The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki Part 37

"On April 5th we left Plesetskaya, after saying good-bye to the English Chaplain who seemed greatly pleased that he was to get his freedom and had his pockets full of Bolshevik propaganda. We reached Naundoma after a night of terrible cold in the unheated car and during the next two days on the railway journey to Vologda had nothing to eat. On April 7th we reached that city and were locked up with about twenty Russians. Here we got some black bread that seemed to have sand in it and some sour cabbage soup which we all shared, Russians and all, from a single bucket. Next day we thought it a real improvement to have a separate tin and a single wooden spoon for the forlorn group of Americans and British.

"At Plesetskaya we were questioned very thoroughly by a Russian officer who spoke English very well and showed marked sympathy toward us and saw to it that we were better treated, and later in Moscow saw to it that we had some small favors. In three days' time we were again on the train for Moscow, travelling in what seemed luxury after our late experience.

The trains to Moscow ran only once a week as there were no materials to keep up the equipment.

"On our arrival we found the streets sloppy and muddy, with heaps of ice and snow and dead horses among the rubbish. Few business places were open, all stores having been looted. Here and there was a semi-illicit stand where horsemeat, salt fish, carrots or cabbage and parsnips, and sour milk could be bought on the sly if you had the price. But it was very little at any price and exceedingly uncertain of appearance. We were sent to join the other prisoners, French, English, Scotch and Americans who had preceded us from the front to Moscow. They had tales similar to ours to tell us.

"The next morning at 10:00 a. m. we were wondering when we would eat.

The answer was: Twelve noon. Cabbage soup headed the menu, then came dead horse meat, or salt fish if you chose it, black bread and water.

Same menu for supper. We learned that the people of the city fared scarcely better. All were rationed. The soldiers and officials of the Bolsheviks fared better than the others. Children were favored to some extent. But the 'intelligenza' and the former capitalists were in sore straits. Many were almost starving. Death rate was high. The soldier got a pound of bread, workmen half a pound, others a quarter of a pound. In this way they maintained their army. Fight, work for the Red government or starve. Some argument. Liberty is unknown under the Soviet rule.

Their motto as I saw it is: What is yours is mine.'"

Captivity with all its desperate hards.h.i.+ps and baleful uncertainties, had its occasional brighter thread. The American boys feel especially grateful to Mr. Merle V. Arnold, of. Lincoln, Nebraska, the American Y.

M. C. A. man who had been captured by the Red Guards a few days preceding their capture. He was able to do things for them when they reached Moscow. And when he was almost immediately given his liberty and allowed to go out through Finland, he did not forget the boys he left behind. He carried their case to the British and Danish Red Cross and a weekly allowance of 200 roubles found its way over the belligerent lines to Moscow and was given to the boys, much to the grateful a.s.sistance of the starving allied prisoners of war.

But they became resourceful as all American soldiers seem to become, whether at Bakaritza, Smolny, Archangel, Kholmogora, Moscow or wherenot, and they found ways of adding to their rations. Imagine one of them lining up with the employees of a Bolo public soup kitchen and going through ostensibly to do some work and playing now-you-see-it-now-you-don't-see-it with a dish of salt or a head of cabbage or a loaf of bread or a chunk of sugar, or when on friendly terms with the Bolshevik public employees volunteering to help do some work that led them to where a little money would buy something on the side at inside employees' prices. Imagine them with their little bra.s.s kettle, stewing it over their little Russian sheet-iron stove, stirring in their birdseed subst.i.tute for rolled oats and potatoes and cabbage and perhaps a few shreds of as clean a piece of meat as they could buy, on the sly. See the big wooden spoons travelling happily from pot to lips and hear the chorus of Dobra, dobra.

They will not ever forget the English Red Cross woman who constantly looked out for the five Americans, the thirty-five British and fifteen French prisoners, finding ways to get for them occasional morsels of bacon and bread and small packages of tea and tobacco. On Easter day she entertained them all in the old palace of Ivan the Terrible.

How good it was one day to meet an American woman who had eighteen years before married a Russian in Chicago and come to Moscow to live. Her husband was a grain buyer for the Bolshevik government but she was a hater of the Red Rule and gave the boys all the comfort she could, which was little owing to the surveillance of the Red authorities.

And one day the sergeant met an American dentist who had for many years been the tooth mechanic for the old Czar and his family. He fixed up a tooth as best he could for the American soldier. The Reds had about stripped him but left him his tools and his shop so that he could serve the Red rulers when their molars and canines needed attention.

The American boys gained the confidence of the Russians in Moscow just as they had always done in North Russia. They were finally given permission to partic.i.p.ate in the privileges of one of the numerous clubs that the Red officials furnished up lavishly for themselves in the palatial quarters of old Moscow. Here they could find literature and lectures and lounging room and for a few roubles often gained a hot plate of good soup or a delicacy in the shape of a horse steak. Of course the latter was always a little dubious to the American doughboy, for in walking the street he too often saw the poor horse that dropped dead from starvation or overdriving, approached by the butcher with the long knife. He merely raised the horse's tail, slashed around the a.n.a.l opening of the animal with his blade, then reached in his great arm and drew out the entrails and cast them to one side for the dogs to growl and fight over. Later would come the sleigh with axes and other knives to cut up the frozen carca.s.s. On May day the boys nearly lost their members.h.i.+p in the club, along with its soup and horse-steak privileges because they would not march in the Red parade to the gaily decorated square to hear Lenin speak to his subjects.

Was the Red government able to feed the people by commandeering, the food? No. At last the peasants gained the sufferance of the Red rulers to traffic their foodstuffs on the streets even as we have seen them with handfuls of vegetables on the market streets of Archangel. Prices were out of sight. Under a shawl in a tiny box, an old peasant woman on Easter Day was offering covertly a few eggs at two hundred roubles apiece.

Imagine the feelings of the boys when they walked about freely as they did, being dressed in the regular Russian long coats and caps and being treated with courtesy by all Russians who recognized them as Americans.

Here they found themselves looking at the great hotel built on American lines of architecture to please the eye and shelter the American travellers of the olden times before the great war, a building now used by the Red Department of State. Here they were examined by one of Tchicherin's men upon their arrival in the Red capital. Further they could walk about the Kremlin, and visit a part of it on special occasions. They could see the execution block and the huge s.p.a.ce laid out by Ivan the Terrible, where thousands of Russians bled this life away at the behest of a cruel government.

Or they could stand before the St. Saveur cathedral, a n.o.ble structure of solid marble with glorious murals within to remind the Slavic people of their unconquerable resistance to the great Napoleon and of his disastrous retreat from their beloved Moscow.

They cannot be blamed for coming out of Moscow convinced that the heart of the Slavic people is not in this Bolshevik cla.s.s hatred and cla.s.s dictators.h.i.+p stuff of Lenin and Trotsky; equally convinced that the heart of the Russian people is not unfearful of the attempted return of the old royalist bureaucrats to their baleful power, and convinced that the heart of this great, courteous, patient, longsuffering Slavic people is groping for expression of self-government, and that America is their ideal--a hazy ideal and one that they aspire toward only in general outlines. Their ultimate self-government may not take the shape of American const.i.tutionalism, but Russian self-government must in time come out of the very wrack of foreign and internecine war. And every American soldier who fought the Bolshevik Russian in arms or stood on the battle line beside the Archangel Republic anti-Bolshevik Russian, might join these returned captives from Bolshevikdom in wis.h.i.+ng that there may soon come peace to that land, and that they may develop self-government.

"We finally received our release. We had known of the liberation of Mr.

Arnold and several of our North Russian comrades and had been hoping for our turn to come. Mr. Frank Taylor, an a.s.sociated Press correspondent, was helpful to us, declaring to the Bolshevik rulers that American troops were withdrawing from Archangel. We had been faithful (sic) to the lectures, for a purpose of dissimulation, and the Red fanatics really thought we were converted to the silly stuff called bolshevism.

It was plain to us also that they were playing for recognition of their government by the United States. So we were given pa.s.sports for Finland.

The propaganda did not deceive us.

"At the border a suspicious sailor on guard searched us. He turned many back to Petrograd. The train pulled back carrying four hundred women and children and babies disappointed at the very door to freedom, weeping, penniless, and starving, starting back into Russia all to suit the whim of an ignorant under officer. Under the influence of flattery he softened toward us and after robbing us of everything that had been provided us by our friends for the journey, taking even the official papers sent by the Bolshevik government to our government which we were to deliver to American representatives in Finland, he let us go.

"After he let us go we saw the soldiers in the house grabbing for the American money which Mr. Taylor had given us. They had not thought it worth while to take the Russian roubles away from us. Of course they were of no value to us in Finland. After a two kilometer walk, carrying a sick English soldier with us, my three comrades and I reached the little bridge that gave us our freedom."--By Sgt. Glenn W. Leitzell, Co.

M, 339th Inf.

x.x.xVIII

MILITARY DECORATIONS

In the North Russian Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki, American officers and men fought at one time or another under the field standards of four nations, American, British, French, and (North) Russian. And for their valor and greatly meritorious conduct, mostly over and beyond the call of duty, many soldiers were highly commended by their field officers, American, French, British, and Russian, in their reports to higher military authorities. Many, but not all, of these officers and soldiers were later cited in orders and awarded decorations. Not every deserving man received a citation. That is the luck of war.

It was a matter of keen regret to the British Commanding General that he was so hedged by orders from England that his generous policy of awarding decorations to American soldiers was abruptly ended in mid-winter when it became apparent that the United States would not continue the campaign against the Bolsheviki but would withdraw American troops at the earliest possible moment.

The Russian military authorities were eager to show their appreciation of their American soldier allies, but due to the indifference of Colonel Stewart to this not many soldiers were decorated with Russian old army decorations.

The French decorations were probably the sincerest marks of esteem and admiration. They were bestowed by French officers who were close to the doughboy in the field. And they are prized as tokens of the affection of the French for Americans.

In speaking of American decorations we can hardly write without heat.

The doughboy did not get his just deserts. And he, without doubt, is correct in placing the blame for the neglect at the door of the American commanding officer, Colonel Stewart. Men and officers who died heroically up there in that North Russian campaign, and others who carry wound scars, and yet others who performed valiantly in that desperate campaign, went unrewarded.

AMERICAN DECORATIONS

Distinguished Service Cross

BUGLER JAMES F. REVELS, "I" Co., 339th Inf., for gallantry in action, Sept. 16th, 1918, Obozerskaya, Russia.

LIEUT. CHARLES F. CHAPPEL, "K" Co., 339th Inf., for gallantry in action, Sept. 27th, 1918, Kodish, Russia. (Citation posthumous.)

SGT. MATHEW G. GRAHEK, "M" Co., 339th Inf., for gallantry in action, Sept. 29th, 1918, at Verst 458, Obozerskaya, Russia.

SGT. CORNELIUS T. MAHONEY, "K" Co., 339th Inf., for gallantry in action, October 16th, 1918, Kodish, Russia.

CORP. ROBERT M. PRATT, "M" Co., 339th Inf., for gallantry in action, October 17th, 1918, Verst 445, near Emtsa, Russia.

PVT. VICTOR STIER, "A" Co., 339th Inf., for gallantry in action, January 19th, 1919, Ust Padenga, Russia. (Citation posthumous.)

PVT. LAWRENCE B. KILROY, 337th Ambulance Company, for gallantry in action, Kodish, Russia.

PVT. HUBERT C. PAUL, 337th Ambulance Company, for gallantry in action, Kodish, Russia.

LIEUT. CLIFFORD F. PHILLIPS, "H" Co., 339th Inf., for gallantry in action, April 2nd, 1919, near Bolsheozerki. (Citation posthumous.)

CORP. THEODORE SIELOFF, "I" Co., 339th Inf., for gallantry in action, Nov. 4th, 1918, at Verst 445, near Emtsa, Russia.

PVT. CLARENCE H. ZECH, 337th Ambulance Company, for gallantry in action, Kodish, Russia.

CORP. WILLIAM H. RUSSELL, "M" Co., 339th Inf., for gallantry in action, April 1st, 1919, near Bolsheozerki, Russia. (Citation posthumous.)

PVT. CHESTER H. EVERHARD, 337th Ambulance Company, for gallantry in action, April 2nd, 1919, near Bolsheozerki, Russia.

LIEUT. HOWARD H. PELLEGROM, "H" Co., 339th Inf., for gallantry in action, April 2nd, 1919, near Bolsheozerki, Russia.

FRENCH DECORATIONS

Legion of Honor

MAJOR J. BROOKS NICHOLS, 339th Inf.