In fact, when a survey of the military resources of the European Allies had disclosed their utter lack of men for such an expedition and it was found that the only hope lay in drawing the bulk of the needed troops from the United States forces, and when the statement of the cases in the usual polite arguments brought from President Wilson a positive refusal to allow American troops to go into Russia, it was only by the emphasis, it is said, of the pathetic appeal of the North Russian anti-Bolshevists, coupled with the stirring appeals of such famous characters as the one-time leader of the Russian Women’s Battalion of Death and the direct request of General Foch himself for the use of the American troops there in Russia as a military necessity to win the war, that the will of President Wilson was moved and he dubiously consented to the use of American troops in the expedition.
Even this concession of President Wilson was limited to the one regiment of infantry with the needed accompaniments of engineer and medical troops. The bitter irony of this limitation is apparent in the fact that while it allowed the Supreme War Council to carry out its scheme of an Allied Expedition with the publicly announced purposes before outlined, committing America and the other Allies to the guarding of supplies at Murmansk and Archangel and frustrating the plans of Germany in North Russia, it did not permit the Allied War Council sufficient forces to carry out its ultimate and of course secret purpose of reorganizing the Eastern Front, which naturally was not to be advertised in advance either to Russians or to anyone. The vital aim was thus thwarted and the expedition destined to weakness and to future political and diplomatic troubles both in North Russia and in Europe and America.
During the months spent in winning the participation of the United States in an Allied Expedition to North Russia, England took some preliminary steps which safeguarded the Murmansk Railway as far south toward Petrograd as Kandalaksha.
Royal Engineers and Marines, together with a few officers and men from French and American Military Missions, who had worked north with the diplomatic corps, were thus for a dangerously long period the sole bulwark of the Allies against complete pro-German domination of the north of Russia. Some interesting stories could be told of the clever secret work of the American officers in ferreting out the evidences in black and white, of the co-operation of the German War Office with Lenine and Trotsky. And stories of daring and pluck that saved men’s lives and kept the North Russians from a despairing surrender to the Bolsheviki.
Meanwhile England was taking measures herself to support these men so as to form a nucleus for the larger expedition when it should be inaugurated by the Allied Supreme War Council. But the total number of British officers and men who could be spared for the purpose, in view of the critical situation on the Western Front, was less than 1,200. And these had to be divided between the widely separated areas of Murmansk and Archangel. And the officers and men sent were nearly all, to a man, those who had already suffered wounds or physical exhaustion on the Western Front. This was late in June. About this time the plan of the Allied Supreme War Council as already stated was, under strict limitations, acceded to by President Wilson, and the doughboys of the 339th Infantry in July found themselves in England hearing about Archangel and disgustedly exchanging their Enfields for the Russian rifles.
For various reasons the command of the expedition was assigned by General Foch to General Poole, the British officer who had been so enthusiastic about rolling up a big volunteer army of North Russians to go south to Petrograd and wipe out the Red dictatorate and re-establish the old hard-fighting Russian Front on the East. Naturally, American soldiers who fought that desperate campaign in North Russia now feel free to criticize the judgment of General Foch in putting General Poole in command. It appears from the experiences of the soldiers up there that for military, for diplomatic and for political reasons it would have been better to put an American general in command of the expedition. And while we are at it we might as well have our little say about President Wilson. We think he erred badly in judgment. He either should have sent a large force of Americans into North Russia—as we did into Cuba—a force capable of doing up the job quickly and thoroughly, or sent none at all. He should have known that the American doughboy fights well for a cause, but that a British general would have a hard time convincing the Americans of the justice of a mixed cause. This is confession of a somewhat blind prejudice which the American citizen has against the aggressive action of British arms wherever on the globe they may be seen in action, no matter how justifiable the ultimate turn of events may prove the British military action to have been. We say that this prejudice should have been taken into account when the American doughboy was sent to Russia to fight under British command. It might not be out of order to point out that the North Russian shared with his American allies in that campaign the same prejudice, unreasonable at times without doubt, but none the less painful prejudice against the British command of the expedition. And all this in spite of the fact that most of the British officers were personally above reproach, and General Ironside, who soon succeeded the failing Poole, was every inch of his six foot-four a man and a soldier, par excellence.
The French were able to send only part of a regiment, one battalion of Colonial troops and a machine gun company, who reached the Murmansk late in July about the time the Americans were sailing from England. They were soon sent on to Archangel, where political things were now come to a head.
The Serbian battalion which had left Odessa at the time of the summer collapse of the Russian armies in 1917 had gradually worked its way northward from Petrograd on the Petrograd-Kola Railroad with the intention of shipping for the Western fighting front by way of England. They had been of potential aid to the Allied military missions during the summer and now were permitted by the Serbian government to be joined to the Allied expedition. They were accordingly put into position along the Kola Railroad. These troops, of course, as well as thousands of British troops which were stationed in the Murmansk and by the British War Office were numbered in the North Russian Expeditionary forces, were of no account whatever in the military activities of that long fall and winter and spring campaign in the far away Archangel area where the American doughboys for months, supported here and there by a few British and French and Russians, stood at bay before the swarming Bolos and battled for their lives in snow and ice.
The battalion of Italian troops with its company of skii troops which sailed from England with the American convoy also went to the Murmansk and all the American doughboy saw of Italians in the fighting area of Archangel, North Russia, was the little handful of well dressed Italian officers and batmen in the city of Archangel. Of course, we had plenty of representation of Italian fighting blood right in our own ranks. They were in the O. D. uniform and were American citizens. And of course the same thing could be said of many another nationality that was represented in the ranks of American doughboys and whose bravery in battle and fortitude in hardships of cold and hunger gave evidence that no one nationality has a corner on courage and “guts” and manhood. To call the roll of one of those heroic fighting companies of doughboys or engineers or medical or hospital companies in the olive drab would evidence by the names of the men and officers that the best bloods of Europe and of Asia were all pulsing in the American ranks.
The presence of British, French and American war vessels and the first small bodies of troops encouraged the Murmansk Russian authorities to declare their independence of the Red Moscow crowd and to throw in their lot with the Allies in the work of combatting the agents of the German War Office in the North. In return the Allies were to furnish money, food and supplies. Early in July written agreement to this effect had been signed by the Murmansk Russian authorities and all the Allies represented, including the United States. It will be recalled that Ambassador Francis had been obliged to leave Petrograd by the Bolshevik rulers, and he had gone north into Murmansk.