Russian Sideshow

by Robert L Willett

  The Soviets attacked several more times, using heavy artillery barrages, but very light infantry assaults. They seemed worn out by the weather and their heavy casualties, but finally picked up their dead and wounded, and by April 5 they had withdrawn.

  Finally, the weeklong series of battles was over, and it appeared that Archangel was safe.

  Just five days later, Company H was ordered back to Onega, where they drilled and paraded until they were sent back to Archangel for transportation home. On April 17, Captain Ballensinger heard that Bolshe-Ozerkiye had been evacuated and sent Lieutenant Carlson to search for bodies. The captain reported that at the time of writing of his report, April 25, 1919, two bodies had been recovered.

  On April 29, Pvt. William Negake drowned while crossing the Onega River. Ray Rasmussen was a pallbearer at Negake’s funeral on May 7: “Pvt. Negaki of Hart [Michigan] was buried at Onega cemetery at 11 A.M. I was one of the pallbearers (Mauritz, too). Carried wooden casket 1/4 mile and then had to cover grave.”41 Rasmussen was from the same little town. On April 5, Company M was relieved by a mixed Russian-British force and sent back to Archangel. Their most recent front-line assignment had lasted only eight days, but they were probably the most difficult days of their tour. Neither Company M nor Company H would see further combat. To the men of Company M, the clash in early April 1919 was known as the Battle of Verst 18, the verst marker on the Onega-Obozerskaya railroad at Bolshe-Ozerkiye.

  The battle at Bolshe-Ozerkiye was certainly not a victory; however, it kept a sizeable Soviet force from the railroad front and possibly from cutting off the troops in Obozerskaya and sections farther south. It also prevented a Red push on through to Archangel.

  On April 17, to everyone’s surprise, American brigadier general Wilds P. Richardson arrived without announcement to become the new regimental commander of the 339th, replacing Colonel Stewart, as the regiment prepared to leave the Russians to their own affairs.

  Meanwhile, the two platoons from Company K that had left the Railroad Force in early September to form the Kodish, or Seletskoye, front, the railroad front’s flank protection, were joined by other Allied forces and made up a very respectable concentration. Their mission was to protect the Plesetskaya-Archangel Road and keep the Bolos away from Archangel. It was a flank protection of the important, but stagnant, railroad front. Miles to the east of the railroad, the bloody Seletskoye Force found itself in almost constant combat, but during the winter, it held its ground before the overwhelming Soviet Sixth Army.

  7

  The Emtsa/Seletskoye Front

  [I]t seemed that the only fitting epitaph for them was the saddest that can ever be written above the graves of fallen soldiers. They died in vain.

  —E. M. Halliday, The Ignorant Armies

  THE Emtsa front on the Emtsa River developed as a result of the disappearance of Force B. Since the sailors of the Olympia were considered to be in danger, the newly arrived doughboys were sent to rescue their missing brothers-in-arms.

  As Third Battalion rolled down the rails from Archangel in the early days in September, Companies I, K, L, and M were anticipating their first action as American fighting men. Companies I, M, and L remained with the Railroad Column, but Company K was ordered to Seletskoye on the Emtsa River on September 7. On the way, they were to find and attempt to rescue Allied Force B.1 After passing stacks of abandoned equipment, ammunition, and supplies, as well as freshly dug graves, they arrived in Seletskoye.2

  Company K was led by one of the AEFNR’s toughest leaders, Capt. Mike Donoghue, nicknamed “Iron Mike” by his men. Iron Mike and his troops headed east from Obozerskaya on September 7, but unfortunately, became lost in the swampy forests of the area and floundered for days before they were rescued. On the fifth day of their adventure, battalion adjutant Lt. Clarence Gardner found them and directed them toward their assignment in Seletskoye. Shortly after leaving Obozerskaya, one of the men of Company K found a diary with the last entry August 30. The diary belonged to the daring Ens. Donald Hicks of the Olympia; he had lost it as Force B fought its way toward Obozerskaya.3

  The details of the arrival of the first American forces on this front are conflicting. Stewart’s report shows two platoons of Company L joining Donoghue en route to Seletskoye; other sources indicate that L came later. On September 14, Company K and two platoons of Company L arrived at Seletskoye to join the British and French of the newly designated Force D. That force consisted of troops previously on the Dvina that were quickly routed to the Seletskoye-Kodish area to protect Kodish’s critical position on the Plesetskaya-Kodish-Sisko Road. It was feared that on this main route ending just south of Archangel, large numbers of Red troops in Plesetskaya could be funneled north to threaten Archangel.

  The headquarters for Force D was Seletskoye, a small village located not far from the Emtsa River; it became the supply base for the troops that would be fighting across the river and down the road to Kodish, the key village. Seletskoye, a small, unimpressive village, would house hundreds of troops coming and going during the coming months. It was typical of many of the towns in which the doughboys would find themselves quartered. Its five to six hundred villagers lived in houses stretched on either side of the road.

  One feature of the Russian house was the absence of a “privy.” Harold Weimeister, a wagoner with the 337th Ambulance Company, wrote of his stay in Seletskoye. Although he spent many months in a variety of homes at four different fronts, he remembered his home in Seletskoye best:

  Every house was built in conjunction with the barn for convenience in the extreme cold and prevalent throughout central Europe. The toilet was on the second floor and was only a hole in the floor with the sewage dropping to the cattle stalls below. When used a turd would freeze before it hit the floor below with the consequences that in time it formed a tower about the diameter of a telephone pole. When the Russians started asking us when we were going to leave, we humorously answered, “When we fill up the privy.” This turned out not to be so humorous. We filled two up to the time we left Seletskoye in February. This tower of shit would grow steadily until it came abo[v]e the second floor too high to squat over—THEN WE MOVED.4

  With the arrival of the Americans, Force D numbered 380 men, including the Royal Scots, French machine gunners, and Royal Marines.5 A sudden attack by the Bolsheviks on September 16 tested the force, but the many automatic weapons and determined resistance of the Allies threw it back. Surprisingly, the British force commander Captain Scott decided to withdraw.6 Americans lost one man, Pvt. Glenn Staley of Company K, killed on September 17, and two wounded.7

  This fight had some embarrassing aftermaths. Captain Scott, convinced that more Red attacks would come, retreated north from Seletskoye to Tiagra (Tegra), while the Soviets retreated south to Kodish, fearing more Allied attacks. As the Allies withdrew, they burned several bridges to prevent enemy advances, not realizing that their opponents were heading in the opposite direction, also burning bridges. Finally, a British patrol from Tiagra determined that Seletskoye was deserted. As the patrol returned to their main force, to their surprise they discovered Yanks burning a bridge. Puzzled, one Brit called out, “I say, old chaps, what’s the bloody gaime?”8 They finally got things sorted out; the Allies did some bridge repair, then walked back into Seletskoye on September 19, while the Reds remained in Kodish.

  As the capture of Kodish was considered vital to the three-pronged attack planned by Allied headquarters and to the area defense, reinforcements were sent to Seletskoye from Archangel. The other two platoons of Company L arrived with the Machine Gun Company of the 339th, forty-seven men under Lt. Clifford Ballard. The new commander of the force was, of course, a British officer, Colonel Henderson, who lasted five days before he was relieved and returned to England.9

  Late in September, Captain Donoghue was ordered to take Company K, Company L and Machine Gun Company to board rafts made by the 310th Engineers and assault the Bolo position on the east bank of the Emtsa River. It would hav
e been virtually a suicide move, throwing the three companies against heavily fortified Bolo strongholds defended with a fierce tenacity. The Yanks refused to wade across the river, but found a half-destroyed bridge and started across. The Reds defended the bridge with everything they had. Lieutenant Ryan of Company K wrote on September 27:

  Started out about 5 A.M. and was with the main body at the bridge 3 versts outside of Kadish [sic] ran into something this proved to be a regular battle there must be 1000 of them. I was on the right flank. The left caught it the heaviest. Lt. Chappel was killed and I guess also Sgt. Agnew. Sgt Pease, Sgt. Nykus, Cpl. Dickey were all wounded . . . spent the night in the woods, walking around in water up to my knees.10

  Company K mechanic Percy Walker wrote:

  [T]he machine guns are popping to beat the band and big shells are bursting all around we have no big guns. . . . Commons [Lieutenant John] puts a sgt. in charge and takes me with him to do a little scouting so we started out in front of our lines and go about 5 rods when I get a rifle bullet through my right leg just below the hip.11

  By that time they had been bloodied, as well as battered. Killed were Lt. Charles F. Chappel, Sgt. John Agnew, and Pvt. Charles Vojta from Company K; Cpl. Edward Mertens and Cpl. Edward Kreizinger of Company L; and Cpl. Harley Hester and Sgt. Emanuel Meister from the Machine Gun Company. In addition there were twenty-four wounded.12

  During the next two weeks, Force D had numerous skirmishes in the frigid swamps near Kodish; low on supplies, with feet and legs soaked and swollen, they were unable to gain an inch of ground. British colonel Gavin relieved Colonel Henderson on September 29, the third Seletskoye commander in less than a week. Official reports indicate on October 7, Colonel Gavin relieved parts of the three American companies and sent them north to Mejnodskaya, out of harms’ way.13 Lieutenant Ryan’s diary indicated that Company K was relieved on October 3, but returned to the front lines on October 5; however, Company L remained on the line. A very welcome addition to the complement was a two-gun section of the awesome Canadian artillery, which arrived on October 8, fresh for the fight, along with Company D of the 339th.14

  Orders came for a new push on Kodish. Colonel Gavin ordered a ferry to be built some three versts south of Mejnodskaya; his plan was to cross to the east side of the Emtsa River, then push south along the river toward Kodish. On October 12, Companies K and L paddled across the river without opposition and advanced toward Kodish. That night they slept in the marshy woodlands, cold and hungry. The next morning Captain Cherry of Company L took his four platoons, plus two Company K platoons, in a move to cut off the Bolsheviks in their rear, while the rest of Company K attacked the Bolo line at the river. The frontal attack was supported by Canadian artillery, the machine guns of the Machine Gun Company, and the Royal Marines.

  But all to no avail; once again the terrain was their worst enemy, and Cherry never found the Soviet rear. Lieutenant Ryan, who was in the column, wrote in his diary:

  10/13—We started at 7:30 The woods and swamp are so thick that one cant see 20 feet ahead. Moved in squad column as best we could . . . just at dark about 5 P.M. they attacked our flank, we had no MG but 15 rifles, stood them off. We lost Pvt. Cromm [Louis Cronin] and Sgt. Scheunerman wounded. C [Lt. John Commons] and myself stayed on the ridge all night. Mean night.15

  October 14 would be no better. Gerrit Knoll of Company D wrote, though, that things were not all bad. “We moved up to Kadish and crossed the Ymsa River and lived in dugouts made by the Bolshevikies and they were good ones as they intended them for winter quarters.”16

  Patrols sent out the night of October 13 indicated that the Reds had fallen back south of Kodish, so Companies K and L, with two platoons of Company D, began moving cautiously down the road toward town. The Bolos had left a rear guard that opened on the Americans, killing Pvt. Joseph Ozdarski and Pvt. Arthur Christian of Company L and wounding several, including one from Company D, but by 2:30 P.M. on October 15, Kodish was in Allied hands.

  The next city on the road to the elusive Plesetskaya was Avda, about 20 versts south of Kodish. The British officers thought that they should continue the offensive, take Avda and move on to capture the railroad center, Plesetskaya. The two American companies, reinforced by forty Royal Marines, set out after a brief rest in Kodish, moving along the Avda Road, sending out their point men to locate any problems. But soon after they had rendezvoused with the other two American platoons, the Bolo artillery opened with their heavy guns, killing the point man, Pvt. Otto Taylor of Company K, and stopping the advance. That night the doughboys rested in the woods, waiting for daylight in the water-filled swamps that surrounded Kodish. At daybreak on October 17, the Allies attacked again, but the heavy Red artillery fire and the impassable swamps held them fixed to the road south of Kodish. The determined assaults that kept up for three days finally forced the Bolos to retreat south, leaving the town of Avda abandoned. On October 18, Ryan wrote, “This P.M. Dave Cromberger walked down the road and found their position deserted. L Company has gone up there.”17

  The next day, patrols moved through Avda and into positions two versts south of town. The situation stabilized for the moment as the Soviets dug in at Verst 16 between the towns of Kochmas and Avda. Both sides were content to find defensive positions and send out patrols in a number of directions. Three platoons of Company D were released as the action quieted down for the first time since late September. A force made up of Royal Scots and some SBAL troops, along with a number of Russian Officer Training Corps gunners and forty Lewis Machine Gunners, seized Tarasevo and Shred Makharenga east of Kodish.18 Rumors and prisoner reports told of desertions and unrest in the forces at Plesetskaya; it appeared that the prize, Plesetskaya, could be theirs with a final push. That was not to be the case.

  Back in Archangel, however, General Ironside had just replaced General Poole as the new British commander and attitudes were changing. No longer was the word “offensive” used for the campaign; the word now was “defensive.” General Ironside ordered all forward movement to cease and the various fronts to prepare to settle in for a winter stalemate. With snow in many places hip-deep, temperatures seldom rising above zero and often dropping to 50 degrees below zero, it was felt that neither men nor equipment were prepared for any aggressive combat. The front line for the Seletskoye force at that point was at Verst 17 (Kodish was at Verst 11), held by Company K with one platoon of Machine Gun Company. Miles away in reserve were two platoons of Company L and some Russian artillery in Seletskoye, the Canadian artillery having been sent to the Dvina Force. Captain Donoghue had his headquarters in Kodish with a British medical unit; he had no more than 180 men, including thirty sick or wounded. Seletskoye was about eighteen miles north of the Kodish contingent. Some added support came from several Vickers machine guns, which were dug in along the road behind the front lines.19 In view of the fact that Plesetskaya was just as important to the Reds as it was to the Allies, the Allied defensive force left outside Avda was hardly an impressive one.

  Apparently the Soviets detected the change in posture, and began moves to retake Kodish on November 1. They succeeded in driving out the Americans at Verst 17 with heavy artillery fire on November 3 and kept up the pressure, so that on November 4, the Yanks retired from Verst 16, still under heavy attack. In those four days, four men were wounded.20 (On November 1, the Kodish/Seletskoye Force acquired yet another new commander, this time Colonel Haselden of Force B fame, while Gavin was sent to the railroad front to replace the incompetent Colonel Sutherland.)

  Fighting continued for the next several days, with Red forces pounding away at every dugout, house, or hole that contained the men of Company K and the Machine Gun Company. These embattled troops of the front line, exhausted, cold, filthy, and half-starved, were in imminent danger of being cut off as Red troops worked their way down the Emtsa River, trying to get in the Allied rear. The objective was the one remaining whole bridge, the Americans’ only means of withdrawal to their old entrenchments on the other
side of the river. Donoghue described the action:

  For half an hour there raged a fight as intense as was the bitter reality of the emergency for the forty Americans with Lieutenant Clarence Gardner in those dugouts. By almost miraculous luck in directing their fire through the screen of trees that shielded the Reds from view, Sgt. Cromberger’s Vickers gun and Cpl. Wilkie’s Lewis gun inflicted terrible losses upon this fresh battalion just getting into action against the Americanskis.21

  With that effort, on November 7, the Yanks were able to leave Kodish, cross the bridge and man their fortifications on the American side of the Emtsa. Donoghue recorded, “The bridge was occupied by the enemy at 10:30 A.M. November 9.”22 Engineers from the 310th joined the doughboys to build blockhouses and lay wire to strengthen the little fortress, and artillery came down from Seletskoye with the reserves from Company L and some fresh replacements from Archangel. In spite of the reported ferocity of the fight, American losses were only seven wounded from November 1 to November 9, although the reported Soviet casualties were two to three hundred.23

  As the Kodish/Seletskoye front settled down to a kind of trench warfare, Major Nichols, commanding Third Battalion on the railroad front, visited the remnants of the original Force D. He sent Company K back to Archangel on November 20 and forwarded Company E from its Archangel area guard duty to Kodish. The Royal Scots had gone back to Dvina, the Royal Marines had been sent to other fronts, Lieutenant Ballard’s machine gun platoon had been relieved by fresh Yankee gunners, and only Company L remained of the original Force D.

  Pvt. Donald Carey with Company E said Seletskoye impressed him more favorably than other Russian towns and seemed to him to be an agricultural community. “The land, cleared for a considerable distance and crudely fenced into fields, appeared to have been farmed for many years.”24 As Company E arrived, a detail of American and British were building a line of zigzagging trenches and other fortifications as a defensive position for the protection of the vital road. Quarters for Allied soldiers were uncomfortable, but warm. And bugs were definitely a problem. Cockroaches, lice, even flies in the bitter cold, were part of the average Russian house. The smell often was the hardest thing to stomach. There was little bathing during the winter, and much of the soap was a derivative of some fish products.