The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki Part 9

Two Platoons Of "H" Company By Steamer To Onega--Occupation Of Chekuevo--Bolsheviki Give Battle--Big Order To Little Force--Kaska Too Strongly Defended--Doughboys' Attack Fails--Cossacks Spread False Report--Successful Advance Up Valley--Digging In For Winter.

Meanwhile "H" Company was pushing up the Onega Valley. Stories had leaked out in Archangel of engagements up the Dvina and up the railroad where American soldiers had tasted first sweets of victory, and "H" men now piled excitedly into a steamer at Archangel on the 15th of September and after a 24-hour ride down the Dvina, across the Dvina Bay up an arm of the White Sea called Onega Bay and into the mouth of the Onega River, landed without any opposition and took possession. The enemy had been expelled a few days previously by a small detachment of American sailors from the "Olympia."

The "H" force consisted of two platoons commanded by Lieuts. Phillips and Pellegrom, who reported to an English officer, Col. Clark.

The coming of Americans was none too soon. The British officer had not made much headway in organizing an effective force of the anti-Bolshevik Russians. The Red Guards were ma.s.sing forces in the upper part of the valley and, German-like, had sent notice of their impending advance to recapture the city of Onega.

On September 18th Lieut. Pellegrom received verbal orders from Col.

Clark to move his platoon of fifty-eight men with Lieut. Nugent, M. R.

C., and one man at once to Chekuevo, about fifty miles up the river.

Partly by boat and partly by marching the Americans reached the village of Chekuevo and began organizing the defenses, on the 19th. Three days later Lieut. Phillips was hurried up with his platoon to reinforce and take command of the hundred and fifteen Americans and ninety-three Russian volunteers. At dawn on the twenty-fourth the enemy attacked our positions from three sides with a force of three hundred and fifty men and several machine guns.

The engagement lasted for five hours. The main attack coming down the left bank of the Onega River was held by the Americans till after the enemy had driven back the Allies, Russians, on the right bank and placed a machine gun on our flank.

Then the Americans had to give ground on the main position and the Reds placed another machine gun advantageously. Meanwhile smaller parties of the enemy were working in the rear. Finally the enemy machine guns were spotted and put out of action by the superior fire of our Lewis automatics, and the Bolshevik leader, Shiskin, was killed at the gun.

This success inspirited the Americans who dashed forward and the Reds broke and fled. A strong American combat patrol followed the retreating Reds for five miles and picked up much clothing, ammunition, rifles, and equipment, and two of his dead, ten of his wounded and one prisoner and two machine guns. Losses on our side consisted of two wounded. Our Russian allies lost two killed and seven wounded.

The action had been carried on in the rain under very trying conditions for the Americans who were in their first fire fight and reflected great credit upon Lieut. Phillips and his handful of doughboys who were outnumbered more than three to one and forced to give battle in a place well known to the enemy but strange to the Americans and severely disadvantageous.

Outside of a few patrol combats and the capture of a few Bolshevik prisoners the remainder of the month of September was uneventful.

The Onega Valley force, like the Railway and Kodish forces, was sparring for an opening and plans were made for a general push on Plesetskaya. On September 30th Lieut. Phillips received an order as follows:

"The enemy on the railway line is being attacked today (the 29th) and some Cossacks are coming to you from Obozerskaya. On their arrival you will move south with them and prevent enemy from retiring across the river in a westerly direction.

"Open the wire to Obozerskaya and ascertain how far down the line our troops have reached and then try to keep abreast of them but do not go too far without orders from the O/CA force (Col. Sutherland at Obozerskaya). I mean by this that you must not run your head against a strong force which may be retiring unless you are sure of holding your ground. There is a strong force at Plesetskaya on the railway and it is possible that they may retire across your front in the direction of the line running from Murmansk to Petrograd. The commandant of Chekuevo must supply you with carts for rations and, as soon as you can, make arrangements for food to be sent to you from the railway.

The S. S. service can run up to you with supplies and can keep with you until you reach the rapids, if you go so far. Don't forget that the enemy has a force at Turchesova, south of you. Keep the transports in the middle of your column so that no carts get cut off, and it would be a good thing if you could get transport from village to village.

"Captain Burton, R. M. L. I., will remain in command at Chekuevo."

W. J. CLARK, Lieut.-Col.

The Americans knew that this was a big contract, but let us now look at the map and see what the plan really called for. Forty miles of old imperial telegraph and telephone line to the eastward to restore to use between Chekuevo and Obozerskaya. No signal corps men and no telling where the wires needed repair. And sixty miles more or less to the south and eastward on another road to make speed with slow cart transport with orders to intercept an enemy supposed to be preparing to flee westward from the railway. Not forgetting that was to be done in spite of the opposition of a strong force of Red Guards somewhere in the vicinity of Turchesova thirty-five miles up the valley. "A little job, you know,"

for those one hundred and fifteen Americans, veterans of two weeks in the wilds of North Russia.

The American officer from his reconnaissance patrols and from friendly natives learned that the enemy instead of seeking escape was ma.s.sing forces for another attack on the Americans.

About seven hundred of the Red Guards were heavily entrenched in and around Kaska and were recruiting forces. In compliance with his orders, Lieut. Phillips moved out the next morning, October 1st, with the eighteen mounted Cossacks, joined in the night from Obozerskaya, and his other anti-Bolshevik Russian volunteer troops. Movement began at 2:30 a.

m. with about eight miles to march in the dark and zero hour was set for five o'clock daybreak. Two squads of the Americans and Russian volunteers had been detached by Lieut. Phillips and given to the command of Capt. Burton to make a diversion attack on Wazientia, a village across the river from Kaska. Lieut. Pellegrom was to attack the enemy in flank from the west while Lieut. Phillips and the Cossacks made the frontal a.s.sault.

Phillip's platoon was early deserted by the Cossacks and, after advancing along the side of a sandy ridge to within one hundred yards of the enemy, found it necessary to dig in. Lieut. Pellegrom on the flank on account of the nature of the ground brought his men only to within three hundred yards of the enemy lines and was unable to make any communication with his leader. Captain Burton was deserted by the volunteers at first fire and had to retreat with his two squads of Americans. The fire fight raged all the long day. Phillips was unable to extricate his men till darkness but held his position and punished the enemy's counter attacks severely. The enemy commanded the lines with heavy machine guns and the doughboys who volunteered to carry messages from one platoon to the other paid for their bravery with their lives.

Believing himself to be greatly outnumbered the American officer withdrew his men at 7:30 p. m. to Chekuevo, with losses of six men killed and three wounded. Enemy losses reported later by deserters were thirty killed and fifty wounded.

Again the opposing sides resorted to delay and sparring for openings. At Chekuevo the Americans strengthened the defenses of that important road junction and kept in contact with the enemy by daily combat patrols up the valley in the direction of Kaska, scene of the encounter. It was during this period that one day the "H" men at Chekuevo were surprised by the appearance of Lieut. Johnson with a squad of "M" Company men who had patrolled the forty miles of Obozerskaya road to Chekuevo looking for signs of the enemy whom a mounted patrol of Cossacks sent from Obozerskaya had declared were in possession of the road and of Chekuevo.

They learned from these men that on the railway, too, the enemy had disclosed astonishing strength of numbers and showed as good quality of fighting courage as at Kaska and had administered to the American troops their first defeat. They learned, too, that the French battalion was coming back onto the fighting line with the Americans for a heavy united smash at the enemy.

A new party of some fifteen Cossacks relieved the eighteen Cossacks who returned to Archangel. The force was augmented materially by the coming of a French officer and twenty-five men from Archangel.

The same boat brought out the remainder of "H" Company under command of Capt. Carl Gevers, who set up his headquarters at Onega, October 9th, under the new British O/C Onega Det., Col. ("Tin Eye") Edwards, and sent Lieut. Carlson and his platoon to Karelskoe, a village ten miles to the rear of Chekuevo, to support Phillips.

Success on the railroad front, together with information gathered from patrols led Col. Edwards to believe the enemy was retiring up the valley. An armed reconnaissance by the whole force at Chekuevo moving forward on both sides of the Onega River on October 19th, which was two days after the Americans on the railroad had carried Four Hundred and Forty-five by storm and the Bolo had "got up his wind" and retired to Emtsa. Phillips found that the enemy had indeed retired from Kaska and retreated to Turchesova, some thirty-five miles up the valley.

Phillips occupied all the villages along the river Kachela in force, sending his combat patrols south of Priluk daily to make contact. Winter showed signs of early approach and, in compliance with verbal orders of Col. Edwards at Onega, Phillips withdrew his forces to Chekuevo on October 25th. This seems to have been in accordance with the wise plan of the new British Commanding General to extend no further the dangerously extended lines, but to prepare for active defense just where snow and frost were finding the various widely scattered forces of the expedition. On the way back through Kaska it was learned that two of the "H" men who had been reported missing in the fight at Kaska, but who were in fact killed, had been buried by the villagers. They were disinterred and given a regular military funeral, and graves marked.

Outside of daily patrols and the reliefs of platoons changing about for rest at Onega there was little of excitement during the remainder of October and the month of November. Occasionally there would be a flurry, a "windy time" at British Headquarters in Onega and patrols and occupying detachments sent out to various widely separated villages up the valley. There seems to have been an idea finally that the village of Kyvalanda should be fortified so as to prevent the Red Guards from having access to the valley of the Chulyuga, a tributary of the Onega River, up which in the winter ran a good road to Bolsheozerke where it joined the Chekuevo road to Oborzerskaya. Wire was brought up and the village of Kyvalanda was strongly entrenched, sometimes two platoons being stationed there.

Captain Gevers had to go to hospital for operation. This was a loss to the men. Here old Boreas came down upon this devoted company of doughboys. They got into their winter clothing, gave attention to making themselves as comfortable shelters as possible on their advanced outposts, organized their sleigh transport system that had to take the place of the steamer service on the Onega which was now a frozen barrier to boats but a highway for sleds. They had long winter nights ahead of them with frequent snow storms and many days of severe zero weather. And though they did not suspect it they were to encounter hard fighting during and at the end of the winter.

X

"G" COMPANY FAR UP THE PINEGA RIVER

Reds Had Looted Villages Of Pinega Valley--Winter Sees Bolsheviks Returning To Attack--Mission Of American Column--Pinega--Pinkish-White Political Color--Yank Soldiers Well Received--Take Distant Karpogora--Greatly Outnumbered Americans Retire--"Just Where Is Pinega Front?"

In making their getaway from Archangel and vicinity at the time the Allies landed in Archangel, the Reds looted and robbed and carried off by rail and by steamer much stores of furs, and clothing and food, as well as the munitions and military equipment. What they did not carry by rail to Vologda they took by river to Kotlas. We have seen how they have been pursued and battled on the Onega, on the Railroad, on the Vaga, on the Dvina. Now we turn to the short narrative of their activities on the Pinega River. As the Reds at last learned that the expedition was too small to really overpower them and had returned to dispute the Allies on the other rivers, so, far up the Pinega Valley, they began gathering forces. The people of the lower Pinega Valley appealed to the Archangel government and the Allied military command for protection and for a.s.sistance in pursuing the Reds to recover the stores of flour that had been taken from the co-operative store a.s.sociations at various points along the river. These co-operatives had bought flour from the American Red Cross. Accordingly on October 20th Captain Conway with "G" Company set off on a fast steamer and barge for Pinega, arriving after three days and two nights with a force of two platoons, the other two having been left behind on detached service, guarding the ships in the harbor of Bakaritza. Here the American officer was to command the area, organize its defense and cooperate with the Russian civil authorities in raising local volunteers for the defense of the city of Pinega, which, situated at the apex of a great inverted "V" in the river, appeared to be the key point to the military and political situation.

Pinega was a fine city of three thousand inhabitants with six or seven thousand in the nearby villages that thickly dot the banks of this broad expansion of the old fur-trading and lumber river port. Its people were progressive and fairly well educated. The city had been endowed by its millionaire old trader with a fine technical high school. It had a large cathedral, of course. Not far from it two hours ride by horseback, an object of interest to the doughboy, was the three hundred-year-old monastery, white walls with domes and spires, perched upon the grey bluffs, in the hazy distance looking over the broad Pinega Valley and Soyla Lake, where the monks carried on their fishing. In Pinega was a fine community hall, a good hospital and the government buildings of the area.

Its people had held a great celebration when they renounced allegiance to the Czar, but they had very sensibly retained some of his old trained local representatives to help carry on their government. Self government they cherished. When the Red Guards had been in power at Archangel they had of course extended their sway partially to this far-off area. But the people had only submitted for the time. Some of their able men had had to accept tenure of authority under the nominal overlordship of the Red commissars. And when the Reds fled at the approach of the Allies, the people of Pinega had punished a few of the cruel Bolshevik rulers that they caught but had not made any great effort to change all the officers of civil government even though they had been Red officials for a time. In fact it was a somewhat confused color scheme of Red and White civil government that the Americans found in the Pinega Valley. The writer commanded this area in the winter and speaks from actual experience in dealing with this Pinega local government, half Red as it was. The Americans were well received and took up garrison duty in the fall, raising a force of three hundred volunteers chiefly from the valley above Pinega, whose people were in fear of a return of the Reds and begged for a military column up the valley to deliver it from the Red agitators and recover their flour that had been stolen.

November 15th Captain Conway, acting under British G. H. Q., Archangel, acceded to these requests and sent Lieut. Higgins with thirty-five Americans and two hundred and ten Russian volunteers to clear the valley and occupy Karpogora.

For ten days the force advanced without opposition. At Marynagora an enemy patrol was encountered and the next day the Yanks drove back an enemy combat patrol. Daily combat patrol action did not interfere with their advance and on Thanksgiving Day the "G" Company boys after a little engagement went into Karpogora. They were one hundred and twenty versts from Pinega, which was two hundred and seven versts from Archangel, a mere matter of being two hundred miles from Archangel in the heart of a country which was politically about fifty-fifty between Red and White. But the Reds did not intend to have the Americans up there. On December 4th they came on in a much superior force and attacked. The Americans lost two killed and four wounded out of their little thirty-five Americans and several White Guards, and on order from Captain Conway, who hurried up the river to take charge, the flying column relinquished its hold on Karpogora and retired down the valley followed by the Reds. A force of White Guards was left at Visakagorka, and one at Trufanagora, and Priluk and the main White Guard outer defense of Pinega established at Pelegorskaya.

Like the whole expedition into Russia of which the Pinega Valley force was only one minor part, the coming of the Allied troops had quieted the areas occupied but, in the hinterland beyond, the propaganda of the wily Bolshevik agents of Trotsky and Lenine succeeded quite naturally in inflaming the Russians against what they called the foreign bayonets.

And here at the beginning of winter we leave this handful of Americans holding the left sector of the great horseshoe line against a gathering force, the mutterings of whose Red mobs was already being heard and which was preparing a series of dreadful surprises for the Allied forces on the Pinega as well as on other winter fronts. Indeed their activities in this peace-loving valley were to rise early in the winter to major importance to the whole expedition's fate and stories of this flank threat to Archangel and especially to the Dvina and Vaga lines of communication, where the Pinega Valley merges with the Dvina Valley, was to bring from our American Great Headquarters in France the terse telegram: "Just where is the Pinega Front?"

It was out there in the solid pine forests one hundred fifty miles to the east and north of Archangel. Out where the Russian peasant had rigged up his strange-looking but ingeniously constructed sahnia, or sledge. Where on the river he was planting in the ice long thick-set rows of pines or branches in double rows twice a sled length apart.

These frozen-in lines of green were to guide the traveller in the long winter of short days and dark nights safely past the occasional open holes and at such times as he made his trip over the road in the blinding blizzards of snow. Out there where the peasant was changing from leather boots to felt boots and was hunting up his scarfs and his great parki, or bearskin overcoat. That is where "G" Company, one hundred strong, was holding the little, but important, Pinega Front at the end of the fall campaign.

XI

WITH WOUNDED AND SICK

Lest We Forget S. O. L. Doughboy--Column In Battle And No Medical Supplies--Jack-Knife Amputation--Sewed Up With Needle And Thread From Red Cross Comfort Kit--Diary Of American Medical Officer--Account Is Choppy But Full Of Interest.

Some things the doughboy and officer from America will never have grace enough in his forgiving heart to ever forgive. Those were the outrageous things that happened to the wounded and sick in that North Russian campaign. Of course much was done and in fact everything was meant to be done possible for the comfort of the luckless wounded and the men who, from exposure and malnutrition, fell sick. But there were altogether too many things that might have been avoided. Lest we forget and go off again on some such strange campaign let us chronicle the story of the grief that came to the S. O. L. doughboy.

One American medical officer who went up with the first column of Americans in the Onega River Valley in the fall never got through cussing the British medical officer who sent him off with merely the handful of medical supplies that he, as a medical man, always carried for emergencies of camp. Story has already been told of the lack of medical supplies on the two "flu"-infected ships that took the soldiers to Russia. Never will the American doughboy forget how melancholy he felt when he saw the leaded shrouds go over the side of the sister ship where the poor Italians were suffering and dying. And the same ill-luck with medical supplies seemed to follow us to North Russia.

Dr. Nugent, of Milwaukee, writes after the first engagement on the Onega front he was obliged to use needle and thread from a doughboys' Red Cross comfort kit to take st.i.tches in six wounded men.

Lieut. Lennon of "L" Company reports that during the first action of his Company on the Kodish Front in the fall, there was no medical officer with the unit in action. The American medical officer was miles in rear.

Wounded men were bandaged on the field with first aid and carried back twenty-six versts. And he relates further that one man on the field suffered the amputation of his leg that day with a pocket knife. The officer further states that the American medical officer at Seletskoe was neglectful and severe with the doughboys. At one time there was no iodine, no bandages, no number 9's at Kodish Front. The medical officer under discussion was never on the front and gained the hearty dislike of the American doughboys for his conduct.