The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki | Page 4

Stout Defense of Kitsa
Christmas Dinner, Convalescent Hospital, Archangel
"Come and Get It" at 455
Orderly Room, Convalescent Hospital, Archangel
American Hospital Scene
Doughboys Entertained by "Y" Girls in Hostess House

Doughboys Drubbed Sailors
Yank and Scot Guarding Bolo Prisoners, Beresnik
View of Archangel in Summer
General Ironside Inspecting Doughboys
Burial of Lt. Clifford Phillips, American Cemetery, Archangel
Major J. Brooks Nichols in his Railway Detachment Field Hq
Ready to Head Memorial Day Parade, Archangel, 1919
American Cemetery, Archangel
Soldiers and Sailors of Six Nations Reverence Dead
Graves of First Three Americans Killed, Obozerskaya, Russia
Sailors Parade on Memorial Day
Through Ice Floes in Arctic Homeward Bound
Out of White Sea into Arctic, under Midnight Sun

INTRODUCTION
The troopships "Somali," "Tydeus," and "Nagoya" rubbed the
Bakaritza and Smolny quays sullenly and listed heavily to port. The
American doughboys grimly marched down the gangplanks and set
their feet on the soil of Russia, September 5th, 1918. The dark waters
of the Dvina River were beaten into fury by the opposing north wind
and ocean tide. And the lowering clouds of the Arctic sky added their
dismal bit to this introduction to the dreadful conflict which these
American sons of liberty were to wage with the Bolsheviki during the
year's campaign.

In the rainy fall season by their dash and valor they were to expel the
Red Guards from the cities and villages of the state of Archangel,
pursuing the enemy vigorously up the Dvina, the Vaga, the Onega and
the Pinega Rivers, and up the Archangel-Vologda Railway and the
Kodish-Plesetskaya-Petrograd state highway. They were to plant their
entrenched outposts in a great irregular horseshoe line, one cork at
Chekuevo, the toe at Ust-Padenga, the other cork of the shoe at
Karpagorskaya. They were to run out from the city of Archangel long,
long lines of communication, spread wide like the fingers of a great
hand that sought seemingly to cover as much of North Russia as
possible with Allied military protection.
In the winter, in the long, long nights and black, howling forests and
frozen trenches, with ever-deepening snows and sinking thermometer,
with the rivers and the White Sea and the Arctic Ocean solid ice fifteen
feet thick, these same soldiers now seen disembarking from the
troopships, were to find their enemy greatly increasing his forces every
month at all points on the Allied line. Stern defense everywhere on that
far-flung trench and blockhouse and fortified-village battle line. They
were to feel the overwhelming pressure of superior artillery and
superior equipment and transportation controlled by the enemy and
especially the crushing odds of four to ten times the number of men on
the battle lines. And with it they were to feel the dogged sense of the
grim necessity of fighting for every verst of frozen ground. Their very
lives were to depend upon the stubbornness of their holding retreat.
There could be no retreating beyond Archangel, for the ships were
frozen in the harbor. Indeed a retreat to the city of Archangel itself was
dangerous. It might lead to revulsion of temper among the populace
and enable the Red Guards to secure aid from within the lines so as to
carry out Trotsky's threat of pushing the foreign bayonets all under the
ice of the White Sea. And in that remarkable winter defense these
American soldiers were to make history for American arms, exhibiting
courage and fortitude and heroism, the stories of which are to embellish
the annals of American martial exploits. They were destined, a handful
of them here, a handful there, to successfully baffle the Bolshevik
hordes in their savage drives.

In the spring the great ice crunching up in the rivers and the sea was to
behold those same veteran Yanks still fighting the Red Guard armies
and doing their bit to keep the state of Archangel, the North Russian
Republic, safe, and their own skins whole. The warming sun and
bursting green were to see the olive-drab uniform, tattered and torn as it
was, covering a wearied and hungry and homesick but nevertheless
fearless and valiant American soldier. With deadly effect they were to
meet the onrushing swarms of Bolos on all fronts and slaughter them
on their wire with rifle and machine gun fire and smash up their
reserves with artillery fire. With desperation they were to dispute the
overwhelming columns of infantry who were hurled by no less a
renowned old Russian General than Kuropatkin, and at Malo Bereznik
and Bolsheozerki, in particular, to send them reeling back in bloody
disaster. They were to fight the Bolshevik to a standstill so that they
could make their guarded getaway.
Summer was to see these Americans at last handing over the defenses
to Russian Northern Republic soldiers who had been trained during the
winter at Archangel and gradually