This Veteran’s Day unremembered: American Expeditionary Force Siberia

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Parades rolled through many American cities on Veterans Day, Nov. 11 honoring the anniversary of the end of World War I on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, what once was known as Armistice Day.

None of those parades, however, featured tributes or remembrance of one of the war’s oddities made all the more poignant by today’s tensions engendered by Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Or resemblde the scene just before the armistice in August 1918 in Russia’s Far East.

Aug. 15, 1918 was that day lost in the sands of time. On that day, almost 3,000 officers and soldiers of the US Army’s 27th and 31st Infantry Regiments plus significant numbers of volunteers from three other regiments of the 8th Division formerly under the command of Major General William S. Graves disembarked at Vladivostok, Russia’s Pacific capital.  

Before a throng of Russian citizens, the American Expeditionary Force, Siberia (AEF in Siberia) paraded through the city streets  in support of the 40,000 allied soldiers mainly in the Czech Legion, who had fought its way across the country on the Trans-Siberian Railway awaiting evacuation by sea back to Europe.

“’Most Americans don’t realize that early in the existence of the Soviet Union, we actually had American soldiers on the ground killing communists (Bolsheviks back then) in northern Russia and Siberia,” said Col. John House, who wrote a history of the obscured today American Expeditionary Force in Siberia that fought and died in support of efforts to turn back the Bolshevik tide.

The U.S. Far Eastern expeditionary force numbered almost 8,000 troops when the final troops arrived by Aug. 21. They took up positions along the railway from Valdivostok to Nikolsk-Ussuriki about 60 miles north. Another detachment of 5,000 troops were sent at the same time to Archangel in Northern Russia near the Finnish border about 3,500 miles to the west.

President Woodrow Wilson ordered the deployments in the waning months of the great war to free up the Czech force for the Western Front. These troops had been stranded in Russia following the Bolshevik’s March 3, 1918 treaty with the Central Powers ending Russian involvement in the war.

The Legion had been formed early in 1918 from Czech and Slovak prisoners of war in Russia, sympathetic Russian Slavs, and deserters from the Austro-Hungarian army, according to the National Archives. 

When the Bolsheviks pulled out of the war, they agreed to let the Czech Legion leave Russia. President Wilson wanted the world to know that the United States supported the safe return of the Czech Legion to its newly formed homeland, said Gibson Bell Smith, an archivist specializing in modern military records, in a 2002 article in the National Archives Prologue Magazine..

Fighting on the railroad

In March 1918, the Legion moved steadily eastward along the Trans-Siberian Railway. When the Bolsheviks tried to disarm the Czechoslovaks, the soldiers of the Legion hid their weapons, and relations between the two groups frayed, Smith said.

Wilson also wanted to promote self-government and self-defense by Russians in the Far East in the face of sporadic Bolshevik attacks and threats of attacks from Japan and Cossack marauders, according to some sources. Not to mention safeguarding American investments.

“President Woodrow Wilson’s motivation for sending troops to Siberia stemmed from the same desires that drove him to try to impose the Paris Peace Treaty on Europe: the promotion of democracy and self-determination,” Bell said.

“But first and foremost,” Smith continued, “he wanted to protect the billion-dollar investment of American guns and equipment along the Trans-Siberian Railway. Vast quantities of supplies had been sent when America believed that Russia was capable of fighting and winning against the Central Powers in the spring of 1917.”

As with much of the historical record, being a contrarian sort, historians debate the intervention.

Two months after the November 11, 1918, armistice that officially ended the war for the rest of Europe, as one million Americans in France were preparing to sail home, the U.S. troops in Russia found that their ill-defined missions had transformed into something even more obscure,” said Erick Trickey in Smithsonian Magazine.

“Historians still debate why President Woodrow Wilson really sent troops to Russia, but they tend to agree that the two missions, burdened by Wilson’s ambiguous goals, ended in failures that foreshadowed U.S. foreign interventions in the century to come,” Trickey said.

The American Expeditionary Force remained in Siberia through April 1920. The Vladivostok parade may have represented the high point in the entire experience, according to historians. American troops faced severe logistical challenges through their 19 months in country. Fuel, ammunition, food and supplies were limited. Horses had trouble in sub-zero Siberian temperatures. Some 189 soldiers were killed. The worst losses were suffered on June 25, 1919 at the AEF Siberia base camp, Romanovka when a pre-dawn attack by Bolshevik partisans killed 24 Americans.

Historians do declare

The US forces parade in Russia’s Pacific capital Vladivostok/IstPravda

Historians tend to see Wilson’s decision to send troops to Russia as one of his worst wartime decisions, and a foreshadowing of other poorly planned American interventions in foreign countries in the century since. “It didn’t really achieve anything—it was ill-conceived,” says James Carlson Nelson, who published a 2019 book addressing what was called the Polar Bear Expedition. “The lessons were there that could’ve been applied in Vietnam and could’ve been applied in Iraq.”

Jonathan Casey, director of archives at the World War I Museum, agreed. “We didn’t have clear goals in mind politically or militarily,” he said. “We think we have an interest to protect, but it’s not really our interest to protect, or at least to make a huge effort at it. Maybe there are lessons we should’ve learned.”

Lessons learned or not aside, that 1918 parade through Vladivostok by he AEF Siberia was a sight to behold and a sight to be remembered on this Veteran’s Day.

“We didn’t even know who they were,” said Andrei I. Krushanov, a Soviet historian, to the Los Angeles Times in 1987. “Their hats were absolutely out of place for a soldier . . . and the animals we never saw before.”

The “out-of-place” hats were the campaign hats worn by the American soldiers of World War I–Marine Corps drill instructors still wear them, as does Smokey the Bear–and the strange animals were mules, which were commonplace on the Western Front and on farms throughout the United States, according to William J. Eaton of the Times.

The buildings that the U.S. Army and Navy used as their headquarters from 1918 to 1920 are still standing in downtown Vladivostok, but there are no plaques or markers.

However, the AEF Siberia brought home something else of historical interest. By the time they left in 1920, an Army chaplain had performed about 80 marriages involving doughboys and Russian women, Eaton said.

Parades roll through many American cities today, Veterans Day, Nov. 11 honoring the anniversary of the end of World War I on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, what once was known as Armistice Day.

None of those parades, however, will feature tributes or remembrance of one of the war’s oddities made all the more poignant by today’s tensions engendered by Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Or resemble the scene just before the armistice in August 1918 in Russia’s Far East.

Lost in time

An American infantry camp in Siberia, Russia, December 1918 /Heritage Images

Aug. 15, 1918 was that day lost in the sands of time. On that day, almost 3,000 officers and soldiers of the US Army’s 27th and 31st Infantry Regiments plus significant numbers of volunteers from three other regiments of the 8th Division formerly under the command of Major General William S. Graves disembarked at Vladivostok, Russia’s Pacific capital.  

Before a throng of Russian citizens, the American Expeditionary Force, Siberia (AEF in Siberia) paraded through the city streets  in support of the 40,000 allied soldiers mainly in the Czech Legion, who had fought its way across the country on the Trans-Siberian Railway awaiting evacuation by sea back to Europe.

“’Most Americans don’t realize that early in the existence of the Soviet Union, we actually had American soldiers on the ground killing communists (Bolsheviks back then) in northern Russia and Siberia,” said Col. John House, who wrote a history of the obscured today American Expeditionary Force in Siberia that fought and died in support of efforts to turn back the Bolshevik tide.

The U.S. Far Eastern expeditionary force numbered almost 8,000 troops when the final troops arrived by Aug. 21. They took up positions along the railway from Valdivostok to Nikolsk-Ussuriki about 60 miles north. Another detachment of 5,000 troops were sent at the same time to Archangel in Northern Russia near the Finnish border about 3,500 miles to the west.

President Woodrow Wilson ordered the deployments in the waning months of the great war to free up the Czech force for the Western Front. These troops had been stranded in Russia following the Bolshevik’s March 3, 1918 treaty with the Central Powers ending Russian involvement in the war.

The Legion had been formed early in 1918 from Czech and Slovak prisoners of war in Russia, sympathetic Russian Slavs, and deserters from the Austro-Hungarian army, according to the National Archives. 

When the Bolsheviks pulled out of the war, they agreed to let the Czech Legion leave Russia. President Wilson wanted the world to know that the United States supported the safe return of the Czech Legion to its newly formed homeland, said Gibson Bell Smith, an archivist specializing in modern military records, in a 2002 article in the National Archives Prologue Magazine..

In March 1918, the Legion moved steadily eastward along the Trans-Siberian Railway. When the Bolsheviks tried to disarm the Czechoslovaks, the soldiers of the Legion hid their weapons, and relations between the two groups frayed, Smith said.

Woodrow Wilson’s folly

Wilson also wanted to promote self-government and self-defense by Russians in the Far East in the face of sporadic Bolshevik attacks and threats of attacks from Japan and Cossack marauders, according to some sources. Not to mention safeguarding American investments.

“President Woodrow Wilson’s motivation for sending troops to Siberia stemmed from the same desires that drove him to try to impose the Paris Peace Treaty on Europe: the promotion of democracy and self-determination,” Bell said.

“But first and foremost,” Smith continued, “he wanted to protect the billion-dollar investment of American guns and equipment along the Trans-Siberian Railway. Vast quantities of supplies had been sent when America believed that Russia was capable of fighting and winning against the Central Powers in the spring of 1917.”

As with much of the historical record, being a contrarian sort, historians debate the intervention.

Two months after the November 11, 1918, armistice that officially ended the war for the rest of Europe, as one million Americans in France were preparing to sail home, the U.S. troops in Russia found that their ill-defined missions had transformed into something even more obscure,” said Erick Trickey in Smithsonian Magazine.

“Historians still debate why President Woodrow Wilson really sent troops to Russia, but they tend to agree that the two missions, burdened by Wilson’s ambiguous goals, ended in failures that foreshadowed U.S. foreign interventions in the century to come,” Trickey said.

The American Expeditionary Force remained in Siberia through April 1920. The Vladivostok parade may have represented the high point in the entire experience, according to historians. American troops faced severe logistical challenges through their 19 months in country. Fuel, ammunition, food and supplies were limited. Horses had trouble in sub-zero Siberian temperatures. Some 189 soldiers were killed. The worst losses were suffered on June 25, 1919 at the AEF Siberia base camp, Romanovka when a pre-dawn attack by Bolshevik partisans killed 24 Americans.

Historians tend to see Wilson’s decision to send troops to Russia as one of his worst wartime decisions, and a foreshadowing of other poorly planned American interventions in foreign countries in the century since. “It didn’t really achieve anything—it was ill-conceived,” says James Carlson Nelson, who published a 2019 book addressing what was called the Polar Bear Expedition. “The lessons were there that could’ve been applied in Vietnam and could’ve been applied in Iraq.”

Jonathan Casey, director of archives at the World War I Museum, agreed. “We didn’t have clear goals in mind politically or militarily,” he said. “We think we have an interest to protect, but it’s not really our interest to protect, or at least to make a huge effort at it. Maybe there are lessons we should’ve learned.”

Lessons learned or not aside, that 1918 parade through Vladivostok by he AEF Siberia was a sight to behold and a sight to be remembered on this Veteran’s Day.

“We didn’t even know who they were,” said Andrei I. Krushanov, a Soviet historian, to the Los Angeles Times in 1987. “Their hats were absolutely out of place for a soldier . . . and the animals we never saw before.”

The “out-of-place” hats were the campaign hats worn by the American soldiers of World War I–Marine Corps drill instructors still wear them, as does Smokey the Bear–and the strange animals were mules, which were commonplace on the Western Front and on farms throughout the United States, according to William J. Eaton of the Times.

The buildings that the U.S. Army and Navy used as their headquarters from 1918 to 1920 are still standing in downtown Vladivostok, but there are no plaques or markers.

However, the AEF Siberia brought home something else of historical interest. By the time they left in 1920, an Army chaplain had performed about 80 marriages involving doughboys and Russian women, Eaton said.

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