Polar Bear Expedition

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The Polar Bear Expedition (also known as Northern Russian Expedition , American North Russia Expeditionary Force - ANREF or American Expeditionary Force North Russia - AEFNR ; in German translation: Expeditionskorps Eisbär or American Expeditionary Force (in) Northern Russia ) was a contingent of around 5,000 soldiers of the United States , which landed as part of the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War in the Russian city ​​of Arkhangelsk to fight the Red Army there and in the surrounding regions between September 1918 and July 1919 .

Allied intervention

The Polar Bear Expedition was dispatched by US President Woodrow Wilson following a request from the British and French governments to participate in the Allied intervention in northern Russia. The British and French had three goals in this intervention:

  1. To prevent Allied war material , which was originally intended for the now collapsed Eastern Front of the First World War , from falling into German hands or the Bolsheviks in Arkhangelsk .
  2. Liberation of the Czechoslovak legions , which were cut off from the Allies by the civil war and stranded along the Trans-Siberian Railway .
  3. Reestablishment of the Eastern Front by fighting the Red Army with the help of the Czechoslovak Legions and the White Army, and the Bolsheviks containing the spread of communism in Russia.

On 14 July 1918, the left 85th Infantry Division of the US Army its training camp at Camp Custer in Michigan . The goal was the European western front . Three days later, President Wilson agreed to a limited participation of American troops in the Allied intervention in Russia, provided that they would only be used to guard the Allied war material stored there. When General John J. Pershing received this instruction, he changed orders for the 339th Infantry Regiment and the first battalion of the 310th Engineers, as well as some other subordinate units of the 85th Division. They were not sent to France, but trained in the use of Russian weapons in England and re-equipped with them. They were then moved to the northern Russian city of Arkhangelsk, where they arrived on September 4, 1918 and were placed under British command there.

At the same time another 7,950 American soldiers and officers of the American Expeditionary Force Siberia were ordered to Vladivostok .

The use

A Red Army soldier shot dead by a US guard on January 8, 1919 at around 3 a.m. who is said to have tried to climb outpost No. 1 as part of a group of seven attackers. Vysokaya Gora on the Waga , today in Schenkursk Rajon (based on the original caption of the US Army Signal Corps, location specified)

When the British commanders of the Allied invasion arrived in Arkhangelsk on August 2, 1918, they found that the Allied war material had already been transported by the retreating units of the Red Army across the Northern Dvina River . The Americans, who arrived a month later, were therefore used directly for offensive operations to liberate the Czechoslovak legions. British commanders dispatched the first battalion of the 339th Infantry upriver along the Dvina and the third battalion along the railway line to Vologda , where they could push the Red Army back for the next six weeks.

However, these two fronts stretched for hundreds of kilometers and were extremely narrow and difficult to care for, maintain and protect. Towards the end of October 1918 they could no longer continue the offensive. Aware of their weak situation and the imminent onset of winter, they increasingly adjusted to a defensive situation.

The Allied commanders also soon realized that they would not succeed in creating an effective local force to fight the Bolsheviks. Finally they gave up their goal of reaching the Czechoslovak legions and consolidated their position in order to be able to keep the previous territorial gains over the winter. In winter, the Red Army went on the offensive, particularly along the Waga, a tributary of the Dvina, where the Allies suffered numerous casualties and were forced to retreat over a wide area.

During their deployment in northern Russia, the Americans counted more than 110 fatalities from fighting, as well as 30 missing and 70 dead from illness. Of the latter, 90% died from the Spanish flu .

retreat

After the armistice with Germany on November 11, 1918, family members and friends of the ANREF soldiers began writing letters to newspapers and petitions to their representatives in the United States Congress calling for the soldiers to withdraw immediately from northern Russia. The newspapers, in turn, picked up on their withdrawal, and Congressmen raised the issue in Washington, DC . Meanwhile, the American soldiers in northern Russia were morally exhausted, given the change in their original mission, the armistice on the Western Front and the fact that the port of Arkhangelsk was now frozen over and thus closed to shipping. When their officers were asked why they were still fighting against the Bolsheviks in Russia, they could not give an exact answer, except that they had to fight for their survival and not to be pushed into the Arctic Ocean by the Red Army .

At the beginning of 1919, cases of alleged and actual mutiny became known again and again. On February 16, President Wilson directed his Department of War to begin planning an ANREF withdrawal from northern Russia. In March 1919, four American soldiers from Company B of the 339th Infantry wrote a petition protesting their continued presence in Russia. They were then threatened with a military trial. Brigadier General Wilds P. Richardson arrived in Arkhangelsk on April 17, 1919 on board the icebreaker Canada . He had been ordered by General Pershing to begin the coordinated withdrawal of American troops “at the earliest possible time”. On May 26, 1919, the first half of 8,000 volunteers from the British relief troops arrived in Arkhangelsk to relieve American troops. In early June, the majority of the ANREF soldiers traveled via Brest , France to New York City and finally home, with two-thirds from Michigan. During the withdrawal, the members of the ANREF decided to refer to themselves as “Polar Bears” in the future, and they were allowed to wear a corresponding badge on their left sleeve. The ANREF was officially dissolved on August 5, 1919.

Years after American troops withdrew from Russia, President Warren G. Harding called the expedition a mistake by the previous administration.

Repatriation of the dead

Upon their return, ANREF veterans worked in their state and at the federal government level to obtain finances and the necessary permits to retrieve the remains of more than 125 U.S. soldiers who were left behind in northern Russia. Because of the lack of mutual diplomatic recognition between the United States and the Soviet Union , it took many years before permission was finally given. An expedition led by the veterans' association " Veterans of Foreign Wars " (VFW) carried out a successful rescue mission in autumn 1929, during which the remains of 86 US soldiers were found, identified and brought back. Remains of a further dozen ANREF soldiers were sent from the Soviet Union to the United States in 1934. This reduced the number of dead still buried in northern Russia to 30. The remains of 56 ANREF soldiers were then interred in the White Chapel Cemetery in Troy , Michigan, around a polar bear sculpture by the sculptor Leon Hermant.

Last surviving member

Harold Gunnes, born in 1899, died on March 11, 2003, probably the last surviving member of ANREF.

literature

  • With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia (1920; reprint 2004, reprint ISBN 1-4191-9446-1 )
  • Bozich, Stanley J. and Jon R. Bozich: "Detroit's Own" Polar Bears: The American North Russian Expeditionary Forces 1918-1919 . Polar Bear Publishing Co., 1985, ISBN 0-9615411-0-5 .
  • Carey, Neil G .: Fighting the Bolsheviks . Presidio, 1997, ISBN 0-89141-631-5 .
  • Goldhurst, Richard: The Midnight War . McGraw-Hill, 1978, ISBN 0-07-023663-1 .
  • Gordon, Dennis: Quartered In Hell: The Story of American North Russian Expeditionary Force 1918-1919 . The Doughboy Historical Society and GOS, Inc., 1982, ISBN 0-942258-00-2 .
  • Guins, George Constantine: The Siberian intervention, 1918-1919 . Russian Review Inc, 1969.
  • Halliday, EM: When Hell Froze Over . ibooks, Inc., 2000, ISBN 0-7434-0726-1 .
  • Hendrick, Michael: An Investigation of American Siberian intervention (1918-1920) . Texas Southern University, 1972.
  • Hudson, Miles: Intervention in Russia 1918–1920: A Cautionary Tale . Pen and Sword, 2004, ISBN 1-84415-033-X .
  • Kindall, Sylvian G .: American Soldiers in Siberia . Richard R. Smith, 1945.
  • Moore, Joel et al .: The American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki: Campaigning in North Russian, 1918-1919 . The Battery Press, 2003, ISBN 0-89839-323-X .
  • White, John Albert: The Siberian Intervention . Princeton University Press, 1950.
  • Willett Jr., Robert L .: Russian Sideshow: America's Undeclared War, 1918-1920 . Brassey's, Inc., 2003, ISBN 1-57488-429-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Robert L. Willett, "Russian Sideshow," (Washington, DC, Brassey's Inc., 2003), 267
  2. ^ Joel R. Moore, Harry H. Mead and Lewis E. Jahns, "The History of The American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki" (Nashville, TN, The Battery Press, 2003), pp. 47-50
  3. ^ Robert L. Willett, "Russian Sideshow" (Washington, DC, Brassey's Inc., 2003), pages 166-170
  4. ↑ American soldiers faced Red Army on Russian soil, Army Times , September 16, 2002
  5. ↑ WWI vets: last living links to a bygone era: with less than 400 of them left, these century-old warriors still have stories to tell, about the Great War. VFW Magazine , Nov. 1, 2003, No. 3, Vol. 91; P. 14