The partners who spared the doughboys much death and destruction at Toulgas were the Canadians of the Sixty-seventh Battery, Sixteenth Brigade, Canadian Field Artillery. They had literally saved Company B from total destruction. One of these Canadians was nineteen-year-old Frank Frape, who won the British Military Medal for his efforts at Toulgas. The Canadians were universally popular with the Allied troops, and they had a definite aversion to the British, but a strong liking for the Americans. Another friend-in-need was the 337th Field Hospital and its medical personnel. They were on the scene whenever a doughboy was hit, getting him to the Toulgas hospital and quickly on down to Brezenik. Sometimes there was tension between British and American medical personnel, but the Yanks had front-line American medics to look out for them. While they could not save all the wounded, it was not because of lack of concern or effort.
In all, it had been a team effort to hold Toulgas through the miserable winter months with temperatures often 30 degrees below zero. Winter clothing finally arrived on November 18; from then on, there was less frostbite and fewer frozen fingers. The real tragedy of Toulgas and the lower Dvina campaign is that the goals, capturing Kotlas and joining the Czechs, were totally impossible and should have been recognized as such by Poole. Ironside recognized the futility of the plan and ordered a holding action with no attempt to move south, so Toulgas became the dismal end of that mission. The Dvina expedition and the Vologda Railroad action were to have been the two most significant advances of the North Russian campaign. Their failure was not due to poor troop performance, but to inept planning.
As winter waned and spring approached, enthusiasm for the campaign dimmed noticeably. Rumblings were heard, petitions passed, and open mutiny took place in Russian, French, and even British troops. The failure of the expedition became obvious to even the most ardent supporters of intervention.
While the campaign had been difficult for the Dvina units, it was even worse for its offspring, the Vaga front.
9
The Vaga Front
The snow was terrible, being waist deep, and at every other step a comrade fell wounded or dead. It was impossible to assist them as each man was fighting for his life.
—Dorothea York, The Romance of Company A
ON September 16, 1918, General Poole concluded that while the Dvina River was important, it was vulnerable to Bolshevik movements from the Vaga River, which flowed into the Dvina. Consequently, he ordered elements of the First Battalion, already on the Dvina, to divert to his new force on the Vaga River. The Vaga Force would be led by Company A, commanded by one of the best company commanders of the regiment, Capt. Otto Odjard.
The First Battalion had been confined to its barges for days, stopping periodically to bury the dead flu victims; it finally arrived at the Vaga River where the troops disembarked. The battalion moved into Berezenik, near the junction of the Vaga and Dvina Rivers. Berezenik, a rather nice town with fashionable ladies, was a welcome sight to the barge-weary Yanks. The men of Company A expected a better life here in Berezenik; they remained in town as their First Battalion mates in Companies B, C, and D moved on up the Dvina. Those hopes were soon dashed; new orders from Poole stated that the British staff was coming to stay in the town, and outposts were needed farther up the Vaga River. Company A was ordered to move south along the Vaga to man the new posts.
Before Company A moved out, the men performed the full military burial rites for the first officer to die, 2d Lt. Marcus Casey of Company C, another flu victim. Then two platoons of Company A, under Captain Odjard and Lt. Harry Meade, boarded the old side-wheeler Tolstoy and sailed quietly, but swiftly, up the river with a few Slavo Battalion Allied Legion (SBAL) Russians, searching for the enemy. They took Shenkursk on September 18 without firing a shot and bivouacked there.1 A pretty city of about two thousand people, Shenkursk was set up high on the east bank of the river.
The Vaga was far different from the Dvina. The Dvina crawled slowly over its courses, overrunning its banks on a regular basis. Following the Dvina was an assignment in misery. The Vaga’s banks were high, sometimes steep, and the scenery was more to the men’s liking. But like the Dvina, the banks were dotted with little villages of log huts and the most primitive of conditions. Their toilet facilities were basic: “The villagers had no toilets but utilized a railing just outside their door. The excretement would become a pyramid and the peak would be knocked over when interfering with sitting. In the spring all would be cleaned up to put in a mix with soil.”2 This was the procedure even in winter temperatures, which reached 50 degrees below zero.
On September 21, about 4:00 A.M., Captain Odjard and his two platoons of Company A left Shenkursk and reboarded the Tolstoy to go up river. After five hours of comfortable travel, they received their first enemy fire, which came from the banks of the river. Their orders were to clear the area, so the doughboys made their first amphibious landing. The Bolos retreated after wounding four men, including Sgt. John Komasrek and Pvt. Floyd Stevens, the first casualties of the company.3 The Americans continued up river for the next several days, passing through a number of villages, finally locating in Rodvinskaya, some 90 versts beyond Shenkursk. They were joined there by the other two platoons of the company under Lieutenants MacPhail and Saari.4
By this time, Company A was completely out of touch with the Railroad and the Dvina Forces and miles beyond any other Allied units. Odjard continued to move upriver, capturing Puiya on October 8, but Bolos got between Company A and Rodvinskaya, so they retreated to Rodvinskaya, carrying their wounded. Their short stay in Puiya marked the furthest penetration of the Allied troops into North Russia.
During the next few weeks, Company A patrolled, scouted, and kept its eyes open for Bolshevik activity, while Company C came over from the Dvina front to headquarter at Shenkursk.
As winter approached, the railroad drive to Plesetskaya had failed; Force A was entrenched just south of Obozerskaya with its flanks protected by the Onega and Seletskoye Forces; and Force C on the Dvina was stymied at Toulgas. That left the smallest force, the Vaga Force with its Americans, SBAL, and Royal Scots, in the most exposed position, with Company A by far the most remote unit, located at Rodvinskaya.
The men at Rodvinskaya ate well, dining especially on fresh game—duck, fish, rabbit, and even venison.5 With hard freezes every night, the roads, formerly muddy, were now passable, making Bolshevik movement easier. It was time to send Company A back to the supposedly safer Ust Padenga. They arrived there on October 24; on November 2, 1918, Company A was relieved by Company C, with 75 Russians, 35 SBAL, and one Russian eighteen-pounder. It was not a very significant force for its isolated position. Orders were to hold positions two versts north of Ust Padenga, positions critical for Shenkursk defense.
On November 13, a patrol set out from Ust Padenga on horseback. Lt. Glen Weeks of Wisconsin wrote in his diary, “They fell into a trap and one got away. The three were killed, then mutilated badly.”6 One American, Pvt. Adolf Schmann of Company C, and two Canadians of the Sixty-eighth Canadian Battery, D. Fraser and F. H. Russell, were killed.7 Probably because of anger over that mutilation episode, on Sunday November 17, “We caught two spies trying to find out our position, outpost strength, etc. Lt. Cuff, Lt. Winslow and myself took one of them out in the woods and shot him.”8 Sgt. Robert Ray’s diary noted on November 14, “Well, we caught a couple of spies who we found had told about the patrol going out. Took one of them out and shot him let him lay 2 days so the people could see it & tell the Bolos.”9 Another death occurred when Pvt. Louis Szymanski was accidentally shot by Private Blass on Thanksgiving Day.10
For the next three weeks, until December 2, Company C patrolled the Ust Padenga sector while Company A relaxed in Shenkursk, drawing occasional patrol and scouting duty, but the rest of the time making use of the city’s hospitality and culture.
Company C noticed in late November that Bolsheviks were using new tactics, scouting in snow camouflage suits. Up until then, the Reds had given way al
most any time they had faced well-organized, aggressive enemies. Now, new troops, veterans of fighting in the south and on other fronts, were being freed up to join their less-well-trained northern comrades. Instead of poorly armed, untrained, and ill-equipped youngsters, the Allies were finding a more experienced and better-equipped enemy.
Just after Thanksgiving, Lt. Francis Cuff and Lt. Harry Steele of Company C led a sixty-man patrol out of Ust Padenga toward Bresenik (not to be confused with far off Berezenik), nine miles south of Ust Padenga. Within a mile of the town, they were heavily ambushed, and Cuff ordered a fighting retreat. While the lieutenant and four men fought as rearguard, protecting the others, they were surrounded and killed. Steele managed to get back with the survivors. Lt. Glenn Weeks led a rescue party. “I took out all available men, but in the meantime our casualties were many. Lt. Cuff was killed after he was almost out of enemy territory. I got the main body out without any additional casualties. Total 15 killed or missing, one wounded. We evacuated 5 bodies.”11 The bodies of Cuff, Cpl. John Bosel, Cpl. John Cheeney, Pvt. Raymond Clemens, Pvt. Thurman Kissick, and Pvt. Irvin Wenger were recovered, but had been badly mutilated.12 Lieutenant Cuff’s arms and legs had been severed.13
On December 1, five of the men killed with Cuff were buried in the local cemetery in Shenkursk. Cuff was especially mourned. The lieutenant from Wisconsin was both popular and competent, so he was sent off with full military honors. His casket, mounted on a caisson, was taken to the cemetery with his steel helmet atop the coffin, and he “was given every military honor possible to bestow.”14
Others on that patrol, Pvt. Henry Weitzel, Pvt. Nicholas Jonker, Pvt. Elmer Hodge, Pvt. Boleslaw Gutowski, and Pvt. Johnnie Triplett, disappeared during that action, but the search for their bodies was fruitless. Eventually, they were declared killed in action.
One happy event occurred on December 2. After Cuff’s funeral, two men missing from the patrol stumbled into camp. One was Pvt. Roy Clemens, brother of the slain Ray Clemens, and with him Private Greenlund. For almost four days they had outwitted the Reds by hiding in deep snow and moving constantly to avoid succumbing to the twenty-below temperatures. They were ragged and half-starved, with badly frostbitten fingers and feet, but alive.
By that time, it was obvious that there was trouble ahead for isolated Vaga forces. They were supposed to be protected by the advances of the Railroad and Dvina Forces by early January 1919. With the failure of these movements, the southernmost Allied position at Ust Padenga was badly overextended, with Shenkursk almost as vulnerable.
Ust Padenga was a typical village with clusters of huts and cabins stretched along the Vaga River. Besides the central village of Ust Padenga itself, slightly south of it, closer to the woods, were the few houses of Nizhni Gora, and to the north was the cluster of buildings known as Visorka Gora, separated from the central village by a stream that circled to the south.
After the patrol ambush, Company C remained in Ust Padenga, alert and anxious. Meanwhile, Company A was in Shenkursk patrolling and scouting outside town and in nearby Shegovari. In mid-December, Company A moved back to Ust Padenga, and Company C went back to Shenkursk. The Ust Padenga routine was to establish one platoon on the hill at Nizhni Gora, rotating that duty each week. The rest of the company was in Ust Padenga itself with a company of Cossacks. Captain Odjard’s headquarters was in Visorka Gora, with one Russian artillery section and a platoon of engineers. Odjard’s position was on a high bluff, almost a mile from his other platoons. The snow was almost thirty inches deep, and the Vaga was frozen solid by mid-January. The increased Bolshevik activity was evidenced by a white-clad Bolo shot by one of the doughboys only fifteen feet from the American outpost.
On January 19, Lt. Harry Meade, with forty-four men of his fourth platoon, relieved Lieutenant MacPhail’s second platoon in Nizhni Gora, with orders from the British to hold at all costs. He woke to hear artillery landing near his cabin. Adjusting his field glasses, Meade saw swarms of Soviets, dressed in white, moving across the plains in the distance. As the heavy Red bombardment continued, Meade’s men readied for the attack. Suddenly, the barrage lifted. Facing the Americans were not the distant Reds, but hundreds of Soviets barely one hundred yards down the hill from the doughboys. They had crawled forward during the night and covered themselves with snow. When the artillery stopped, the snow-covered Soviet infantry could spring into action. The Americans opened fire and slowed the charging Soviets, but they swept on, despite their losses. The Allied Cossacks, to their credit, came up to support the defenders, and even though their commander was killed as they approached, they accomplished some relief in the day’s fight. Cpl. Victor Stier picked up a Cossack machine gun and laid down a withering fire, but was hit in the jaw.
Lieutenant Meade saw his embattled force caught in a hopeless vise and ordered a fast retreat. It was a desperate time for Meade’s little group as they struggled through deep snow, downhill, exposed, and taking casualties as they went. The hard-packed road was being swept by Soviet fire, so the Yanks were forced to flounder through the heavy snows in the village on their retreat. The subzero temperature made breathing painful and movement exhausting. As they retreated, they waited in vain for supporting artillery fire from the Russian artillerymen in Visorka Gora.
Finally, the pitiful few who survived passed through Ust Padenga, at last getting the supporting rifle, machine gun, and artillery fire they so urgently needed. Captain Odjard was running to the artillery camp when he met the Russian gunners, panicked and deserting. Pulling his pistol, he forced them back to their guns to begin their supporting fire.
The price was high. By the time they reached Visorka Gora, Meade’s forty-five-member platoon numbered seven unwounded fighting men. The three-hour retreat turned Meade’s hair completely white.15 Meade remembered later, “One by one men fell either wounded or dead in the snow, either to die from his wounds or from the terrible exposure.”16 Of his original platoon, Meade lost twenty-one killed, including four who died of wounds later, and fifteen wounded, plus three cases of shell shock.17 Only four bodies were recovered; seventeen were listed as missing, and none of that seventeen was ever located. It was not only the worst battle in terms of casualties, but it began a series of retreats that ended with the American withdrawal from North Russia several months later.
Heroism was routine during the fight. When Lieutenant McPhail saw Corporal Stier signal weakly from the bloody snow near Ust Padenga, he took Odjard’s horse into heavy fire to bring back the corporal, who died the next day.18 Cpl. Giussepe De Amicis, trying to stop a Bolo charge with his Lewis gun, died refusing to leave his gun. McPhail, Sergeants Trombley, Nees, and Rapp, and Private Kuna went after the wounded. “The five set out along that death strewn road, back into the relentless rain of shell and fire, back into the valley where the wounded and dying lay among the dead awaiting they knew not what.”19 As darkness fell on the first day, it was as if a sudden curtain had fallen on a great tragedy.
On January 20, two survivors of the Nizhni Gora massacre returned to Visorka Gora. Pvt. Peter Wierenga and Cpl. James Burbridge had lost touch with the platoon and found themselves trapped inside the Red lines. They found refuge in a closet provided by a friendly villager, killed two captors, and floundered through the snowy woods until they arrived at the Allied camp, half frozen and starved. That day was also marked by the deaths of Victor Stier and Pvt. George Smith, both of whom had been badly wounded on the retreat.
Wagons from Shenkursk, loaded with supplies and ready to carry wounded doughboys back to safety, arrived with a small amount of mail bringing news from peaceful little Michigan towns, news that contrasted sharply with the horrors of the day.20
The Nizhni Gora rout was not the end of the Ust Padenga nightmare. As the forces withdrew from Nizhni Gora and Ust Padenga to the bluffs of Visorka Gora, the Bolsheviks continued their attacks with massed artillery, causing extensive damage to the few buildings on the bluff. Realizing his exposed position and the overwhelming numbe
rs of Soviets, Odjard waited for orders to withdraw. But the British high command was silent.
A wagon driven by Wagoner Carl Berger of Headquarters Company arrived from Shenkursk on January 19. It was part of an almost endless train of ambulances taking the wounded to Shenkursk. While Berger was resting in one of the houses waiting to take more wounded, a dud shell came through the roof and decapitated him.21 Canadian artillery under Lt. Douglas Winslow also arrived that day, a relief for the Americans, who trusted their Canadian neighbors with their lives, and they immediately launched counterbattery fire. At daybreak the following day, the Bolos launched a vicious attack on the deserted Ust Padenga, not realizing that the Americans were then all on the hilltop of Visorka Gora. From the bluff, the Canadians fired grapeshot at point-blank range, decimating the Reds. All that day, Red artillery poured shell after shell into the now vacant village. They finally took the village, finding nothing but rubble.
To support the beleaguered Allies, the RAF sent up the best planes they had to strafe and bomb the Soviet forces, doing their best to keep the village of Visorka Gora out of Bolo hands. Their efforts were helpful but could not stem the mass of Red soldiers, who continued to sweep across the fields despite heavy Canadian artillery fire and the automatic weapons of the Americans.22
Throughout the attacks and bombardments, Lt. Ralph Powers, medical officer of Company A, had been treating the wounded. He first set up operations in a dressing station, which was bombed out. Then, he moved to Lieutenant MacPhail’s quarters; when that was hit several times, he moved on to the sergeant’s quarters. There, while he was treating an amputee, a shell went through the wall, bursting just outside the room. It not only mortally wounded the doctor, but killed Sgt. Yates Rogers, Cpl. Milton Gottschalk, and Pvt. Elmer Cole. Sergeant Rogers had been one of the platoon favorites, joking and keeping spirits up; his death hit everyone hard.
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