Siberian Briar Patch, Part II: AEF Siberia in Action

 

U.S. Commander William Graves and Staff with
Russian White Commander Grigoriy Semënov

The Military Mission

The military intervention into Siberia can be divided into three stages. These divisions are based more on official clarifications of duties, rather than any changes in military policy. A continuity, a consistency is present throughout the entire period of U.S. intervention, primarily to facilitate counterrevolution. The first stage is the period between the landing of U.S. troops and the acceptance by Washington of the Inter-Allied Railway Agreement (IARA) on 9 February 1919. The IARA imposed military control on the Siberian railways by clearly defining the respective responsibilities of the intervening forces on various sectors of the railway. For the Americans, this would confirm duties already assumed and create new ones.

Although obvious in whose interest the agreement worked, it was not until July that the purpose of the AEF was officially stated. During the summer of 1919, it was openly admitted that U.S. troops were in Siberia to maintain the supply line of the white leader, Admiral Kolchak. To the troops north of Vladivostok the latter was by that time an irrelevant technicality.

Japanese Troops Advancing in Force Against Red Troops

American troops had arrived at Vladivostok to much cheer, mostly furnished by themselves and the crew and band of the USS Brooklyn that had been stationed in the waters around Vladivostok since March. The Japanese commander, General Kikuzo Otani, greeted the Americans with more seriousness and urgency. By letter he advised Colonel Henry Styre, in temporary command whilst Graves was in transit, that Vladivostok was in peril of imminent invasion. The Americans were needed for the city's defense.

Unwilling to remain inactive and unable to verify Otani's story, Styre consented to join in what was later to be known as the Ussuri Campaign. The several companies sent to help "defend" the city caught up with the Japanese after six days hard marching and served as rear flank to the Japanese and Czech forces who were pursuing the Bolsheviki northwards up the Trans-Siberian. The campaign culminated at Khabarosk, 475 miles from Vladivostok, where the Stars and Stripes and the Rising Sun were raised together in a significant show of unity.

U.S. Major Samuel Johnson Commanding the
International Police Force of Vladivostok

Graves's first real examination of his troops came in October during a tour north of Vladivostok. He ordered back to Khabarovsk any troops he found west of the city that had continued to follow the Japanese in their pursuit of the Red Guard. Graves could "see no reason for keeping troops at any of these stations," although a number of troops were kept at important locations between Khabarovsk and Vladivostok. U.S. forces elsewhere got off to a less auspicious beginning, but equally partisan in the widening civil war. The majority of the 27th and 31st Infantry Regiments (dispatched from Manila) marched east of Vladivostok to establish a tent camp at Gornastaya Valley. The International Police Force was also created at this time under the command of a Russian-born American officer, Major Samuel Ignatiev Johnson.

An additional 250 troops were sent to the Soucha coalmines, located 75 miles northeast of the city. The mines consisted of 12 shafts and served as the fuel supply for the entire Primorsk province and for the operation of eastern Siberian railroads. The Suchan mines were the fuel for intervention and counterrevolution. The Allies set about immediately to secure the continued production of its coal. One of the first acts of the Allied leaders was to reinstate the previous mine manager, recently run out of the area by mine workers. To Graves, the mines proved to be the "stormy petrel" of his entire Siberian adventure. Most American causalities would be suffered protecting the spur lines linking the mines with the Trans-Siberian.

Guarding the Siberian Railroads

Click on Image to Enlarge

The Railway Agreement of February formalized some of these winter arrangements and added others. Although finalized in February, it took an additional two months to sort out which Allied force would protect each specific sector. (See map above.) Some 550 U.S. troops became responsible for the line running immediately out of Vladivostok to the town of Nikolsk-Ussuri, 68 miles north. Nikolsk-Ussuri, a town of 52,000 inhabitants, served as the juncture of the Ussuri line continuing to Khabarovsk, and the Chinese Eastern Railroad which crossed Manchuria, later to reenter Siberia. At Spasskoe, continuing north, 1,700 troops were responsible for the length of line leading to the town of Ussuri and the 40-foot long bridge crossing the river Ussuri 217 miles from Vladivostok. Another 1,900 troops were assigned to guard a branch line from Ulgonaya to the coal mines at Suchan. Two thousand men were also stationed 1,700 miles west to maintain the stretch of line between Verkhe-Udinsk and Mysovaya, where the Trans-Siberian reached the network of 38 tunnels linking eastern and western Siberia.

U.S. Railroad Guard Detail

With the railway agreement practicably enacted, U.S. troops were immediately confronted by the dilemma of professed "non-interference" while participating in counterrevolution. Graves continued to maintain his "neutrality" regardless, which in essence was to keep his expeditionary force as disentangled from the mire of civil war as long as possible. In a proclamation given to his troops to distribute in their sectors he outlined that:

The sole object and purpose of the armed forces of the United States of America. . . is to protect the railroad and railway property and ensure the operation of passenger and freight trains through such sector without obstruction or interruption.

The proclamation initially left the partisan guerrillas wondering just who the "Amerikanskiy soldat" was. They soon made up their minds. As such order on the railroad only benefited one side, the U.S. soldiers soon became justifiable targets of the partisans. Just as it allowed supplies to roll to counterrevolution forces in western Siberia, Allied control of the railways made White control of the east possible. White representatives in eastern Siberia used order on the railroad to either starve or attack "Bolshevist" areas. "We are making this condition possible," Graves wired Washington, "by our presence here."

Hospital Car on American Train

Even before U.S. sectors were chosen, U.S. troops north of Vladivostok were preparing for "anticipated...guerrilla warfare or general revolution with the recession of winter" due to the "unsettled political and economic conditions in eastern Siberia." As early as 14 March, partisans fired upon trains and "information was received that the partisans were recruiting for a vigorous spring drive against the Kolchak government." By late spring, U.S. forces finally settled in their allotted sectors, became swept up in that vigorous drive. Throughout March and April, attacks on rail freight, tack, and bridges increased. In May, Graves decided that to properly maintain "order" on the railways, U.S. troops would have to follow the attacking partisans into the surrounding countryside. The first active campaign began on 21 May in the vicinity of Maihe in the Ulgonaya-Suchan sector. Throughout the summer of 1919, the history of the AEF in eastern Siberia is one of skirmishes, attacks, and forays into the surrounding hills and valleys. On numerous occasions American combat patrols fought in conjunction with White Russian and Japanese forces. Over 200 U.S. soldiers were to fall in this partisan war. Twenty-five died on the morning of 25 June near the village of Romanovka during a dawn raid on their encampment.

Tomorrow: Siberian Briar Patch, Part III:  Time for AEF Siberia to Depart

Sources: Articles in the April and May, 2020, St. Mihiel Trip-Wire by Christopher T. McMaster, PhD