Russian Sideshow

by Robert L Willett

  After an overnight trip from Otaru to Vladivostok, the remainder of the Camp Fremont contingent docked in that city at 8:30 P.M. on September 29.20

  Capt. Laurance Packard noted the speedy mobilization in his report:

  This within twelve days after orders were issued, and with practically no interference with the colossal effort which the United States was making to decide the issue of the War on the Western Front, an organized and well-equipped force of 145 officers and 4805 men was actually on its way, to a remote and entirely new theatre of action.21

  There is an explanation for the speedy deployment: on July 6, eleven days before Wilson announced his decision to intervene, a memo written by Col. E. D. Anderson of the General Staff outlined in some detail a plan to send the Twenty-seventh and the Thirty-first Infantries, plus five thousand replacements from Camp Fremont, to Vladivostok, if required.22

  18

  The Early Days in Siberia

  I am entrusted unanimously, by the Allied Powers, with command of their Armies in the Russian Territory of the Far East.

  —Japanese General Otani

  WHILE General Graves was assembling, outfitting, and transporting the replacements for the expeditionary force, the two regiments from Manila were already participating in the Vladivostok expedition, an experience often characterized by confrontation and confusion. Colonel Styer commanded the expedition until Graves’s arrival, and almost as soon as Styer landed in Vladivostok on August 15, he received this message from Japanese General Otani: “I have the honor to inform you that I have been appointed Commander of the Japanese Army at Vladivostok, by His Majesty the Emperor of Japan, and that I am entrusted unanimously, by the Allied Powers, with command of their Armies in the Russian Territory of the Far East.”1 That was a shock to the American colonel, who immediately cabled Washington. The reply simply said Graves would be there soon to handle matters.

  Between August 3 and August 11, the Allies landed five thousand British, French, and Japanese troops.2 Their purpose was to help the Czechs on the railroad as they struggled northward from Vladivostok in an attempt to clear that portion of the route still harassed by the Reds. The Czechs seemed in complete control of the Trans-Siberian Railroad, but that was not quite true. On the line east of Chita and south of Khabarovsk, Bolsheviks and partisans still harassed the railroad. The Czechs were having difficulty, but were bolstered by the newly arrived Allied troops. Even with that help, the outcome was in doubt. The day was saved for the Czechs at the Nikolsk railroad junction by artillery that British colonel John Ward, commander of the Middlesex Battalion, had begged from the Suffolk and brought up by train in time to stop Bolshevik advances. Although Ward later became an open critic of the American policy in Siberia, he was a hero to the Allies in August.3

  As that Nikolsk battle continued, Otani decided to commit his Twelfth Division and withdrew the Czechs, British, and French. Otani requested American troops to move north against the Reds and also requested two companies of the Twenty-seventh Infantry to relieve Czech troops guarding the railroad between Vladivostok and Nikolsk. On August 18, Companies F and G of the Twenty-seventh moved up to spell the weary Czechs along the railroad. The following day Company F underwent the expedition’s first baptism by fire. It was a minor affair, not with the Bolsheviks, but with Chinese bandits, who were menacing a small village north of Razdolnoye. Lt. George Herrick led a team from Company F to the rescue; Pvt. Stephen Duhart became the first American casualty in Siberia when he was slightly wounded by a Chinese bullet.4

  The rest of the Twenty-seventh stayed on the ships until August 20, when they all disembarked and put on a grand parade for the Allies and U.S. Navy already there. On August 19, Colonel Styer cabled Washington with the Japanese plan, of which he was to become a part. It was also a Japanese plea for help. Styer’s cable describing Otani’s plan read:

  First take Khabarovsk, 15,000-armed enemy this sector; then advance west by Amur and Manchuria.—General Otani stated that in his judgment present forces, assigned to expedition, are insufficient to accomplish mission which was and remains solely the extrication of the Czechs west of Irkutsk, between whom and us are 40,000 enemy forces and a double line of communications to make secure; the Czechs, west of Irkutsk, have little ammunition left and otherwise are in a pitiable plight, so much so that their relief before winter is imperative, if they are to survive. He asked all Allied Commanders to so represent to their Governments, and that they themselves, send all forces immediately available, and request Japan to send troops at once in sufficient numbers to meet the situation. Japan has ready many troops.5

  The message displayed the Japanese lack of knowledge of the true situation, or lack of candor. There were no more than a few thousand troops in Khabarovsk, and nowhere near forty thousand Reds between Vladivostok and Irkutsk. And the “pitiable” Czech troops actually were closing in on Verkhne Udinsk, capturing it in mid-August.6 That made the Czechs the masters of the route of the Trans-Siberian Railroad, which crossed Manchuria.

  Although the Czechs were successful in the Baikal area, the railroad between Khabarovsk and Vladivostok was stubbornly defended by a Bolshevik force. The Twenty-seventh Infantry was assigned to the Japanese, who launched the Ussuri offensive to clear the railroad between Khabarovsk and Vladivostok on August 24. General Otani committed his Twelfth Division, with the U.S. Twenty-seventh Infantry as rear guard. Colonel Styer was still confused about his position, uncertain whether he should join an offensive under a Japanese commander, but receiving no clear answers from Washington and with Graves at sea, he made the decision to participate. General Otani ordered the Twenty-seventh Infantry to Sviyagino, as he positioned his troops for an attack on the Bolo stronghold at Kraefski.

  As the American units traveled on the railroad north toward Sviyagino, repairing burned out bridges and disrupted communications, they came upon some of the carnage left from the previous battles. One source said it was the Chinese bandits who performed the wanton pillage, murder, and burnings that the Americans saw with horror. One of the men wrote of seeing several boxcars full of horribly cut and mangled women and children on their way to medical help.

  The dying mass of humanity was so mutilated it made us feel dreadful. The poor souls were being taken by train to Nikolsk so that those in one piece could have some treatment but that was a distance of some 25 miles or more and we were pretty sure that not many would survive.7

  The Japanese attack on Kraefski crushed the Red defense, and the Bolos fled northward. The British and French forces were pulled out of the line at that point and sent farther west; little would be heard from them, except for the critical comments of the British, during the next eighteen months. The Twenty-seventh Infantry, being held in reserve, was not in the fight, but marched along with the Allied troops as they followed the fleeing Reds. After the battle one of the American intelligence officers, viewing the battleground, drew the conclusion that the Bolshevik strength estimated by Otani was vastly exaggerated.8 Thereafter, Japanese details of enemy strength, position, and condition were viewed with some skepticism.

  As the U.S. Twenty-seventh Infantry took part in the Ussuri campaign, the understrength Thirty-first Infantry landed in Vladivostok on August 21 with 1,424 members.9 The landing of both regiments was far from smooth; no one seemed ready for the American troops. The city was not prepared to house the three thousand Americans who had just landed. Many units of the Twenty-seventh Infantry had stayed only briefly in the city before being sent north, but most of the Thirty-first Infantry remained in the city. They managed to erect a tent city west of the city in a valley, but with Russian generosity and the hard work of the doughboys, they were soon in barracks scattered around the city. The Thirty-first Infantry did send part of its Third Battalion to relieve Companies F and G of the Twenty-seventh Infantry, leaving three hundred men between Vladivostok and Baronovski.10

  After the battle of Kraefski, the Japanese cavalry cleared the roads north to Ussuri, and the Japanese infa
ntry headed north on the railroad, delayed by bridges destroyed by the Bolos, damaged tracks, and obstacles placed on the tracks. Meanwhile, the Americans were ordered by General Otani to march on the right flank from Sviyagino to Ussuri, about ninety miles, so they did not have the luxury of train travel. The roads were hardly deserving of the name, being no more than tracks in many places. Some of the days were fine, but when the rains came, filling the roads with muck and mud, the regiment covered only eighteen miles in two days. The men took all their equipment and rations with them in carts pulled by mules; they soon found that the U.S. carts were no match for the Russian roads.

  As they moved north, they came on another area where a battle had been fought, with dead men and animals left on the scene. The complete lack of respect for, or even interest in, the dead stunned the Americans.

  When men regained some semblance of composure, their voices came in whispers. In that mangled pile of bloated corpses, lying in a mush of bone and flesh, men felt that what they had come to regard as civilization must have died there. There had been dead men on top of dead horses, dead horses on top of men, and flies thick and black everywhere.11

  This was the aftermath of the Battle of Kraefski.

  As the march wore on and discomfort became agony, the doughboys thought of the Japanese at Sviyagino waiting to be moved up to Ussuri by train; they began to question the Japanese commander’s selection of the Twenty-seventh Infantry for the miserable march. “Allies,” remarked Pvt. George Billick, “I’ll bet they will give us more trouble than the Russians before we are through.”12 Passing through villages, their interpreters heard tales of Japanese troops pillaging, raping, and stealing, giving the Americans more to think about on their lonely advance. Every time they stopped as they passed through swampy areas, huge mosquitoes would attack them. Russian mosquitoes have a quality all their own; one British officer claimed they could suck blood through a blanket. Their bites were painful, itchy, and long-lasting, making nights unbearable for many. Each day brought a new grisly discovery of the rotting bodies of Russians killed by the Japanese.

  In a moving finale to the miserable march, as the advance party neared Ussuri, they could hear martial music coming faintly through the trees. As the battalions came into sight of the village, they saw the Thirty-first Infantry band, recently arrived by train, playing “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” and, as weary as they were, they picked up their step and with tears in their eyes, finished their misery-plagued trek.13

  The ninety-mile march was said by many to be the worst experience of their Siberian stay. The doughboys did themselves proud, though, and Japanese General Oi, General Otani’s second in command and commander of the Japanese Twelfth Division, gave them high praise.14 The Japanese cavalry swept through Khabarovsk, with the main body of Japanese troops following on September 6. Colonel Styer was requested to send one company to join the Japanese in the formal occupation of the city; he selected Company E. On schedule, the parade and formal occupation took place on September 10. On September 13, the commander of the Japanese Seventh Division, part of the occupying force, issued a declaration disclaiming any desire of the Japanese to interfere in any way with the Russians in their internal affairs, or to take any lands, but only to bring peace and harmony to the people, “its only purpose being to perform the will of our most humane and merciful emperor.” He added:

  It may be said that the Japanese Army is the real savior of the Russian people. If, however, anyone should oppose our Army or endeavor to prevent the carrying out of our avowed purposes, it will be necessary to invoke a severity of action and such obstructionist will be pursued and dealt with regardless of his nationality, as nothing must stand in the way of the execution of the work of our Army.15

  Ultimately, many would oppose the will of the “humane and merciful Japanese emperor” with tragic consequences.

  The Twenty-seventh Infantry Regiment set up its headquarters in Khabarovsk, with Japanese and Russian units also assigned to that sector. Shortly after arriving in Khabarovsk, Companies E and C went after the scattering Soviet troops, going as far west as Ushumun, almost five hundred miles from Khabarovsk. Much of the trip was on the newly completed Trans-Siberian Railroad Amur section, but part of the route was by foot, in rugged weather, with the doughboys, recently arrived from Manila, still in summer uniforms. Again, the Japanese were impressed. The history of the regiment said that it snowed during the march to Ushumun, and the lack of winter wear made life miserable. Still, they arrived well in advance of the Japanese, prompting General Oi to once again send his compliments.16

  By September 7, the Reds were passing through Khabarovsk, pursued by Japanese cavalry and fleeing along the northern Amur River, losing any semblance of organization. The Reds still put up resistance in spots, but being pressed from the west by advancing Czech units and from the east by the Japanese, they had little hope of success. By September 18, the Czechs and Cossacks, pushing westward from Verkhne-Udinsk were only one hundred miles from a linkup with the Japanese and Americans at Ushumun. Many of the Reds fled to the north or crossed the border into China, but the Japanese pursued them and captured most of them. The Japanese navy played its part, bringing gun-boats up the Amur to search for Reds and placing a few boats on the Zeya River. How they managed to get boats into that remote area, near Ushumun, is a puzzle, but reports indicate they were there.17 The remaining Reds still did what the Bolsheviks did best: fought a guerrilla warfare along the railroad.

  The Ussuri campaign ended with Companies C and E returning to Khabarovsk on October 11, 1918, and other elements of the Twenty-seventh Infantry scattered. The regiment suffered no casualties, but the Japanese lost 306 men in the bitter fighting.18 After the campaign, Second Battalion, without Company E, was sent to guard the railroad west of Khabarovsk, at Bira and Prokrofka, about 150 miles west of regimental headquarters. Later, in November, Company C was sent to Spasskoye to join the First Battalion, and Company E was sent to guard the prisoners at Krasnaya Retchka.19 The rest of the regiment remained in winter quarters in Khabarovsk to suffer through the long, bitterly cold, boring winter.

  Some of the Allies noted with concern that after the campaign, Japanese troops occupied most of the territory north of Khabarovsk to the sea and west virtually to Chita. The Japanese had a goal of acquiring Siberian territory, and that strategy seemed to be working. And their troop strength continued to increase, eventually reaching seventy-two thousand.

  In the midst of the confusion and distrust between the Americans and Japanese, Gen. William S. Graves arrived, determined to follow the principal guideline of his president: to stay out of Russian affairs.

  19

  General Graves Arrives in Russia

  International relations are quite unlike relations subsisting between individuals. Morality and sincerity do not govern a country’s diplomacy which is guided by selfishness, pure and simple. It is considered the secret of diplomacy to forestall rivals by every crafty means available.

  —Kokumin, Japanese newspaper

  AFTER Graves’s arrival, the assembled AEFS with the two infantry regiments, AEF Headquarters, Company D Fifty-third Telegraph Battalion, 146th Ordnance Depot Company, Seventeenth Evacuation Hospital, and other signal, medical and ambulance units numbered 8,117.1 Their stated purpose was to aid the Czechs, securing the lines between Czechs in Vladivostok and those fighting in the west. Some Czechs were heading west to help their comrades in the Baikal area, some were trying to break through the Bolshevik line that was entrenched across the Ussuri line of the Trans-Siberian, and some remained in Vladivostok.

  Confusion reigned in Vladivostok. Nine Allied nations were represented in Siberia—the United States, Great Britain, France, Japan, China, Canada, Italy, Serbia, and Czechs. The Russians had twenty-four separate governments stretching from the Urals to Vladivostok with no common bond except a hatred of Bolshevism and a distrust of Tsarists.2 The Japanese in Siberia, seeking territorial expansion, were willing to join the Siberian
expedition, so long as the Americans joined in as well to pay part of the cost. In an accord reached before the Intervention, Japan and the United States agreed to limit the number of their own troops to roughly seven thousand; that was the understanding as Graves landed in Siberia.3 The notion of not interfering in internal affairs in the middle of a revolution, with nine Allies sending in armed units, seemed incredible. Newton Baker’s caution in Kansas City was a considerable understatement of the risks involved for Graves. His eggs were loaded with dynamite, and he soon found the fuses had been lit.

  Until Graves arrived with his troops, it had begun to look as though the Siberian expedition would resemble the ill-fated North Russian experience: American troops serving under a foreign commander who immediately sent the doughboys off to fight Bolsheviks with widely separated units spread over large tracts of land.

  General Graves took steps to change the status in Siberia. As soon as he landed on September 2, 1918, he met with Colonel Styer and Adm. Austin M. Knight, commander of the Asiatic Fleet, who showed him the orders from General Otani, appointing himself commander of all Allied troops. One of Graves’s first visits was to the Japanese general on September 2; he made it clear to Otani that American units were to be controlled by American officers and could be used only with Graves’s consent. Otani said that he had been requested to assume control of all troops by the American State Department.4 After some discussion, Otani accepted Graves’s limitation on the use of U.S. troops. “The question was never again mentioned, except once in February, 1920 by General Oi, who had succeeded Otani in command of Japanese troops.”5

  One of the few pieces of information Graves had received from the War Department concerned the Japanese Siberian strategy, which was simply to keep Russian forces as fragmented as possible and to oppose any strong Russian central authority. The Japanese were to support weaker fragmented Russian units as much as possible. Graves wrote in September 1919: