Corp. Boren hastily entering the room, lifted Sgt. Rodgers [sic] from the floor where he had been thrown by the shell concussion. No flesh was torn, no blood flowed, but he lay limp and motionless. As though even fate had dealt gently with so much life and youth there was not a mark or bruise on the length of his big body, but ‘Curly’ too was dead. His jokes would never set the barracks in a roar again. His unquenchable spirit of laughter would never again relieve the tension and calm the raw nerves of an outgoing guard or patrol. Curly was dead.23
The orders to leave finally came at 11:00 P.M. on January 22; by 1:10 A.M. the entire force was moving out toward Shenkursk, covered by darkness, but still harassed by shell fire. The Canadians were upset because they had to leave one of their guns, since the horses that pulled the piece had been killed. The gun was stripped, the block removed, and it was left disabled by the side of the road.24 An intelligence officer in Shenkursk wrote on January 22:
They are sure out there in force right enough. The clans are rapidly gathering for the big prize—Shenkursk. Later—Orders from British Headquarters for troops at Ust Padenga to withdraw tonight. 10:00 P.M.—There is a red glare in the sky in the direction of Ust Padenga and the flames of burning buildings are plain to be seen.25
Although the retreat was not a rout, it was a disheartened lot of Allies who trudged wearily out of Visorka Gora, bitter at the loss of life and the feeling of abandonment. The artillery had failed them until Canadians arrived; the order to withdraw was issued only after all had been lost; and although the massive number of Soviets facing them was known, little had been done to protect the troops from the crushing defeat.
The order to retreat was delayed so long that the Reds were able to get behind the forces at Ust Padenga, occupying towns on both sides of the Vaga River. There had been a brief rest in Shalosha on their way to their next destination, Spasskoye, but there were few fires, little warm food, and scanty shelter. The men were exhausted, frozen, hungry and demoralized. Once they got to Spasskoye in the early hours of January 23, there was little relief. Lieutenant Mead found a house with a bed after they arrived; he almost made it to the bed, but fell asleep in a rocking chair before he reached it. Lieutenant MacPhail found him and remarked, “I thought, my gosh, just three more steps and he could have fallen on the only bed I saw in Russia.”26 By MacPhail’s count, he had slept ten hours in six days.
As they entered Spasskoye, Canadian gunnery captain Ollie Mowatt and Lieutenant Mead climbed a church tower on the village square, only to discover hordes of enemy infantry and artillery on all the roads leading into town. A battle began once again. To make the most of their small artillery pieces, the Canadians moved one gun in plain sight on the crest of a hill, but one of the first casualties was to that gun crew and the officers closest to the Bolo lines. A shell made a direct hit on one piece, wounding both Captain Odjard and Captain Mowatt; Mowatt later died of his wound.
The battle in Spasskoye was summarized in Pvt. John Crissman’s diary:
We left here at 1:15 A.M. and hiked to Spasska where we put up for the night. Canadians are here with one piece of artillery. We slept until 9 A.M. About noon the enemy attacked and a battle was on for all day and guns from Shenkursk fired on our enemy. Enemy guns opened on us and nearly destroyed the town. Captain Odjard was wounded and several others also. About 3 P.M. received orders to retreat. Retreated under heavy fire and arrived at Shenkursk safely about 5 P.M., Had supper and went to bed. About 11 P.M. we were told to get ready to leave, carrying nothing but overcoat, rations, gun and belt. We hiked all night single file through woods without noise or smoking. Hike was very tiresome.27
Soon after the survivors of Ust Padenga staggered into Shenkursk, there was a funeral procession for twelve of the dead whose bodies had been recovered. It was a solemn procession that moved through the streets of Shenkursk, which was no longer a rear area. “Preparations for the funeral were hurried to make way for what must be done for the living but in spite of the impending crisis everything was done that conditions would allow and care could suggest.”28 Since there was no chaplain in the town, the ceremony was led by Lt. Charles Warner; three volleys and taps ended the solemn service. The grave markers were never placed because the Soviet bombardment began again, driving everyone to shelter.
British commanders were finally absorbing the full impact of the Bolshevik offensive. Between Shenkursk and the main Allied base at Bereznik on the Dvina River, more than one hundred miles away, were two Allied-occupied positions. The closest was Shegovari, forty-four miles away, then Kitsa, twenty miles beyond. These were weak positions, with only three platoons between them. With the massive Red Army approaching Shenkursk, there was little choice: the British headquarters in Bereznik ordered a further retreat. It was easier ordered than achieved, because the Soviets had sent strong raiding parties to cut off Allied withdrawal. That meant that all main routes north were in enemy hands. The local Russians told of one old trail that was sometimes used for travel to Shegovari. After scouts had determined that it was open, the route was chosen, and the whole Shenkursk Allied force stole silently out of town, single file, followed by Russian Tsarists, more afraid of the Bolos than the dark, hostile woods and subzero temperatures. Before they left, an RAF plane traveled the route flying at three hundred feet, seeing no sign of the Reds, a minor miracle.29
The British officers ordered the troops to retreat, but to leave the wounded behind. The American officers refused to leave without their injured and found sleds and carts to move them out, although it meant abandoning virtually everything else, including ammunition, rations, equipment, and medical supplies. The reasoning for not burning the town was that it would alert the Reds to the Allied withdrawal and cause ambushes on the road. It was a humiliating decision.
Ambushes were not the primary concern, however, as the march began. The Shackleton boots were fine boots for certain conditions, but they were not made for marching long distances. They were long and wide, allowing for several pair of socks, but were ungainly and awkward for walking. Shackleton himself was in Murmansk at the time, and the Yanks fervently wished he were along for their hike. It was not long before almost all the men had thrown their boots in the snow and marched in their socks. Lieutenant MacPhail had eleven pair of socks, plus overshoes, and when they had a rest stop, one of his men said that Coon Dog Williams feet were freezing because he had only three pair of socks. “So I gave Coon Dog my overshoes, a good snort of rum and a cigar to chew and the never-down-hearted rascal said, ‘Let’s go. I can march to Archangel now!”’30 Many tales developed, even some poetry, concerning the footwear, such as the one described in The Ignorant Armies: “It required the development of a new gait altogether—a kind of half-waddle, half-dance step which soon became known as the Shackleton Walk. (One step forward and two steps back—a sideslip down with a hell of a whack).”31
Moving the wounded was an agonizing process. To keep them from freezing, the wounded were stuffed into sleeping bags, their only means of keeping warm. One of the medics of the 337th Ambulance Company, Pvt. Godfrey Johnson, wrote, “Some of these were so badly injured that the slightest touch would cause excruciating agony. But there was need for urgent haste and we had no alternative but to stuff the patient in the bag as best we could despite his agonized screams.”32
The march was done with minimum light; daylight lasted at most six hours with temperatures conservatively recorded as twenty to forty below zero. As the column moved slowly out of Shenkursk, unknown troubles lay in store. Canteens froze solid, so there was little to drink; the road soon turned into a rutted, pitted trail that tripped and bruised the troops and accompanying Russian civilians. Even with the cold, they began to sweat inside their layered clothes, and they soon had icicles forming on their noses and mouths. With poor boots, rutted, frozen roads, pitch-black darkness, frostbitten extremities, and the possibility of a Bolo attack at any moment, the march resembled a frozen hell.
The guns of the Canadian artille
ry led the march, followed by some one hundred sleds of wounded, then the troops, and finally the Russian civilians who chose to risk the trip. Gradually, possessions were dropped—packs, rations, even overcoats—as fatigue took over. By the time the column reached Shegovari, the Canadians had lost four guns, and the rest of the men were down to absolutely minimum weight. During the march, the Russian Allied troops found the route too risky and fled for safer areas, probably to the Bolo lines.
At Shegovari, elements of Companies C and D held off a Soviet attack on January 23. Actually, it was local partisans who attacked, rather than the Bolsheviks. They were mostly peasants who were slated for conscription into the Allied army, but preferred to join the Reds. As the partisans approached Shegovari from the south, they captured the lone sentry, Pvt. Anton J. Vanis, without raising the alarm.33 The next sentry, positioned just north of Vanis’s post, was Pvt. Frank Syska, whom they killed with a blow to the head. They crept closer, still undiscovered, and were almost at the guardhouse when they were detected. They attacked by throwing grenades through the window, but few actually exploded. One did detonate, wounding the unit commander Lt. Harry Steele, but the attack was driven off. Only one dead attacker was found; he was a native of a neighboring town.34
With the arrival of the retreating column in Shegovari, the force was still no match for the Reds, so the retreat continued. Eventually, they arrived at Vistafka, where they made an attempt to fortify and defend the town, letting the main column pass through to the next village, Kitsa. The nighttime retreats were described by Godfrey Johnson: “Travelling in the nighttime as we did, that forest became a gloomy, sinister, ominous wilderness, fraught with hidden menace.”35 Companies A and C stayed on outpost in Vistafka and found themselves under constant pressure from the Reds. The Reds could probably have launched a major assault and wiped out the Allied command, but were content to harass and shell the defenders. Occasionally, they launched infantry attacks, but most of their damage was done by artillery. On January 29, they launched a furious bombardment, according to Pvt. Gus Grossa of Company C: “One awful day, if we get out of here alive it will be a miracle. At 3:00 A.M. Bolos get range on our billets, poured it on us.”36 Sgt. Wilbur Smith of Company C was killed that morning; Pvt. Isiador Dunaetz died two days later; and Thomas Keefe was killed, but his body never found.
The story of Isiador Dunaetz was a sordid example of the experiences of the wounded in that long, cold evacuation. The medic assigned to unload the wounded was Private Johnson. As Dunaetz was being taken off the sled, his hair was frozen to the straw, and he complained that they were pulling his hair. Johnson said, “Taking a closer look we noticed he had been creased by a bullet along the left side of the skull and the brains had oozed out and were frozen to the straw, and in moving him we were actually pulling out his brains.”37 The surgeon worked on him that night, but to no avail. The other passenger on Dunaetz’s sled had been hit with machine gun bullets in both thighs; the Bolos were using dum-dum bullets that broke up on contact with a body and caused massive exit wounds. As he was having his wounds dressed and packed with gauze, he was asked if it hurt much. He truthfully said, “If it don’t nothin’ ever did.”38 Eventually, the sleds with the wounded made it back to the relatively safe city of Berezenik, where the 337th had set up a field hospital and more adequate treatment could be given to those who survived the trip.
On January 29, Company D was sent back to the Dvina River column, and Company A, relieved by Scots, rested in Kitsa. Private Grossa of Company C reported his misery on February 1, 1919. “It will be a gift of providence if we ever get out of here. Tedichi accidentally shot in hand. Have not washed, shaved, or changed clothes since Jan 22. Am loaded with cooties and they never seem to get tired or fed up.”39
Another Bolo infantry attack on February 4 surprised the outposts at Vistafka, and Company C lost three more men killed: Pvt. Nikodem Ladovich, Pvt. Joshua Clark, and the cook Elmer Speicher. The front then remained quiet until March 9. Company A had taken over the outpost at Vistafka. There the Soviets massed an artillery and infantry assault on March 9, with reportedly four thousand troops.40 Fighting was brief, but took the lives of Sgt. Albert Moore, Cpl. Bernard Kenney, Pvt. Earl Sweet, Pvt. Dausie Trammell, and Pvt. Walter Welstead. Pvt. Benny Rose lived for two days with wounds that almost severed both legs, dying on March 11. With Vistafka a smoking ruin from the shelling and fighting, the Americans and Canadians withdrew on the night of March 9 to a line of defense some three versts in front of Kitsa. It was a poor place to defend, mostly in the open, but fortunately, the Soviets were unable to bring artillery fire to bear. Here parts of Company F joined Company D, who had relieved the battered Company A. The doughboys alternated duty with the Royal Scots for two months, until it was time to go home.41
That was the story of the Vaga Force; in fulfilling their original mission to protect the Dvina units, they suffered the most casualties of any of the AEFNR units. Their orders put them in untenable positions with but a few men pitted against mounting numbers of effective Red soldiers. They had inadequate artillery support and were using unfamiliar equipment, which had replaced their regulation issue. These men, perhaps more than most, had reasons to be both bitter and critical.
Finally, in May 1919 the weather warmed, the ice broke up, and boats could once again bring the doughboys back to the Archangel area. Company F, however, would remain until June.
10
The Pinega Front
The Reds certainly had plenty of courage. They came deliberately up and fired at us. You could see they were experienced soldiers, for they attacked us from every available point of shelter.
—Pvt. John Toornman, Company G
IN the Allied strategy, the Pinega front was probably the last planned and the least significant. Its purpose was the protection of the more important forces to its west; there was no plan to advance toward a major objective.
The railroad front, with its protective elements in Onega and in Seletskoye was optimistically assigned to move not only to Plesetskaya with its railway significance, but on to Vologda for possible merging with other Allied or loyal Russian troops. The Dvina Force, with its auxiliary Vaga Force, was to head for Kotlas and then on to Viatka to join with Czech units trying to reach the western front through Archangel.
Although Pinega was not as strategic a location as the other fronts, it was equally remote. Pinega sat at the apex of a huge split in the Pinega River, one hundred miles east of Archangel. As a city it was reasonably prosperous, with three thousand citizens and a local government that was a curious mix of White and Red Russians. As the revolution swept Russia, the city accepted some of the Red influence, but tempered the Communist presence with trusted old citizen-leaders who were more anti-Tsarist than pro-Red.
A primary need in Pinega was flour. Towns in the area, needing flour for the coming winter, found a source by buying from the stockpile of military stores and provisions supplied by the Allies. Shipments had arrived in Archangel for months, but were gradually confiscated by the Reds before the Allied arrival. Actually, little remained of the mountains of war goods shipped for Russia’s use against Germany. But during one of the windows of opportunity, the Pinega district was able to acquire substantial quantities of flour.
In October 1918, the mixed Red-White government, ignoring ideological differences, requested military assistance from Allied headquarters in Archangel, hoping to protect their source of flour. Capt. John Conway and two platoons of Company G were sent on this mission of mercy. On October 20, 1918, Conway’s little unit left their comfortable Archangel quarters, boarded a fast steamer towing one barge, and three days and two nights later took up their new duties in Pinega.1 For the most part, the Americans were well received. These were new faces, speaking new languages, wearing new uniforms, bringing plenty of cigarettes, candy, and other scarce items.
Almost as soon as Company G arrived, pressures began to mount from Archangel headquarters to clear the Reds from the Pinega Valle
y. Finally, British GHQ ordered Conway to send a force up the valley to Karpogora, 90 versts from Pinega. The expedition planned by Captain Conway included support by Russians under the command of Colonel Shaposhnikoff. The Russians would attack the Bolshevik rear as Conway’s men made the frontal assault. On November 15, Lieutenant Higgins took 35 men and 210 Russian volunteers up the Pinega Valley. For ten days they found no sign of the Reds, but light resistance began soon after; still, they took Karpogora on November 28, Thanksgiving Day, and the Bolos moved out to nearby Verkola, where they had strong fortifications.
One of the men on that expedition, Pvt. John Toornman, later wrote of his experiences:
All the way from Pinega to Kopogora we did not have a doctor or a nurse or any medical help. The white Russians had one man with a satchel with some first-aid. I saw him only once with the White Russians. I think that later they talked about a hospital in Pinega but I never saw it. No newspapers, no magazines, no toilet paper, no writing paper, and not enough food once we were away from Pinega.2 Their stay in Karpogora was brief; such a small force in an isolated area was a perfect target for growing Soviet forces.
During the Allied occupation of the town, the quarters were cold and drafty. One of the larger members of the platoon was bitter and not at all reluctant about expressing his displeasure.
This fellow was a farmer and really hated the army. He would start cussing, “The son of a bitch, President Wilson,” through the “S.O.B., General Pershing,” then would begin on our officers from the top down. In between the fellows would tease him, asking how he would like a steak with all the trimmings, etc. . . . But he would keep on cussing. Then the door opened and Lieutenant Higgins stood there. The big fellow had his knees under his chin trying to cover himself with his too-short overcoat. The coats were sheep-skin lined and warm, had a large collar. Barkel had it turned up over his face, but because everyone stopped laughing and teasing him, he turned the collar down and saw the lieutenant, but kept cussing and said to the lieutenant, “And you, too, you son of a bitch. This damn army. If there was a place to run to, I’d be out of here so damn quick. But there is no place to run to.” Lt. Higgins was not a bad officer, I thought. He smiled at us, never said a word and went out.3
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