Besides supplying all Russian civilian hospitals in and around Archangel regularly with medicine, sheets, blankets, pillows and food rations, the Red Cross opened up a Red Cross hospital in Archangel, which was finally turned over to the local government to be used as a base hospital for the Russian army. Red Cross medicines are credited with having checked the serious influenza epidemic and with having worked against its recurrence.
Medicaments worth one million roubles were sent by the Red Cross to the various district zemstvos. Russian prisoners of war, returning from Germany through the Bolshevik lines to North Russia, were also taken care of.
Work among the American soldiers in North Russia was thorough and effective. The daily ration was supplemented and many American soldiers received from the Red Cross quantities of rolled oats, sugar, milk, and rice, besides all the regular Red Cross comforts, including cigarettes, stationery, chewing gum, athletic goods, playing cards, toilet articles, phonographs, sweaters, socks, blankets, etc.
Supplies were sent as regularly as possible to the troops on the line, generally in the face of apparently insurmountable transportation difficulties. Units of troops, even in the most inaccessible and out of the way places, were visited by Red Cross workers, occasionally at great danger to their lives.
With the assistance of the Red Cross The American Sentinel, a weekly newspaper, was printed and distributed among the troops and did much to keep up their morale. One of the last acts performed by the Red Cross for the American Expeditionary Forces in Archangel was to help and speed to their new homes eight war brides.
The veteran of the North Russian expedition will never look at his old knit helmet or wristlets, scarf, or perhaps eat a rare dish of rolled oats, or bite off a chew of plug, or listen to a certain piece on the graphaphone, or look at a Red Cross Christmas Seal without a warm feeling under his left breast pocket for the American Red Cross.
PRIMM
View of Archangel in Summer.