Americans did more than their share of the fighting: 4200 of them were at the front, compared with only 3000 British (of whom some were the Canadian gunners). In the relative comfort of Arkhangel, the British outnumbered the Americans 3000 to 900.12

  There was also a small air force with about thirty British and Canadian pilots and thirty White Russians, most of whom were highly experienced. The commander of the Russian Slavo-British air force, himself a South African, records having three Australian pilots. Unfortunately he fails to give their names and it has proved impossible to identify them.13

  To keep the planes flying over winter required extraordinary efforts. They were kept in hangars or tents permanently heated by flameless lamps. Even so, oil would thicken and cease to lubricate. Radiators would freeze solid and hot water flushed through them would often freeze again before the engine could be started. Once a plane was in the air, the throttles and control wires froze, metal rigging wires crystallised and snapped and air intake pipes and exhausts filled with ice. The bomb-release gear often froze, so bombs were carried in the observer’s seat and dropped over the side by hand. Aircraft in trouble had nowhere to land but four primitive landing strips hundreds of kilometres apart.

  With only a couple of aircraft, the Bolsheviks were outnumbered and outclassed in the air, but on the ground it was different. Opposing the Allies was the 6th Red Army of about 27,000 men. It was supported by artillery with ample ammunition and was ably led by Aleksandr Samoylo, a former Tsarist general. As well as his land forces, Samoylo commanded a Bolshevik flotilla on the Dvina. With seven gunboats and two artillery barges, it had less firepower than the British flotilla, but come spring it was to enjoy a brief advantage. While both sides were frozen in over winter, the ice thawed earlier upstream and the enemy gunboats were able to go into action while the British were still ice-bound.

  RAF Sopwith fitted with skis. Keeping aircraft operational in the phenomenal Russian cold was nearly impossible. Radiators froze solid, air intake pipes filled with ice, rigging wires crystalised and snapped, controls iced up. Frostbite was common among the pilots despite their heavy windproof clothing and furs. (US Army Signal Corps, Bentley Historical Library)

  Exercising overall executive and military control in the northern region was Mikhail Sergeyevich Kedrov, a ruthless commissar. Soon after the Revolution he had been appointed to head what the Soviets termed an ‘Extraordinary Commission’. His role was to consolidate Soviet power in the north and organise the urgent removal from Arkhangel of the Allied war supplies. He travelled in a special armoured train bristling with guns and went from town to town to instil discipline, shoot ‘traitors’ and terrorise the peasants with bloodthirsty speeches. Paradoxically, he was also a man of culture; an accomplished pianist, he had played Beethoven sonatas to Lenin when they both lived in exile in the West.

  By a strange coincidence, the Western diplomatic corps in Russia actually met Kedrov. While he was withdrawing south from Arkhangel, just before the Allied takeover, the diplomats—including the gregarious, cigar-smoking US Ambassador, David Rowland Francis, and his black American valet14 —were making their way north from Vologda to Arkhangel. The two trains met on the single track and one had to back up to the nearest siding to let the other pass. Francis regarded Kedrov as ‘one of the most violent and unscrupulous members of the Bolshevik party’, and feared being taken hostage. Instead, Kedrov stood politely beside the track and made small talk with the ambassadors.15

  With the arrival of winter the Bolsheviks grew more numerous, better armed and more aggressive. Enemy pressure was brought to bear on isolated outposts. Despite their initial inexperience, many American units fought well. At Tulgas on the Dvina, for example, the Bolsheviks attacked on 11 November 1918, the very day the Allies and Germany signed the Armistice. Several days of unexpected warmer weather had partially thawed the river to the south, giving the enemy gunboats free rein. Fighting raged for three days and it was only the Americans’ tenacity, plus a battery of Canadian guns, that carried the day.

  But the signing of the Armistice undermined Allied morale. The men had been conscripted to fight Germans in a war they believed in. Now, for reasons they didn’t understand, they found themselves taking sides in a cause in which they had no interest. With Germany defeated and the world war over, all sense of purpose evaporated. Allied troops felt they were fighting for nothing except their own lives.

  The Bolsheviks were skilful propagandists and played on Allied discontent. At night across the front line, Allied troops were harangued by Bolshevik spokesmen, many of whom had spent time as migrants in the United States and spoke English with American accents. Leaflets were left to be picked up along forest tracks or dropped by aircraft of the newly formed Red air force. Some bore the hallmarks of having been written by native English-speakers.

  The leaflets asked the men why they weren’t going home now the war was over. They questioned what grievance the foreigners had with the Russian people: ‘What have we do
ne to you?’ Some leaflets raised class issues, accusing the foreign troops of shooting their fellow workers and of being scabs. This was an approach which resonated with the Americans, many of whom were conscripted factory workers. ‘You soldiers are fighting on the side of the employers against us, the working people of Russia … You are kidding yourself that you are fighting for your country.’16

  ‘Have you signed up as a Volunteer?’ Bolshevik propaganda was skilful and effective. This recruiting poster dates from 1920—after the Allied intervention was over, but before Arkhangel finally fell to the Bolsheviks. (Government of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic)

  Allied commanders pretended the propaganda had no effect and, in public, the troops scoffed at it. In fact, it preyed on the minds of many men in isolated outposts, who already found the winter silence unnerving and who knew that until the thaw there was no possibility of escape. The futility of their presence added to the rigours of the cold, the featureless landscape, the monotonous food and the brief hours of dim half-light.

  Bolshevik propaganda had an especially powerful effect on the morale of the Russians, both soldiers and civilians. Ironside conceded the propaganda was well written and very effective. In Arkhangel Bolshevik posters were put up nightly and leaflets were circulated by hand. Ironside complained that the city was full of Soviet agents and that those responsible were seldom caught. The Bolsheviks made propaganda tours of occupied villages and in the summer even delivered leaflets addressing Russian householders by name. They also had the clinching argument: Bolsheviks were fellow Russians defending their homeland, while the foreigners were invaders.

  By comparison, British propaganda was clumsy. At first the Bolsheviks were dismissed as a cowardly rabble ‘foaming at the mouth’, who would turn and run at a few well-directed shots.17 When this proved obviously untrue, a new explanation was offered: the Bolsheviks were actually led by Germans who ‘appear in Russian uniform and are impossible to distinguish’.18

  General Ironside’s efforts were also feeble. On his arrival he issued a proclamation in English, French and Russian:

  There seems to be among the troops a very indistinct idea of what we are fighting here in North Russia. This can be explained in a few words. We are up against Bolshevism which means anarchy pure and simple … Look at Russia at the present moment. The power is in the hands of a few men, mostly Jews, who have succeeded in bringing the country to such a state that order is non-existent, the posts and railways do not run properly, every man who wants something that somebody has got just kills his opponent, only to be killed himself when the next man comes along …19

  An American major protested at the tract and it was withdrawn from circulation among the Americans.20 John Kelly didn’t think much of it. He wrote: ‘None of us fell for this political propaganda I can assure you.’21

  The Jewish Chronicle in London didn’t care for it either. The newspaper complained to the Foreign Office, which agreed that Ironside’s remark about Jews was ‘unfortunate’ and tried to hush it up. Though a splendid soldier, Ironside had his prejudices and seemed to dislike Bolsheviks, Jews, French and Germans, in that order.22

  Morale sank steadily as the winter wore on. There was unrest in every national force, though each played down its own failings and exaggerated those of the others. The Americans thought the British troops ‘weedy and scrawny looking’ and fit only for garrison duty.23 The British thought the French a ‘sullen band of strikers and shirkers’ who sulked if they weren’t given leave every ten days to visit their women in Arkhangel.24 It was no surprise when one French unit refused to leave Arkhangel to return to the front, saying they would defend the city but would take no part in any offensive action; nor when a company of 160 French colonial troops had to be taken into custody, ‘completely demoralised and … useless for military operations’.25

  In February the British faced a mutiny of their own. Some of the 13th Yorkshires refused to relieve the Americans on the Dvina and demanded that censorship be lifted so people back home would know what was really happening in Russia. The ringleaders were court-martialled for mutiny and condemned to be shot. The sentences were commuted only because the King had given a secret direction that no executions should be carried out after the Armistice.26

  The Russians were the least reliable. British opinion of them was very low, and not just in terms of their fighting ability. A British major wrote:

  As far as the Russian element is concerned, they are lazy, stupid, indolent, pleasure loving and seeking, and if it was not for the large number of Finns and Letts, no work where even the least amount of brain is required could be undertaken owing to their lack of education and want of intellect.27

  Many Russian officers behaved as if the Tsar had never abdicated and openly despised their men. Their troops responded with surly resentment and sometimes outright treachery. For example, Tulgas, the village the Americans had held against Bolshevik attack in November 1918, was entrusted to the 3rd North Russian Rifle Regiment. The following April, the regiment went over to the Bolsheviks en masse, murdering seven of their officers and surrendering the blockhouses and dugouts the Americans had spent the winter reinforcing.

  For all their boasted military tradition, Russian officers were themselves undependable. The 1st Arkhangel Regiment, the ones who had mutinied on 11 December, failed to support one American advance because their commander thought it ‘not the right kind of day’ for an attack!28 This was a New Year operation towards Yemtsa on the Railway Front in which no group distinguished itself. The French Foreign Legion failed to make headway in spite of their snowshoes and a British company failed to open fire because its commander was nursing a New Year hangover. Ironside reprimanded the Russian and French officers and sacked the delinquent Briton.

  The Americans had their own morale problems, with high numbers of self-inflicted wounds,29 and much suspicion of British motives. They felt they were being used as pawns for the British Empire and bitterly resented being under British command. One American company refused to return to the Railway Front, complaining the British always placed them in the most dangerous positions. A common belief was that British officers carried extra ‘pips’ in their pocket so that if the occasion demanded they could attach the necessary insignia to outrank any American present.

  One American officer wrote home: ‘We are under British control. Mind you, the English own us; they can do with us what they please. Good God, you cannot believe how these English are hated around here’.30 General Wilds Richardson, who took over from Colonel Stewart in April 1919, even disdained British decorations. He noted the condescending way the British awarded them—‘with an air of superiority bred from generations of handling troops of inferior races’.31

  The ill-feeling was reciprocated. From the British point of view, the Yanks had joined the war three years late, while in their own eyes the Americans had arrived just in time to rescue the Tommies. Relations weren’t helped by the curious fact that many of the American troops didn’t speak English. A sizeable proportion were drawn from migrant families, newly arrived in the United States and often of Polish or Russian origin. According to one British officer, they spoke every European language except English.32

  John Kelly bore witness to the Americans’ feelings. He was attached to an American unit for some weeks and wrote: ‘These so-called allies of ours hated England and all things English … No Hun ever sang his hymn of hate with greater fervour than did these Yankees.’ He found the Yanks cocksure, but very green and inexperienced and with no conception of real war. The loudest bang they had ever heard, he suggested, was the popping of a champagne cork.33

  In public, General Ironside was tactful about the calibre of the American troops, but privately he shared the general low opinion. He wrote: ‘I have seen many American regiments in France and had many under my command but I have never seen anything quite so bad as this regiment … [It] has received no training and the officers are, one and all, of the lowest quali
ty imaginable.’34

  In turn, Kelly had no high regard for the British officers. To him they were barrack-square officers, interested in troops saluting and marching in step, but completely blind to battle discipline, initiative or an ability to improvise. ‘In the field I did not see one English officer whom I would place in the category of being a leader or an inspiration to men under his command.’35

  Australians, of course, reckoned themselves superior to all-comers. Keith Attiwill, who was to arrive in Russia in June 1919 with the Relief Force, compiled a table ranking the fighting prowess of both friends and foes. Attiwill himself had fought neither Germans (omitted from the list) nor Turks, and drew on his mates’ views as much as his own. The table, with 100 being the highest possible score, gives a pretty good idea of Australian opinion.36

  CountryNicknameRating

  Australia Aussies 100

  England Tommies 60

  Scotland Jocks 80

  New Zealand Kiwis 90

  Canada Canooks 80

  South Africa Springboks 90

  United States Yanks 50

  Egypt Gyppos -100

  Turkey Johnny Turk 98

  Chinese (Labour Corps) Chinks .5

  Portuguese Pork and Beaners .1

  Russia (Whites) Russkis 60

  Russia (conscripts) Bolos 20

  Russia (Red army) Reds 90

  French Frogs 50

  National antipathy impinged on social contacts. Perry became such an accomplished skater he was chosen for the Allied team in a friendly ice-hockey game against the Russian Whites. He was persistently fouled by a Russian officer and eventually lost his temper and punched him. ‘Quite a lot of British officers came up and told me I was justified in hitting the rotter.’37 The Russian later apologised for his dirty play but refused Perry’s challenge to settle their differences with fists on the grounds he was an officer. A Canadian officer offered to fight in Perry’s place but the Russian declined him too.