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Summary
Summary
In the brutally cold winter of 1919, 5,000 Americans battled the Red Army 600 miles north of Moscow. We have forgotten. Russia has not.
"AN EXCELLENT BOOK." --Wall Street Journal * "INCREDIBLE." -- John U. Bacon * "EXCEPTIONAL." -- Patrick K. O'Donnell * "A MASTER OF NARRATIVE HISTORY." -- Mitchell Yockelson * "GRIPPING." -- Matthew J. Davenport * "FASCINATING, VIVID." -- Minneapolis Star Tribune
An unforgettable human drama deep with contemporary resonance, award-winning historian James Carl Nelson's The Polar Bear Expedition draws on an untapped trove of firsthand accounts to deliver a vivid, soldier's-eye view of an extraordinary lost chapter of American history--the Invasion of Russia one hundred years ago during the last days of the Great War.
In the winter of 1919, 5,000 U.S. soldiers, nicknamed "The Polar Bears," found themselves hundreds of miles north of Moscow in desperate, bloody combat against the newly formed Soviet Union's Red Army. Temperatures plummeted to sixty below zero. Their guns and their flesh froze. The Bolsheviks, camouflaged in white, advanced in waves across the snow like ghosts.
The Polar Bears, hailing largely from Michigan, heroically waged a courageous campaign in the brutal, frigid subarctic of northern Russia for almost a year. And yet they are all but unknown today. Indeed, during the Cold War, two U.S. presidents, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, would assert that the American and the Russian people had never directly fought each other. They were spectacularly wrong, and so too is the nation's collective memory.
It began in August 1918, during the last months of the First World War: the U.S. Army's 339th Infantry Regiment crossed the Arctic Circle; instead of the Western Front, these troops were sailing en route to Archangel, Russia, on the White Sea, to intervene in the Russian Civil War. The American Expeditionary Force, North Russia, had been sent to fight the Soviet Red Army and aid anti-Bolshevik forces in hopes of reopening the Eastern Front against Germany. And yet even after the Great War officially ended in November 1918, American troops continued to battle the Red Army and another, equally formiddable enemy, "General Winter," which had destroyed Napoleon's Grand Armee a century earlier and would do the same to Hitler's once invincible Wehrmacht.
More than two hundred Polar Bears perished before their withdrawal in July 1919. But their story does not end there. Ten years after they left, a contingent of veterans returned to Russia to recover the remains of more than a hundred of their fallen brothers and lay them to rest in Michigan, where a monument honoring their service still stands.
In the century since, America has forgotten the Polar Bears' harrowing campaign. Russia, notably, has not, and as Nelson reveals, the episode continues to color Russian attitudes toward the United States. At once epic and intimate, The Polar Bear Expedition masterfully recovers this remarkable tale at a time of new relevance.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Nelson (The Remains of Company D) narrates a largely forgotten chapter of WWI, when 5,000 American doughboys of the 339th Infantry Regiment were dispatched to northern Russia in 1918. The expedition's mission was to support opponents of the Russian Revolution and recreate the eastern front against Germany, which had vanished after the Bolshevik government pulled out of the war. But the result was a weak American invasion some 1,000 miles north of Moscow that inexplicably extended past the armistice and "sowed the seeds for recriminations and distrust that would plague U.S.-Russian relations throughout the 20th century-and beyond." Using books, articles, and newspaper accounts-and a crisp character-driven approach-Nelson narrates the expedition's sung and unsung heroes (like Thomas Downs, who cheerfully marched through a seven-mile retreat after losing an eye to a gunshot), horrors, and other events, such as a minor but exaggeratedly reported mutiny that left one company's reputation forever tarnished. Nelson's engrossing narrative will engage military historians, political buffs, and general readers alike. Agent: James Carl Nelson, Hornfischer Literary Management. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A little-known piece of World War I history in a "frozen Hades, [the] last place on earth at the top of the world."Beginning in September 1918, 5,000 American soldiers spent a miserable year fighting Bolsheviks in the Russian Arctic. In this fast-paced account, journalist and historian Nelson (I Will Hold: The Story of USMC Legend Clifton B. Cates, from Belleau Wood to Victory in the Great War, 2016) delivers a detailed, often gruesome narrative of this century-old campaign. In March 1918, Russia's revolutionary government signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Central Powers and withdrew from the war, freeing more than 1 million German soldiers to attack Russia's former alliesBritain, France, and Americaon the Western Front. Outraged, many Allied leaders yearned to reverse matters. Initially opposed to intervention, President Woodrow Wilson eventually agreed with the official explanation that it was required "to guard military stores which may be subsequently needed by Russian forces and to render such aid as may be acceptable to the Russians in the organization of their own self-defense." As a result, the 339th Infantry Regiment and several ancillary units landed in Archangel in northwest Russia. They served under English command, complaining bitterly of the unpalatable food and inferior cigarettes. Nelson has turned up enough journals, letters, newspaper accounts, and memoirs to give an intimate, blow-by-blow description of a nasty campaign fought under unspeakable conditions against the Red Army, an initially ragtag unit that grew increasingly competent. The author reminds readers that these Americans were citizen soldiers, not professionals, yet they continued to obey orders after the war ended and during the Arctic winter, when temperatures dipped far below zero. More than 200 died. By year's end, family, congressmen, and a few soldiers were complaining. In February 1919, Wilson directed the war department to plan their withdrawal, and by summer, they were gone.A vivid, well-researched history of one of America's many misguided military expeditions. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Why are we here? was the constant refrain from the 339th Infantry Regiment and supporting units of the U.S. Army during one 1918-19 mission. Nelson (Five Lieutenants, 2012) does yeoman's work in telling the stories of these men and their exploits during the little-remembered campaign in Northern Russia during that country's violent convulsions of revolution and civil war in the aftermath of WWI. It is a story of fierce fighting, deadly disease, material deprivation, morale-sapping indecision, and confusion on behalf of American leadership and the Bolsheviks' guerrilla fighters (or Bolos, as Americans called them) during a frigid Russian winter with temperatures regularly reaching 50 degrees below zero. Nelson makes a vague case for this expedition being then and now a source of friction between the U.S. and Russia, but this is mainly a work of narrative history with particular focus on the soldiers' long-neglected first-hand accounts. This is a wild ride through an American military campaign few know much about and a good addition to the history of Russian-American relations, a complex, often urgent subject.--James Pekoll Copyright 2019 Booklist
Library Journal Review
In 1918, the U.S. 339th Regiment was deployed to Murmansk, Russia, as part of the Allied intervention in the Russian civil war, in order to fight the Soviet Red Army and assist anti-Bolshevik forces. With this latest work, historian Nelson (I Will Hold: The Story of USMC Legend Clifton B. Cates, from Belleau Wood to Victory in the Great War) avoids a narrow focus on the minutiae of warfare, employing descriptions of the logistical nightmares that came along with a campaign near the Arctic Circle as well as the political entanglements the U.S. forces experienced. Interestingly, it was upon their return to the United States that the 5,000-team unit adopted the moniker the Polar Bears; unfortunately, nearly 200 died owing to harsh weather conditions before their withdrawal. While Nelson mined memoirs written by the Polar Bears, the bibliography is rather sparse on the most recent historiography of the war. VERDICT Nelson adeptly integrates the individual experiences of the regiment with the wider events of the expedition, though sometimes the narrative is overdramatized. Still, this largely overlooked event will interest readers of military history.-Frederic Krome, Univ. of Cincinnati Clermont Coll. © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Author's Note: The Polar Bears | p. vii |
| Prologue | p. 1 |
| Chapter 1 The March To Intervention | p. 3 |
| Chapter 2 Over Where | p. 17 |
| Chapter 3 To Russia. With Angst | p. 27 |
| Chapter 4 We're Here Because We're Here | p. 39 |
| Chapter 5 Archangel | p. 47 |
| Chapter 6 Upriver | p. 53 |
| Chapter 7 The Romance Of Company A | p. 63 |
| Chapter 8 The Strangest Fighting Mission Ever Undertaken | p. 71 |
| Chapter 9 The Bridge | p. 77 |
| Chapter 10 Onega | p. 83 |
| Chapter 11 Storm Clouds | p. 89 |
| Chapter 12 Friends And Comrades | p. 95 |
| Chapter 13 Verst 445 | p. 103 |
| Chapter 14 Armistice Day, Part 1 | p. 109 |
| Chapter 15 Armistice Day, Part 2 | p. 117 |
| Chapter 16 The Pinega | p. 127 |
| Chapter 17 The Lonely Death Of Francis Cuff | p. 133 |
| Chapter 18 Medicine Men | p. 139 |
| Chapter 19 A Thanksgiving Of Sorts | p. 145 |
| Chapter 20 Better Than No War At All | p. 153 |
| Chapter 21 K Means Kodish | p. 163 |
| Chapter 22 The Sad Case Of Sergeant Young | p. 171 |
| Chapter 23 The Devil Comes To Nijni Gora | p. 181 |
| Chapter 24 Flight | p. 193 |
| Chapter 25 Vistafka | p. 201 |
| Chapter 26 To What End | p. 215 |
| Chapter 27 Why Did We Go To Russia | p. 223 |
| Chapter 28 The Ballad Of Bolshie Ozerki | p. 235 |
| Chapter 29 Getting Out | p. 247 |
| Chapter 30 The Gulag Amerikanski | p. 259 |
| Chapter 31 A Return To Russia | p. 269 |
| Epilogue | p. 283 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 285 |
| Notes | p. 287 |
| Bibliography | p. 295 |
| Index | p. 299 |
