Fighting Without a War: An Account of Military Intervention in North RussiaAlbertson, Ralph
History
Fighting Without a War: An Account of Military Intervention in North Russia
Albertson, Ralph
World War, 1914-1918 -- Soviet Union
As our ships rode into the mouth of the Dvina River with the first
troops of the expedition, and the last train pulled out of Archangel
Preestyn bearing the last of the Bolsheviki away to the south, the
people of Archangel came out to the river bank and the docks to see the
incoming fleet and to welcome their deliverers from Bolshevist
proletariat tyranny and prolonged political and industrial unrest. The
Russians were tired of war, and as they lined up on the river banks in
front of the hundreds of peasant villages bordering a thousand versts of
rivers to express their welcome it was Peace and Prosperity that they
thought they were welcoming.
In fact, however, it was war, war such as that part of Russia had never
known before, and most expensive war.
The expedition had been sent "to guard stores at Archangel." Since
these stores had been taken by those whom we assumed to be friends of
Germany we must pursue them. We did. We took guns along. We found
them, with guns also, at several points about a hundred miles from the
city. Their forces were weak. So were ours. But we drove them, or
they led us, down the Murmansk railroad past Kem, down the Vologda
railroad beyond Obozerskaya, up the Onega River to Chekuevo, up the
Pinega River, up the Emtza River, up the Dvina River past Toulgas, and
up the Vaga River to Ustpadenga.
We did not capture our enemy nor the stores we had come to guard. The
early Russian winter came and found us thrown out to seven points in a
form that was like a seven-fingered hand with one finger three hundred
miles long and with no lateral communication between the fingers. In
driving these lines out there was some fighting, mostly of a guerrilla
type. We lost a number of men, but our casualties were comparatively
small. We had been on the offensive and had followed lines of not very
great resistance. The positions in which winter found us may not have
been planned by the Bolsheviki, but I doubt if any English record exists
of such a plan or if any officer will confess to having made such a
plan. We just happened to be there. We were scattered as far as
possible. Each position was practically isolated from all the others.
Our lines of communication were weak and inefficient. The only
protection to our flanks and our rears was the hoped-for snow which came
early and abundantly.
*V*
*THE WINTER CAMPAIGN*
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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