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Posted on 03/13/2005 10:31:43 PM PST by SAMWolf
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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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| Our Mission: The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans. In the FReeper Foxhole, Veterans or their family members should feel free to address their specific circumstances or whatever issues concern them in an atmosphere of peace, understanding, brotherhood and support. The FReeper Foxhole hopes to share with it's readers an open forum where we can learn about and discuss military history, military news and other topics of concern or interest to our readers be they Veteran's, Current Duty or anyone interested in what we have to offer. If the Foxhole makes someone appreciate, even a little, what others have sacrificed for us, then it has accomplished one of it's missions. We hope the Foxhole in some small way helps us to remember and honor those who came before us.
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On November 11, 1918, World War I officially ended, but for American troops in the Russian town of Toulgas, the war was just beginning.  Three British Vickers machine guns were emplaced in the blockhouse. Although they were commanded by a sergeant and seven men from another platoon, Parrish took charge of one gun. He squinted through the 1-by-3-foot firing slit at the bridge. Earlier, he had marveled at how the Russian carpenters had constructed the bridge without using a single nail. Now, Parrish could only think about the horde of Russian infantrymen he expected to come storming across at any second. Snipers fired from across the bridge, killing the other sergeant when he stepped outside the blockhouse for a moment. The men wanted to bring his body inside, but they did not dare go out into the open. Then the snipers concentrated on the firing slit, knocking chips off a brick fireplace directly behind it. Undeterred, Parrish carefully squeezed off bursts on the Vickers, its tripod stand set in a box of sand to keep it from creeping over the log floor. A few minutes later, most of the snipers were dead. But it was early in the morning, and the Russians were far from giving up. After a lull, at least 30 soldiers suddenly charged the bridge with bayonets fixed. Parrish and the other Vickers gunners responded with a long blast of fire; none of the Russians made it across. At 11 a.m., the screech of incoming artillery rounds heralded another attack. Parrish stared at the other troops in the blockhouse as shells landed ever closer to the building, which had a roof that was only two logs thick. There was nowhere to run.  Parrish and his comrades did not know it, but on that day as they faced death--November 11, 1918--the war they were supposed to be fighting officially ended. At 11 a.m. in France, wild celebrations broke out in Allied countries when the news came that an armistice had been signed to end World War I. Even if the American soldiers then in Russia had known of those developments, the news would hardly have mattered. For them the war had barely begun. The reasons for the American military presence in Russia can be traced back to the November 1917 revolution, which brought Vladimir Ilych Lenin, Leon Trotsky and their Bolshevik (Communist) government to power. A great part of the Bolsheviks' wide appeal lay in their intention to take Russia out of the war against Germany. In March 1918, they did just that, signing a separate peace treaty that freed 40 German divisions from the Eastern Front in Russia for service on the Western Front in France. The three most powerful Allied powers at the time--France, England and the United States--were horrified. It was bad enough that the German reinforcements were coming, but they also feared that the major ports in northwest Russia--Murmansk and Archangel--would quickly be seized by Germany. If that happened, the Germans could lay their hands on millions of dollars in war supplies, sent mainly from the United States while Russia was still in the war, which were stored on the docks and in the warehouses of Archangel. To forestall that, a British-led Allied naval force occupied Murmansk in May 1918, followed by Archangel in August. Lenin and Trotsky were alarmed at what they saw as an invasion from the capitalist Western powers to restore their political enemies to power, but they could not prevent it. The small Bolshevik forces at the ports retreated before the sailors landed from the Allied ships. At the same time, after much wrangling, Britain persuaded U.S. President Woodrow Wilson to divert an American regiment bound for the Western Front to Archangel, to reinforce the sailors there and help guard the supplies.  The first time that the men of the U.S. Army's 339th Infantry Regiment realized they were not going to France was when their British Enfield rifles were taken away while they were training in England, and Mosin-Nagant rifles were substituted for them, ostensibly to ensure compatibility with Russian ammunition. The doughboys were appalled at how flimsy and inaccurate their new weapons were. After a short course of instruction, on August 27, 1918, the troops were packed aboard transports bound north toward the Arctic Circle. The soldiers of the 339th were mainly from Detroit, Mich., and one can well imagine their sense of wonder when they first laid eyes on the great onion-shaped domes of Archangel's Russian Orthodox cathedral on September 4. But there was little time for sightseeing. Three days later, the 1st Battalion of the 339th, under Colonel James Corbley, embarked on filthy wooden barges formerly used to carry cattle and coal and started up the meandering Dvina River, which empties into the White Sea near Archangel. That was the start of the trouble on the river front. British Maj. Gen. Frederick C. Poole, commander of the Allied North Russia Expeditionary Force, had decided (with the U.S. ambassador to Russia, David Francis, a willing accomplice) to engage in what would be referred to today as mission creep. When he first entered Archangel in August, Poole had discovered to his dismay that the Bolsheviks had already stolen (or, as they said, "expropriated") most of the war materiel. And to take away those supplies they had also expropriated the best riverboats and other transports from their civilian owners--hence only dirty barges remained for the 1st Battalion. Poole decided that he would aid the White Russian and other anti-Bolshevik forces who were fighting a civil war against the Red Army--and who had promised to put Russia back into the war against Germany if they won. He used the theft of the Allied supplies as a pretext for his strike against the Bolsheviks, claiming that if the American troops were supposed to guard the supplies, they would first have to reclaim them--even if that meant going all the way to Moscow to do so.  The 339th Infantry Leaves for Russia About 400 miles south on the Dvina River from Archangel was Kotlas, an important railway terminal. Poole designated Kotlas a major objective and sent the 339th's 1st Battalion to join some British troops already fighting their way toward it. His one worry was that the rapidly approaching winter would freeze the river and stop all water traffic. As they chugged up the river into the heart of Russia, the men of the 1st Battalion knew very little about grand strategy. Their first combat would be at a hamlet on the Dvina about 200 miles upriver, named Seltso, where the retreating Bolsheviks had decided to make a stand. Leaving the barges downriver--and grateful to get off of them--the American troops trudged the last few miles to Seltso along the muddy bank, carrying full packs on their backs. Because their artillery support, comprised of several field guns manned by White Russians, moved much more slowly, one company from the battalion was sent forward in the hope of taking the hamlet before the Soviets had time to fortify it. On the morning of September 19, D Company had begun to wade across an open marsh about 1,500 yards from Seltso when the Soviets in well-prepared trenches opened fire with machine guns and cannons. The Americans managed to scramble to cover before any of them were hit, but the encounter ended all hope of taking Seltso quickly. For the rest of the day, the troops stayed low and waited for their field guns, while the Soviets lobbed 6-inch shells at them from river gunboats improvised from the craft they had taken from Archangel.  The White Russian gunners had more trouble moving through the mud than expected, so the Americans had to spend a cold, miserable night in swampy woods outside Seltso. Without overcoats and prohibited from lighting fires, the shivering men huddled together to keep warm. The Bolsheviks added to their misery by sending over an occasional shell to keep them sleepless. At noon the next day, an outflanking attempt by B Company under Captain Robert Boyd ran afoul a hidden machine-gun nest, resulting in three men killed and eight wounded. The Americans were learning the hard way what had been known on the Western Front since 1914--that trench warfare was murder on the infantry. Finally, the field guns came up, and in the late afternoon of September 20 they were used to lay a heavy and accurate barrage on both the hamlet and the gunboats. By coincidence, the Bolsheviks decided to withdraw from Seltso just as the 1st Battalion made an all-out frontal attack. After slogging through the knee-deep marsh as fast as they could, the Americans let out victory cheers when they took the trenches. They soon realized, however, that if the Soviets had stuck to their guns a little longer, the battalion could have been massacred in the open.
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pages.prodigy.net/mvgrobbel
www.umich.edu
www.worldwar1.com
www.usmilitaryknives.com
Not content merely to watch, the Royal Scots made a swift attack on the north end of town during the afternoon, dislodging the Bolsheviks and recapturing the hospital. What they then discovered would probably be dismissed as fiction if it were not so well-documented. When the Bolsheviks took the hospital without resistance on the morning of the 11th, their commander, true to form, had immediately ordered that all the Allied patients be shot. A high-pitched voice then interrupted, declaring that the first man who pulled a trigger would be shot himself. All eyes turned to see a beautiful woman step forward wearing the standard male Red Army uniform. She turned out to be a fellow officer--and the commander's lover. The Bolshevik commander grudgingly rescinded his order and then led his men in an attack on the 18-pounders in the ravine. Shortly afterward, he was mortally wounded and was brought back to the hospital to die in the presence of "Lady Olga," as the Allies called the woman officer. She stayed to help tend the wounded soldiers of both sides, even after the Scots had taken back the hospital. In spite of that good fortune at the hospital, the situation in Toulgas worsened on the morning of November 13. Infantry attacks against the bridge and ravine had proved fruitless for the Bolsheviks, so they again switched tactics. They started an almost continuous area bombardment of Toulgas, endangering soldiers and civilians alike. On average, a heavy shell hit the town every 15 seconds throughout the day. When the Allied soldiers looked at some of the shell fragments, they saw to their disgust and dismay that the shells had been manufactured in the United States--a portion of the supplies sent to Archangel that they had been assigned to guard.  As darkness closed in, the situation turned critical. Ammunition was low, and since the one telegraph line to the rear had been cut, neither supplies nor reinforcements were on the way. The temperature had plunged as well, bringing on the first heavy snowfall of winter. One advantage, at least for the Americans, was that no communications meant no outside British control. Captain Boyd of B Company was in charge of the garrison as ranking Allied officer. Deciding to use his powers to the fullest, Boyd proposed a daring gamble to break the siege. Boyd had been impressed by the way young Lieutenant Cudahy kept a cool head under fire. Since he had to stay in town as commander, Boyd put Cudahy in charge of B Company with orders to do what the Reds had failed to do on the 11th--mount a surprise flank attack from the western swamp.  In the faint light just before dawn on November 14, the American company carefully moved past Allied sentries into the wooded swamp. Although the Bolsheviks had surrounded Toulgas, Allied sharpshooters had taken care of many of the Bolshevik pickets on the perimeter the previous afternoon, so it was easy enough to get through their lines. Cudahy's specific objective was a group of huts near the south end that was being used as a supply depot. But more than a simple raid was intended. Boyd hoped that a sharp attack would convince the enemy that large reinforcements had arrived and that it would be wise to pull back. The thick layer of slush under several inches of powdery snow made the going agonizingly slow, as Cudahy led his men in a wide arc and then formed them into a skirmish line at the edge of a meadow. Across the meadow were the huts, along with some Bolsheviks milling about preparing breakfast. With his force still undetected, the lieutenant gave the order to open fire. By a lucky chance the Red detachment's commissar, or political officer, was killed by one of the first American bullets. When the Bolshevik soldiers witnessed this, and then saw the Americans charge out of the woods, they panicked and began running in wild disorder back toward their larger force overlooking the bridge.  Cudahy was deciding how best to follow up on this success when one of the B Company men peered into a hut and found it was crammed with rifle ammunition. Seeing an opportunity, Cudahy told the men to clear the area around the hut. Then he gave the order to set it on fire. Like a shooting gallery gone mad, the uproar of the exploding rifle rounds filled the air for miles. When the Bolshevik commander near the bridge heard the commotion, he assumed that a rescue force had broken through from the rear and was trying to trap his force. Consequently, he ordered his men to pull back from the south end of town. By another lucky chance, the captains of the gunboats had decided at about the same time that the increased cold posed too great a danger of ice forming on the river, and they withdrew their vessels up the Dvina toward Seltso. With their superiority in artillery gone, the Bolshevik ground troops felt they, too, had no choice but to begin a general withdrawal.  The siege of Toulgas was over. It had cost the Allies 28 killed and 70 wounded. A conservative estimate put the Bolshevik dead at 500. When the men of the garrison finally heard the news of the armistice days after the rest of the world, they thought that their prayers had been answered and that their own withdrawal orders were forthcoming. But the Allies were too heavily engaged in the continuing Russian civil war to withdraw so soon. Also, thick ice had formed in the sea around Archangel just as it did on the Dvina and prevented the use of transports, even those with powerful icebreaker bows. During the rest of 1918 and the first two months of 1919, the Allied garrison had several more sharp encounters, though the Bolsheviks never made as great an effort to take Toulgas while the Americans were there. Bolshevik prisoners later told their captors that the Soviet enlisted men had threatened to shoot their officers if another siege was ordered. The Americans were pleased with their reputation of toughness, but they were positively ecstatic when word came in the spring that they were set to leave Russia. On June 3, 1919, B Company and the rest of the 339th boarded transports at Archangel and steamed away.  Funeral for the fallen of the 339th Infantry Regiment, White Chapel Cemetery, 1930. Though the Great War had been over for nearly 12 years, some families did not receive their sons home until 1930 with the return of Infantry Regiment #339. Fondly known as the “Polar Bears”, the unit spent the duration of the war in Siberia, fighting the Bolshevik forces that had overthrown the Czar the year prior. Above, Mr. And Mrs. Frank Skocelas are reunited with their son, Private Andrew Skocelas, one final time. The veterans of the 339th did not feel that they had done much good for Russia. They called themselves "The Polar Bears" at reunions in the years afterward and worked to keep alive the memory of their remarkable exploits. One man did so in a very personal way. When Cudahy's wife gave birth to a daughter, he made "Toulgas" her middle name. |
White Russian Bump on Monday AM for the Freeper Foxhole
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
Morning alfa6.
Is it soap yet?
Interesting!
Before Patten..
To bad they couldn’t keep on heading east!
No USSR wonder what kind of timeline that would be?
Good morning, Snippy and everyone at the Freeper foxhole.
On This Day in History
Birthdates which occurred on March 14:
1681 Georg Philipp Telemann Magdeburg Germany, late baroque composer
1692 Peter Musschenbroek Dutch physician/physicist (Leyden jar)
1782 Thomas Hart Benton (Representative), "Old Bullion"
1800 James Bogardus US inventor/builder (made cast-iron buildings)
1804 Johann Strauss the Elder Viennese violinist/composer (Radetzky March)
1808 Catharinus Putnam Buckingham Brigadier General (Union volunteers)
1816 Montgomery Dent Corse Alexandria VA, Brigadier General (Confederate Army), died in 1895
1820 Victor Emmanuel II King of Sardinia (1849-61)/Italy (1861-78)
1823 Roswell Sabine Ripley Brigadier General (Confederate Army), died in 1887
1833 John Sappington Marmaduke Major General (Confederate Army)
1835 Giovanni V Schiaparelli Italian astronomer (Mars)
1844 King Umberto I of Italy (1878-1900)
1854 Thomas Riley Marshall (D) 28th Vice President (1913-21)
1864 [John] Casey Jones RR engineer (Ballad of Casey Jones)
1879 Albert Einstein Ulm Germany, (E=mc²/Theory of Relativity, Nobel 1921)
1903 Molla Mustafa Barzani Iran, Kurd leader (KDP)
1912 Les Brown Reinerton PA, orchestra leader (& his band of renown)
1919 Max Shulman novelist (Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, Tender Trap)
1920 Hank Ketcham cartoonist (Dennis the Menace)
1923 Diane Arbus photographer
1928 Frank Borman Gary IN, astronaut (Gemini 7, Apollo 8)/CEO-Eastern Airlines
1933 Michael Caine [Maurice J Micklewhite] Bermondsey London England, actor (Blame it on Rio, Alfie, Educating Rita, The Man Who Would Be King)
1933 Quincy Jones Jr Chicago IL, jazz & R&B producer/composer/singer (We Are The World)
1934 Eugene A Cernan Chicago IL, Captain USN/astronaut (Gemini 9, Apollo 10 17)
1934 Shirley Scott swing/blues organist (with Stanley Turrentine)
1942 Jerry Jeff Walker Oneonta NY, country singer (Mr Bojangles)
1945 Walter Parazaider Chicago IL, rock saxophonist (Chicago-If You Leave Me Now)
1947 Billy Crystal Long Beach NY, comedian (Soap, Saturday Night Live, City Slickers)
1952 David Byrne guitarist/vocalist (Talking Heads-Burning Down the House)
1952 J Fred Muggs chimp (Today show)
1956 Natalya Dmitriyevna Kuleshova Russia, cosmonaut
1962 Kirby Puckett centerfielder (Minnesota Twins)
Good morning
I have used J Fred Muggs as a nomme de guerre many times, he has also filled out many an inane questionare at my kids high school. An offense for which, fortunately, I have not had to get said kids out of the office.
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
"We wanted to change the world with our music," he said, "but often all we do is sing. We decided that we were going to take action to change some lives, so we started supporting some needy kids." Then he set forth the challenge, which Steve accepted. He then talked with his Bible-study group at church about supporting a child each month. Most of us want to change the world for the better, but the job seems too big. So what if we decided to do at least one thing to change just one person's life? In the name of Jesus, who said that providing physical help would be the same as helping our Savior Himself (Matthew 25:35-36), what if we reached out to one person with food, or clothing, or transportation? And what if that person, wondering about our motive, asks why we helped? We could then help change that person's life for eternity by introducing him or her to the Savior. Change the world? Let's start with changing one person in Jesus' name. -Dave Branon
Though its end you may not see; It may reach, like widening ripples, Down a long eternity. -Norris Wherever a human being exists, there is an opportunity to do a kindness. -Seneca
How Can I Share My Faith Without An Argument? |
BTW this pic has been reduced to 15% of the original size, aye carumba!!!
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
Dan, I know J Fred Muggs. J Fred Muggs was a friend of mine, and Mr. Rather you're no J Fred Muggs.
Morning Snippy.
Interesting topic for an "alternate history"
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When my son Steve came home from a concert recently, he had with him a free T-shirt and a brochure for an organization that helps needy children in a far-off continent. Apparently, one of the singers had issued a challenge.