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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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I have two memories of the Lewis MG, one is from "For Whom The Bell Tolls" where it was almost a "main character" along with Gary Cooper and the second is seeing it in the hands of an Imperial Stormtrooper in "Star Wars"
Morning Aeronaut.
Morning E.G.C.
Our great weather is continuing to hold. :-)
I remember reading about concrete ships somewhere. ;-)
I don't eat broccolli either.
Hi GailA.
Good Morning Mayor.
I'll bet the "full size" pic is impressive.
Morning PE.
Hi Feather.
OU and OSU are the NCAA Tournament. OSU won the big 12 Tourney at KC. We'll see what happens.
LOL. Good morning Valin.
Good morning Aeronaut.
Good morning EGC.
free dixie HUGS,duckie/sw
FReegards...MUD
Morning Sam..
You guys don't know what you're missing. How 'bout them brussel sprouts? Yummy!
Hi miss Feather
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