Russian Sideshow

by Robert L Willett

  As Company E arrived on the line, they discovered that their barracks bags, which had been held by the supply company in Archangel, had been rifled. Pvt. Fred Krooyer seemed resigned to that fact:

  We went back to Missinowski [Mejnodskaya] for warmer clothing. It had now got so cold some of the boys were freezeing their fingers or feet nearly every night. When we went back to get our warmer clothing out of our barracks bags we found that supply sergeant Patton who had been taking care of our barracks bags had sold about all that he could sell so we didn’t get much warmer clothing to go back to the front.25

  There was always some kind of diversion, and some of it involved liquor. Fred Krooyer’s diary on November 28 noted that he was at the Emtsa River front line in the bitter cold, hoping for a quiet tour on the line. “Major Donohue came in drunk that night and began throwing grenades in the Bolo line, this didn’t go far before the Bolo’s opened up machine guns on us, they kept a firing until nearly morning.”26

  During the next month, the weekly reports showed, “Routine patrolling and outpost duties at bridge position with intermittent sniping and shelling without major operations or American casualties.”27 In fact, Krooyer mentioned that a limited truce took place near Kodish in December. A Red officer had communicated to Lieutenant Baker that a British officer had died in a Bolshevik hospital, and they had found seven hundred rubles on him, which they wanted to return to the Allies. “Dec 20—Bolo officer comes over and [hands] in the seven hundred rubles he took off the British officer to J.J. Baker and invited him over to dinner. He also said as long as we didn’t fire they wouldn’t.”28

  Donald Carey wrote home shortly after Christmas:

  The most unexpected thing happened Christmas Eve. I received your box and eight letters. They came at just the proper time, and the best part was that I never expected the box. Believe me I appreciated everything you sent and all of it comes in handy. Many thanks. Others also got boxes and we all acted like kids. That maple sugar couldn’t have been better. I crave sweets more than anything else in the way of eatables. Altogether I thought it a pretty good Christmas—considering the circumstances.29

  The British High Command decided to order the Railroad Force, including the Seletskoye and Onega units, to make another attempt to capture Emtsa and Plesetskaya in late December. Despite their defensive posture, it was felt that much better winter quarters would be found further south in Emtsa. By then, strong Bolshevik forces were in place between Kodish and Plesetskaya, unlike the November situation where the Reds were in a state of confusion. War Minister Leon Trotsky had moved seasoned troops from South Russia to bolster the sometimes ineffective conscripts of the north; these all were consolidated into the Sixth Bolshevik Army, with headquarters in Vologda.

  Late one night a Bolshevik officer came to the center of the Emtsa Bridge in full view of a number of American outposts and began a harangue about the Americans being pawns of the British, and repeatedly asked why Americans were fighting Russians. He closed by saying, “Poor Americans dying in the swamps of Russia.”30 Donald Carey, new on the line, felt no one was taken in by the talk, but it brought to mind once again, that simple question: why?

  Just before the Americans were to attack there was a strange interruption. A group of Russians appeared on the Emtsa Bridge with a flag of truce carried by a Soviet commander, accompanied by a Russian journalist named Bernstein and Bolshevik soldiers, all escorting an American prisoner, Pfc. George Albers, Company I.31 The Reds proposed to exchange prisoners, but Lt. Charles Lennon wanted clearance from above before he made any commitments and told them it would three or four days before he could give an answer:

  Bernstein, the Bolsheviki Newspaper Correspondent got angry and notified 1st Lieut. Lennon that if the allied forces did not vacate the River position in course of two or three days, they were going to drive them into the White Sea, and he answered that it was pretty cold at the present time, so the Bolsheviki commander and his escort left, taking Prisoner Albers Co “I,” 339th Inf. Back to KODISH Village.32

  The inept assaults of the Railroad Force and the strong Bolo opposition on the Onega front caused Colonel Lucas to call off his three-pronged December offensive; however, news about the cancellation did not reach the Kodish Force. Force D had been split into two commands, with Captain Donoghue named as the leader of the right wing, consisting of the recently returned Company K, Company E, two platoons of Company L, one section of machine guns, one section of Canadian artillery, and supporting medical and engineer continents.33 On December 30, the Americans jumped off, to be supported by the left wing under British colonel Haselden, commanding the Russian Archangel Regiment, along with elements of the British King’s Liverpool Regiment, supplied with numerous machine guns.

  The battle orders called for the right wing to make the frontal assault and meet with supporting forces under Capt. Bernard Heil of Company E on the other side of the river, while Haselden was to use his forces for side flanking and diversionary attacks. There were a British machine gun unit, one platoon of the Archangel Regiment, and thirty White Guards who would leave Shred Makharenga by sleigh under British captain Gilbey and attack Kodish from the southeast at 6:30 A.M. Then another task force, fifty White Guards under Lieutenant Fedrov, would attack Avda from the east at 6:30 A.M. to create distractions for the Americans.

  Departure time was 6:00 A.M. on December 30; Donoghue had his men ready despite the fact that the main Railroad move had been delayed a day, then called off. Promptly at 6:00 A.M., his men moved out with supporting artillery and, according to Major Donoghue,34 “Attack on River position was promptly made simultaneously from all points of assembly, maintaining a heavy fire, forcing enemy to withdraw from River positions.”35

  Lieutenant Baker, leading the assault with elements of Companies E and K, trench mortars, and machine guns, had run into heavy Soviet fire early in the morning and was stalled between tenth and eleventh versts in Kodish. Baker’s report explained:

  The two platoons of K Company were lost in the woods in our rear and slightly to our left. . . . The terrain through which we were moving was almost impassible. The snow was two and three feet deep in places, the swamps slightly covered with snow and an abundance of underbrush along with numerous windfalls made our progress very slow and also accounted for the loss of the two platoons of K Company.36

  And it was eerie with the Arctic darkness that lingered late in the morning and began again in the afternoon.

  By 10:00 A.M., there was still no word of the diversions by the British and Russian left wing, but the Americans, pushing flanking attacks and frontal assaults, again took Kodish. Passing through the town, they found more Bolo resistance and were forced to stop and dig in. They had no sooner found a defensive position than the Reds counterattacked in force. With trench mortars, machine guns, and rifles, the Americans beat off at least two attempts to force them back. By 4:00 P.M. action had subsided to artillery fire and occasional sniping, but in the battle, the 339th had lost nine men killed and thirty-two wounded.37 One of the dead was Harold Wagner of Manistee, Michigan. On June 2, 1919, the local paper ran a short article that ended, “Information of this [his death] was received through the return of a letter mailed to him by the Red Cross. It was returned here with the notation that the addressee was killed in action on December 19, 1918. Efforts are now being made to reach his parents.”38 Almost six months had passed without an official notification.

  After the fighting had lessened, at 9:30 P.M. Donoghue received the same orders he had received six weeks before: halt your advance and defend Kodish.39 Word had finally been received that the major offensive to the west had collapsed, and with the exception of the Seletskoye right wing, no units had come close to capturing its objective. Donoghue’s December 31 report reads, “Col. Haselden relieved from command of SELETSKOE Det by Col. Pitts, 17 Kings Liverpool Regiment.” The next entry was, “Col. Haselden makes a visit to front line position and while there was wounded across the back by a sniper.�
�� In a memoir written after the war, Harold Weimeister, an American medic, remembered Haselden making derogatory remarks about American draftees; “Immediately an American rifle cracked and Hazelteen got it in the back of the neck. Needless to say, I did not ease his sleigh over the rough spots. I hoped the son-of-a-bitch had a pain in the neck the rest of his life.”40

  Another story that surfaced was of two sergeants from Machine Gun Company, who, weary from the fighting, sat down to rest on a log in the deep snow outside Kodish:

  Both sergeants approached the log and sat down. It made a comfortable seat, but soon it started to move. The two ‘non-coms’ were puzzled when suddenly an arm appeared followed by a colonel of the British army, who was demanding to know what was on him. Both ‘non-coms’ were thunderstruck to find that it was the commanding officer of the Kadish front.41

  They also discovered that he was full of “influenza cure” and would likely remember little of his experience.42

  As December 30 ended, platoons of Company E and Company K were holding a front some two versts south of Kodish and extending into heavy woods on both sides. Kodish, though, was a hellish place to defend. In a hollow, surrounded by hills and rocks, it offered attackers the advantage of simply lobbing shells into the American lines with little need for accuracy. During that night, the Reds, now more disciplined and effective, kept up steady fire from machine guns, mortars, and heavy artillery, heavier than that of the Canadians. It was some comfort just after midnight on December 30 when Donoghue received a wire from general headquarters (GHQ): “Convey to O.C. [Officer Commanding] Right Wing and American troops under him the warmest congratulations of Commanding General on their splendid efforts so gallantly and successfully carried out.”43

  December 31 was occupied by fortifying and strengthening Kodish until shortly after noon when heavy Soviet artillery fell on the town and the Yankee lines, but there were no casualties. By 4:30 P.M., Donoghue had posted strong outpost lines and continued patrolling east and west. By 5:00 P.M., he reported the situation normal, and the same on January 1. His report concluded with some testy remarks about his lack of support from the left wing. “Capt. Gibley [British Machine Gun commander] informed O.C. that they were exhausted, which was a poor excuse. . . . Lieut. Fedrov attacking AVDA from the east at 6:30 A.M. Dec 30 and to cooperate with Right Wing Force advancing south, states that it was not the right kind of day to make the attack.”44 Ironside himself found much fault with the left wing; he traveled from the Vologda front, where he had been chastising Colonel Lucas for his lack of success, to join the Seletskoye detachment on December 31. First, he sacked British colonel Haselden in charge of the machine gun attack, replaced him with Colonel Pitts, and ordered Donoghue to pull back into Kodish.

  That night, New Years Eve 1918, Ironside stayed with an American company in a blockhouse in Kodish. He later gave an account of his stay:

  I saw some faint figures moving in front of us as if they were floating in air above the snow. Several of our machine guns opened fire and a Stokes mortar let off half a dozen rounds. After five minutes there was complete silence. The captain decided he would go out and see what had happened, and when he left with his orderly I followed with Piskoff [Ironside’s orderly] at my heels. Some hundred yards beyond the wire we came across six bodies lying in the snow. They were dressed in long white smocks and were on short skis, which were bound with rough skins to keep them from slipping. All were quite dead and frozen stiff in the intense cold. Two had been wounded in the legs and had died of exhaustion and loss of blood. They must have died within moments of being hit.45

  Ironside left the next morning, ordering the detachment to hold Kodish. Although Donoghue reported the situation normal on January 1, other reports indicate heavy shelling during the day, making the holding of the town a nightmare, and Donoghue decided to withdraw six hundred yards to a position more defensible on the Emtsa River. Private Krooyer’s diary reported that on January 5, Company K returned briefly to Kodish and burned the town, then returned to its defensive position. On January 6, Krooyer says:

  Major Donohue got rummed again came over to our quarters asked our captain for a few men to reinforce the river front. Ours was also drunk and told him to take what men he wanted. . . . Started for the Mosyic [Emtsa] River but didn’t stop untill we got within a mile of Kadish. There we had to chase the Bolo’s away from the fire and we captured the city.46

  GHQ reported on January 6, “KODISH evacuated and partly burned yesterday ‘without good reason.”’47

  In that same British headquarters report was a copy of a telegram from Ironside to Colonel Lucas in Vologda in reference to Colonel Pitts, commanding the Seletskoye detachment. “If he does not feel he is capable of running Allied troops I shall have no option but to replace him and give the command to someone who can run a column made up as his is.” Ironside had not solved his command problem on the railroad or its supporting fronts.

  Although the British headquarters reported Kodish evacuated on January 6, Colonel Stewart recorded the evacuation on January 2, with Donoghue’s drunken reoccupation taking place, as Carey noted, on January 6. Stewart wrote, “O.C. Right Wing re-occupied KODISH village as an outpost position with one platoon ‘E’ Company and two Lewis gun crews ‘K’ Company, 339th Infantry.” That gave a certain official sanction to the major’s raid.48

  While Company E was in the defensive position north of the Emtsa, the men had a chance to review their personal situations. Donald Carey found, for the first time, cooties (lice) in his clothing. Cooties were an AEFNR plague, attacking all who were quartered in Russian houses. The bugs flourished in the crude huts in the Russian interior and were delighted to find the fresh pickings of American doughboys. Almost every diary contained references to, even pictures of, the nasty creatures. Carey summed up the typical experience of virtually every AEFNR field officer or enlisted man:

  Opening my undershirt at the neck, I found it well occupied by a colony of small cooties. Some men had acquired them a month before, but I failed to find any while at Mejovskayia.

  Since entering Kodish my body had itched incessantly. I doubt if any man who slept in that foul, dirty, lice-ridden village escaped the physical torture. . . . The mental and physical discomfort was terrible. They used the belt-line and seams of clothing as runways. When cold they were not so active, but when warmed became extremely annoying. They were typical gray backs—body lice. Some men mailed specimens home.49

  With the exception of a late-night false alarm on January 12, when new British troops opened fire on a snowy tree, there was little action, but the men of Companies E and K periodically returned to Kodish to man listening posts in the totally destroyed village. Ryan was fed up with the logic and when ordered back to Kodish on the January 10, wrote in his diary, “We, K Company, are ordered to go back to Kadish. This is a farce, there is no more Kadish, its all burned down, we will have to build shelters for the men. The Colonel is doing this for spite, I think.”50 Ryan indicated that Colonel Pitts was a boy colonel whose permanent rank was lieutenant, having received an instant battlefield promotion.

  This was the last gasp for the American doughboys in Kodish. On January 13, Companies E, K, and L were relieved from the Seletskoye front and began their journey back to Archangel. They did leave one machine gun section on the front, and the feisty Major Donoghue remained in command of the right wing. His command now consisted of one company of King’s Liverpools and one company of SBAL Russians, the American gunners, and Canadian artillery. A description of the SBAL’s makeup was furnished by one of the 339th officers: “These . . . were an uncertain lot of change-of-heart Bolshevik prisoners and deserters and accused spies and so forth, together with Russian youths from the streets of Archangel, who, for the uniform with its brass buttons and the near-British rations of food and tobacco volunteered to ‘help Save Russia”’51 As has been seen, their loyalties were difficult to determine, as was their reliability.

  Finally, all outpost positions w
ere abandoned in Kodish, and the Allies withdrew to their defensive positions three versts north of the burned out town on January 21.

  The British could not accept the fact that Kodish was the limit of their advance on Plestskaya, so another advance was ordered for February 7. The reports of events within the troops involved in that effort indicated that the whole front was fraught with dissension. Troops refused to attack and became lost and confused; orders issued by commanders were in violent disagreement; supplies were abandoned and lost to the Bolos; and the whole advance became chaotic. The Americans involved in the two-day assault were the machine gun section under Lieutenant Ballard and a section of trench mortars under Lt. E. A. Tessin. Lieutenant Ballard became the last American fatality on the front when he was killed on February 7. Ballard’s death was a shattering blow to the 339th. He was killed as he aided a Russian machine gun platoon that had been isolated, surrounded, and abandoned by the Russians and King’s Liverpools as they battled toward their rear. The lone survivor of the gunners trapped in the blockhouse told of the heroic death of his Russian bunkmates and the brave Ballard, killed, as he said, “at the point of the Bolshevik bayonets.”52 Two more Americans were wounded on February 9.

  This virtually ended the American participation along the Kodish line. On February 12, when the British headquarters learned that during the previous few days, the British and Russian forces had been forced to abandon positions in Tarasevo and Gora, and Shred Makharenga had been attacked heavily, Colonel Pitts was relieved of command and replaced by Colonel Levy. On February 15, Iron Mike Donoghue ended his command of the right wing in favor of British major Holmes. On February 22, the section of machine gunners was relieved, leaving only one section of trench mortars as the American support of the front. The trench mortar men of the Headquarters Company were sent up to the front to act as instructors for the newly recruited Russians. Their role turned out to be more than that, as they participated in more than a month of combat duty in the Shred Makharenga sector.53