When Americans Fought A War In Russia (with pics)
These U.S. troops (below) were among some 13,000 Americans sent to Russia's Far North and Eastern Siberia in 1918 to fight both against -- and alongside -- Russians in one of history's strangest conflicts.
After the revolutionist leader Vladimir Lenin and his Bolsheviks seized power in Russia in 1917 with the promise of "Peace, Land, and Bread," the country formally withdrew from World War I. Once Russian guns fell silent, Germany and its allies were able to redeploy hundreds of thousands of soldiers from their Eastern Front and hurl them at the exhausted Allied forces in France and Belgium.
British Prime Minister David Lloyd George expressed fear that the onslaught could mean "disaster" for the Allies. Britain and France began plotting to "reconstitute the fighting front in the East," possibly by linking up with a contingent of battle-hardened Czechoslovak soldiers stranded inside revolutionary Russia, and overturning Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution by force.
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Wilson's stated aim for the U.S. troops was to guard supplies and assist the stranded Czechoslovak forces, who were increasingly in danger as the civil war raged across the country following the Russian revolution. Wilson apparently opposed further military intervention, believing U.S. entanglement in the conflict would only "add to the present sad confusion in Russia rather than cure it."
U.S. troops (left) parade in front of allied Russian White Army fighters.
A U.S. soldier pauses for a photograph while loading supplies onto a ship bound for Russia in 1918.
U.S. soldiers land in Russia's Arkhangelsk in September 1918. Their ship was painted in "dazzle camouflage" designed to make it hard for enemy submarine crews to estimate the ship's direction and speed.
A Bolshevik shot dead after attempting a late-night raid on a U.S. outpost in Russia's Far North.
A U.S. soldier looks across to the Bolshevik-held village of Shenkursk in the distance. The Americans' position was captured by the Bolsheviks two weeks after this photo was taken.
Many more pictures and the full story at
https://www.rferl.org/a/when-american-soldiers-fought-a-war-in-russia/30410353.html
