The Day That The USA Invaded Russia And Fought With The Red Army

INSTANT ARTICLES
WORLD WAR I

Nov 17, 2016 Nikola Budanovic

Soldiers and sailors from many countries are lined up in front of the Allies Headquarters Building. The United States is represented. September 1918.


The US Armed Forces and the Red Army, although great rivals, only once met in battle. Even though during the Cold War a number of conflicts were considered to be proxy wars between the two superpowers, it was during the Russian Civil War that the Soviets and Americans fought each other directly.

On March 3rd, 1918, the Bolshevik government of Soviet Russia signed a separate peace treaty with the Central Powers, in Brest-Litovsk, thus leaving the war and closing the Easter Front. Immediately, the Allies organized an expedition intended to regroup the Imperial Russian Army and subdue the Bolshevik revolution. Several contingents of Allied troops deployed to Russia.
U.S. troops in Vladivostok, August 1918.
U.S. troops in Vladivostok, August 1918.

The British regiment landed in Arkhangelsk, on the far northern tip of Russian coast on August 2nd, 1918, occupying the city and securing it as a base of operations for further actions. The city was of great importance, as it held many supplies sent by the Allies to support the last Russian offensive against the Germans in 1917. By the time the British troops arrived, the supplies had been seized by the Bolsheviks, who engaged the Allies in combat almost immediately upon their arrival.

In September that same year, a contingent of American troops was sent to Siberia as a peacekeeping force, but they never saw combat. Some 189 soldiers died from the cold or other causes. All operations in Russia conducted by the Allies were of an international character. Soldiers from different Allied countries were sent to aid the expedition or were already in Russia as part of the Entente war effort against Germany and Austro-Hungary. These included French, Belgian, Romanian, Greek, Polish, Canadian, Italian, Japanese, Czechoslovak, Yugoslav, and Australian soldiers.

In fear of communism spreading throughout Europe, the Allies quickly agreed to provide open support for the members of the Tzarist White Russian movement, which hoped to restore the Russian Empire.

As the First World War was coming to its end, the Allied attention had shifted to the crisis in Russia. Some units, organized by volunteers and POWs from different ethnic backgrounds, were now stuck in a complicated conflict that was tearing Russia apart. The largest of these divisions was the Czechoslovak Legion, consisted of Czechs and Slovaks, who refused to serve, or deserted from, the Austro-Hungarian Army, in hopes of creating their own state after the war.
Czechoslovaks with armored train, Russia. Wikipedia/ Public Domain
Czechoslovaks with armored train, Russia.

One of the main concerns of Allied expeditions was the extraction of 40,000 members of the Czechoslovak Legion, who, at the outbreak of the civil war, assumed control over the strategically vital Trans-Siberian railway. At first, a verbal non-aggression pact existed between the Bolsheviks and the Czech Legion, but in 1918, the Legion became deeply involved in the conflict, siding itself with the White Russian movement.

The American contingent stationed in Arkhangelsk was dubbed the Polar Bear Expedition due to the position of the city near the Arctic circle. The freezing weather added up to the nickname, as the soldiers faced extremely low temperatures. Elements of the 85th division were sent by General Pershing to aid the British in Arkhangelsk.

The main bulk of the American force was the 339th Infantry Regiment. There were also troops from the First Battalion of the 310th Engineers, plus a few other ancillary units from the 85th Division. The Americans arrived in Arkhangelsk one month after their British counterparts and joined the fight as the British fought their way through to reach the remnants of the Czechoslovak Legion. A far-fetched objective was to restore the Eastern Front with the help of the Czechoslovaks and White Russians as the war was still happening at that time.