The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki | Page 5

during the spring broken in for duty
alongside the American and British troops and later were to hold the
lines in some places by themselves and in others to share the lines with
the new British troops coming in twenty thousand strong "to finish the
bloody show." Gaily decorated Archangel was to bid the Americanski
dasvedanhnia and God-speed in June. Blue rippling waters were to
meet the ocean-bound prows. Music from the Cruiser "Des Moines"
(come to see us out) was to blow fainter and fainter in the distance as
they cheered us out of the Dvina River for home.
Now the troops are hurrying off the transport. They are just facing the
strange, terrible campaign faintly outlined. It is now our duty to
faithfully tell the detailed story of it--"The History of the American
North Russian Expedition," to try to do justice in this short volume to
the gripping story of the American soldiers "Campaigning in North
Russia, 1918-1919."
The American North Russian Expeditionary Force consisted of the
339th Infantry, which had been known at Camp Custer as "Detroit's

Own," one battalion of the 310th Engineers, the 337th Ambulance
Company, and the 337th Field Hospital Company. The force was under
the command of Col. George E. Stewart, 339th Infantry, who was a
veteran of the Philippines and of Alaska. The force numbered in all,
with the replacements who came later, about five thousand five
hundred men.
These units had been detached from the 85th Division, the Custer
Division, while it was enroute to France, and had been assembled in
southern England, there re-outfitted for the climate and warfare of the
North of Russia. On August the 25th, the American forces embarked at
Newcastle-on-Tyne in three British troopships, the "Somali," the
"Tydeus" and the "Nagoya" and set sail for Archangel, Russia. A fourth
transport, the "Czar," carried Italian troops who travelled as far as the
Murmansk with our convoy.
The voyage up the North Sea and across the Arctic Ocean, zig-zagging
day and night for fear of the submarines, rounding the North Cape far
toward the pole where the summer sun at midnight scarcely set below
the northwestern horizon, was uneventful save for the occasional alarm
of a floating mine and for the dreadful outbreak of Spanish "flu" on
board the ships. On board one of the ships the supply of yeast ran out
and breadless days stared the soldiers in the face till a resourceful army
cook cudgelled up recollections of seeing his mother use drainings
from the potato kettle in making her bread. Then he put the lightening
once more into the dough. And the boys will remember also the frigid
breezes of the Arctic that made them wish for their overcoats which by
order had been packed in their barrack bags, stowed deep down in the
hold of the ships. And this suffering from the cold as they crossed the
Arctic circle was a foretaste of what they were to be up against in the
long months to come in North Russia.
We had thought to touch the Murmansk coast on our way to Archangel,
but as we zig-zagged through the white-capped Arctic waves we picked
up a wireless from the authorities in command at Archangel which
ordered the American troopships to hasten on at full speed. The handful
of American sailors from the "Olympia," the crippled category men

from England and the little battalion of French troops, which had
boldly driven the Red Guards from Archangel and pursued them up the
Dvina and up the Archangel-Vologda Railway, were threatened with
extermination. The Reds had gathered forces and turned savagely upon
them.
So we sped up into the White Sea and into the winding channels of the
broad Dvina. For miles and miles we passed along the shores dotted
with fishing villages and with great lumber camps. The distant domes
of the cathedrals in Archangel came nearer and nearer. At last the water
front of that great lumber port of old Peter the Great lay before us
strange and picturesque. We dropped anchor at 10:00 a. m. on the
fourth day of September, 1918. The anchor chains ran out with a
cautious rattle. We swung on the swift current of the Dvina, studied the
shoreline and the skyline of the city of Archangel, saw the Allied
cruisers, bulldogs of the sea, and turned our eyes southward toward the
boundless pine forest where our American and Allied forces were
somewhere beset by the Bolsheviki, or we turned our eyes northward
and westward whence we had come and wondered what the folks back
home would say to hear of our fighting in North Russia.

I
U. S. A. MEDICAL UNITS ON THE ARCTIC OCEAN
Someone Blunders About Medicine Stores--Spanish Influenza At Sea
And No Medicine--Improvised Hospitals At Time Of Landing--Getting