Home from War

From the far field of a war that was never a war returned to the U. S. last week 75 warriors--each in a flag-draped wooden box. Twenty-nine of them were nameless. Icy cold blew the dawn wind as the S. S. President Roosevelt churned slowly up New York harbor, but a balmy breeze it was compared to the blasts of the North Russian winter of 1918-19 when these U. S. soldiers died fighting the Red Army. After eleven years and by dint of diligent search by the Veterans of Foreign Wars their bodies had been exhumed from shallow graves in the frozen tundra, brought back for homeland burial.

Forgetful of the details of that North Russia campaign of the A. E. F., New York City paid the corpses brief homage. Fort Jay guns banged out a salute of 17 guns. Flags were half-staffed. In a pier baggage room in Hoboken was held a funeral service. Many a wreath was stacked around the coffins. Drums rolled. Rifles discharged thrice. Buglers blew "taps." There were no crowds, no major-generals, no Congressional committees. . . .

To Detroit went 56 bodies, where Governor Frederick W. Green received them in an arctic snowstorm; accorded them a state funeral. Others were scattered among a half-dozen Mid-West cities; four went to Arlington.

No declaration of war by Congress authorized U. S. participation in the sorry North Russia expedition, which began in the summer of 1918. President Wilson consented on his own responsibility to the use of U. S. troops on this remote frontier. The original Allied purpose was to offer a new threat to Germany on the East, following the collapse of Russia as a fighting force, to guard supplies, to keep U-boats out of the cold White Sea. But objectives became muddled. The Allied troops numbered some 27,000, of which 5,100 were U. S. soldiers. Twenty thousand "White" Russians joined them. The enemy became the Bolsheviki.

On Aug. 3, 1918 Archangel was captured by the Allies who immediately pushed south on five disconnected fronts. When the Armistice came, they found themselves frozen in for the winter. In January, with the temperature 30DEG below zero, the Red Army assaulted them, drove them back. The wounded died from exposure. Machine guns would work only from heated blockhouses. A bare hand touching metal was seared as by fire. Snow and continual darkness fought for the enemy. On March 30 occurred the "mutiny" of Company I of the 339th Infantry. So great was the demoralization of all troops that withdrawal was ordered with the first thaw late in May.

The expedition cost the U. S. $3,000,000, with 244 men killed, 305 wounded. In November 1919, 104 of the dead were returned to the U. S.

Last summer a Michigan commission searched for the rest of the lost bodies. With the greatest difficulty 86 were found; eleven were left in France. Russian peasants were hostile, had to be bribed to reveal each grave. One town the Soviet Government, cooperating with the U. S., threatened to plow up in toto unless its inhabitants gave up the U. S. dead. In another case a Russian woman had nursed, fallen in love with and then buried a wounded U. S. officer. First she tried to misguide the searchers from the grave. When they found it by an ikon and paper flowers, she vainly implored them to leave its contents behind.

Last week at Corinto, Nicaragua, Rear-Admiral Edward Hale Campbell, commander of the Special Service Squadron, debarked from his flagship, the U, S. S. Rochester to make a periodical inspection of U. S. forces in Nicaragua. He was met by Brigadier-General Dion Williams who commands 1,600 U. S. Marines still scattered over the little republic. Last week President Hoover informed Congress: "We are anxious to withdraw these forces as the situation warrants."

Other U. S. forces on foreign soil: Haiti, 700; China, 2,605.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.