Archangel and Murmansk

On August 3, 1918, the first allied troops landed at Archangel, the Russian port on the White Seas. An excerpt from the article:

"Expedition to Archangel, 30 July–2 August 1918

On the night of 30/31 July, three large Allied vessels set out from Murmansk for Archangel: HMS Salvator, with Major General Poole and Olympia’s Captain Bierer embarked; the French cruiser Amiral Aube, with several hundred French troops recently transported to Murmansk on a British steamer aptly named SS Czar; HMS Nairana (the seaplane carrier) with the Royal Navy’s Admiral Kemp on board; and the British steamer SS Stephen with Lieutenant Floyd, commander of Olympia’s Murmansk detachment.[34] Several trawlers accompanied the larger vessels, and four more followed during the day on 31 July. That day also saw the departure for Archangel of a Russian destroyer, restored to service by Olympia’s crew, and four transports. “Practically all vessels carried troops,” according to Olympia’s war diary, “mostly British and French.” Sources vary on levels, but the number of men probably exceeded 1,200.[35]

The first to land were the officers, who had learned at stops along the way that the Bolsheviks did not intend to defend the city. They had already decamped to the other side of the Dvina River and proceeded several miles down the railroad into the woods.

At 8:00 p.m. on 2 August, Bierer’s ship arrived at Archangel’s harbor, the mouth of the Dvina River. Upon seeing the Allies’ arrival, the boats and ships at port blew their whistles, which still could not drown out the cheering of the crowds on the quay. Bierer, Poole, Kemp, and other Allied officers landed by invitation, according to Bierer, and “were received by the representatives of the new White government and a guard of Russian infantry and cavalry.” The occupiers-turned-celebrated-dignitaries then proceeded to a waiting car, which conveyed them to local government headquarters, where Bierer and the others received official thanks for their assistance in ridding Archangel of its Bolshevik masters.[36]

Down the Dvina River

The warm welcome belied a cold reality. In Bakaritza, about 10 miles inland, the Bolsheviks were preparing to fight. The first step would be to draw the Allies into Russia’s interior; the second step would be to keep them there into winter. Only then would the Bolsheviks go on the offensive, having lured their force into a vast, icy trap.

Major General Poole and the others took the bait. Allied troops lost no time in beating a quick trail down the railroad toward the Bolsheviks’ encampment. The Bolsheviks, after a bit of resistance, simply retreated several miles further, past Isagorka.[37]

When some of the Bolsheviks returned to Bakaritza, HMS Attentive, which had come upriver to assist, shelled their positions. HMS Nairana’s airplanes appeared overhead and began to bomb and machine-gun the handful of Bolsheviks below. Twenty-five crewmen and an officer from Olympia took part in the action, finding themselves right in the line of fire.

After only 24 hours of engagement in and around Archangel, the situation for U.S. authorities, military and civilian, was spinning out of control.

By 10 August, the Bolsheviks had drawn Allied troops, including the 25 crewmen from Olympia, farther into Russia. The Olympia crewmen were under the immediate command of Ensign Donald M. Hicks, Lieutenant Floyd having stayed in Archangel proper with the rest of Olympia’s detachment. Hicks and his men accompanied a polyglot Allied force as it boarded barges and small steamers for the journey up the Dvina River. Poole’s orders for them, which sustained subtle changes over the course of August as the War Office in London tried to decide what exactly to do, entailed establishing contact with the Czechoslovak Legion, thought to be nearby; obtaining, with the Legion’s help, if at all possible, “control of the Archangel-Vologda-Ekaterinburg Railway”; finding allies among the local Russian population by recruiting them directly where practicable or otherwise lending support to “any administration”—i.e., local soviets, city councils, or regional warlords—“which may be friendly to the Allies.” Finally, Poole’s men should distribute humanitarian aid and a liberal dose of “judicious propaganda.”[38]"