Great excitement prevailed for several days. The people declared Tschaplin was moving to restore monarchy under aid of the foreign arms and declared a strike on the street railroads and threatened to take the pumping station and the electric power station located at Smolny. American troops manned the cars and by their good nature and patience won the respect and confidence of the populace, excited as it was. The American ambassador, the Hon. David R. Francis, with characteristic American directness and fairness called the impetuous Tschaplin before him and gave him so many hours in which to restore the rightful government to power. And Tchaikowsky came back into the State House on September 11th much to the rejoicing of the people and to the harmony of the Allied Expedition. The diplomatic and military authorities of the American part of the expedition had handled the situation in a way that prevented riot and gained esteem for Americans in the eyes of all the Russians.
Archangel, Smolny and Bakaritza now were busy scenes of military activity. Down the streets of Archangel marched part of a battalion of doughboys past the State House and the imposing foreign Embassy Building. Curious eyes looked upon the O. D. uniform and admired the husky stalwarts from over the seas. Bright-eyed women crowded to the edge of the boardwalks amongst the long-booted and heavily bewhiskered men. Well-dressed men with shaven faces and marks of culture studied the Americans speculatively. Russian children began making acquaintance and offering their flattering Americanski Dobra.
At Solombola, Smolny, Bakaritza, sounds of firing were heard daily, but the populace were quieted when told that it was not riot or Bolo attack but the Americans practising up with their ordnance. In fact the Americans, hearing of actions at the fronts, were desperately striving to learn how to use the Lewis guns and the Vickers machine guns. At Camp Custer they had perfected themselves in handling the Colt and the Brownings but in England had been obliged to relinquish them with the dubious prospect of re-equipping with the Russian automatic rifles and machine gun equipment at Archangel. Now they were feverishly at work on the new guns for reports were coming back from the front that the enemy was well equipped with such weapons and held the Americans at great disadvantage.
Here let it be said that the American doughboy in the North Russian campaign mastered every kind of weapon that was placed in his hands or came by fortune of war to his hand. He learned to use the Lewis gun and the Vickers machine gun of the British and Russian armies, also the one-pounder, or pom pom. He became proficient in the use of the French Chauchat automatic rifle and the French machine gun, and their rifle grenade guns. He learned to use the Stokes mortars with deadly effect on many a hard-fought line. And during the winter two platoons of “Hq.” Company prided themselves on the mastery of a battery of Russian artillery patterned after the famous, in fact, the same famous French 75 gun.
While the 2nd Battalion under Major Nichols was establishing itself in quarters at Smolny, where was a great compound of freshly unloaded supplies of food, herring and whiskey (do not forget the hard stuff) and, becoming responsible for the safety of the pumping station and the electric power station and the ships in the harbor, Captain Taylor established the big Headquarters Company at Olga barracks at the other end of the city on September seventh where he could train his men for the handling of new weapons and could co-operate with Captain Kenyon’s machine gun men. They on the same day took up quarters in Solombola Barracks and were charged with the duty of not only learning how to use the new machine guns but to keep guard over the quays and prevent rioting by the turbulent Russian sailors. Their undying enmity had been earned by the well-meant but untactful, yes, to the sailors apparently treacherous, conduct of General Poole toward them on the Russian ships in the Murmansk when he got them off on a pretext and then seized the ships to prevent their falling into the hands of the Red Guards. And while the doughboys on the railroad and Kodish fronts in the fall were occasionally to run up against the hard-fighting Russian sailors who had fled south to Petrograd and volunteered their services to Trotsky to go north and fight the Allied expeditionary forces, these doughboys doing guard duty in Archangel over the remnants of stores and supplies which the Bolo had not already stolen or sunk in the Dvina River, were constantly menaced by these surly, scowling sailors at Solombola and in Archangel.
Really it is no wonder that the several Allied troop barracks were always guarded by machine guns and automatics. Rumor at the base always magnified the action at the front and always fancied riot and uprising in every group of gesticulating Russkis seen at a dusky corner of the city.
The Supply Company of the regiment became the supply unit for all the American forces under Captain Wade and was quartered at Bakaritza, being protected by various units of Allied forces. “Finish” the package of Russki horse skin and bones which the boys “skookled” from the natives, that is, bought from the natives, became the most familiar sight on the quays, drawing the strange-looking but cleverly constructed drosky, or cart, bucking into his collar under the yoke and pulling with all his sturdy will, not minding the American “whoa” but obedient enough when the doughboy learned to sputter the Russki “br-r-r br-r-r.”
Archangel is situated on one of the arms of the Dvina River which deltas into the White Sea. Out of the enormous interior of North Russia, gathering up the melted snows of a million square miles of seven-foot snow and the steady June rains and the weeks of fall rains, the great Mississippi of North Russia moves down to the sea, sweeping with deep wide current great volumes of reddish sediment and secretions which give it the name Dvina. And the arm of the Arctic Ocean into which it carries its loads of silt and leachings, and upon which it floats the fishermen’s bottoms or the merchantmen’s steamers, is called the White Sea. Rightly named is that sea, the Michigan or Wisconsin soldier will tell you, for it is white more than half the year with ice and snow, the sporting ground for polar bears.
While we were fighting the Bolsheviki in Archangel, the National Geographic Society, in a bulletin, published to our people certain facts about the country. It is so good that extracts are in this chapter included:
“The city of Archangel, Russia, where Allied and American troops have their headquarters in the fight with the Bolshevik forces, was the capital of the Archangel Province, or government, under the czar’s regime—a vast, barren and sparsely populated region, cut through by the Arctic Circle.