Archangel: The American War with Russia

by John Cudahy

But in Russia the American regiment was at once merged with the British Command, and from first action until the end of the campaign, British Headquarters directed and controlled the dispositions and conduct of the Americans.

At Archangel there is a modern, spacious white building, and here from steam-heated headquarters Colonel George W. Stewart commanded the United States 339th Infantry, here were quartered his staff officers, the unemployed "brains" of our Northern American army. He never saw any part of his regiment in action. For a long time I believe he had not even a vague notion regarding the location of his British dissipated troops.

Embassies of France and Serbia, Poland, and Italy were in Archangel, and the American Ambassador, David R. Francis, came from Vologda there early in August, and stayed until sickness compelled him to leave for England during the winter. And there was an American Military Attache who developed into a Military Mission with Colonel James A. Ruggles as chief, and a staff of officers to assist him. Also there was an American Consulate, with an American Consul General, Dewitt C. Poole, who at times appeared to take over a supervision of the American share in this strange, strange war with Russia.

And over across the harbor at Bakaritza, a well-fed Supply Company watched over mountains of rations and supplies that had been brought all the way from far off America; supplies and little good things and comforts that would have heartened and brought new life and hope to the lonely, abandoned men on the far fighting lines in the snow. These supplies never reached the front, but the Supply Company, with American business shrewdness and American aptitude for trading, acquired great bundles of rubles, and at the market place converted these into stable sterling, and came out of Russia in the springtime with pleasant memories of a tourist winter; likewise a small fortune securely hid in their olive drab breeches. But there were others who ate their hearts away, fretting and chafing, in Archangel, whose petitions to go to the front to play the man's game were denied by those in command.

British G.H.Q. brought six hundred surplus officers and forty thousand cases of good Scotch whiskey. Some of the officers had come frankly in search of a "cushy job" in a zone they thought safely removed from poison gases and bombardments and all the hideous muck of the trenches. Others, much to their disgust, had been sent to the polar regions because some one in Headquarters had thought they possessed some peculiar qualification to command or "get on" with imaginary Russian regiments that were to spring to the Allied Standard.

So it was that Archangel became a city of many colors, as gallant, uniformed gentlemen strode down the Troitsky Prospect, whipping the air with their walking sticks, and looking very stern and commanding, as they answered many salutes, in a bored, absent-minded way.

There were officers of the Imperial Army, weighed down with glittering, ponderous honor medals, and dark Cossacks with high gray hats, and gaudy tunics, and murderous noisy sabers. Handsome gentlemen of war from England, from Serbia, Italy, Finland, France, and Bohemia, and many other countries, all arrayed in brilliant plumage, and shining boots, and bright spurs, and every other kind of "eye wash." And, of course, there were large numbers of batmen to shine the boots and burnish the spurs, and keep all in fine order, and other batmen to look after the appointments of the officers' club, and serve the whiskey and soda.

In the afternoons there were teas, and receptions and matinees, and dances in the evening, when the band played and every one was flushed with pleasure and excitement. Such flirtations with the pretty barishnas, such whispered gossip and intrigue and scandal in light-hearted Archangel!

At Kodish, at Onega on the Vaga, and at Toulgas, far off across the haunting snows, sick men and broken men, men faint from lack of nutrition, and men sickened in soul, were doing sentry through the numbing, cold nights, because there were none to take their places in the blockhouses, and no supports to come to their relief, no reserves to hearten them and give them courage.

The blockhouses so far away, where men were maimed and crippled and shell shocked, and the black hopelessness that crept into men's hearts, and strangled men's hearts, and overcame their soldier spirit—in the blockhouses—far, so far off from gala Archangel.