Let me tell you about the time the U.S. Army fought the Red Army on two fronts on Russian soil. That’s right, from September 1918 to July 1919, nearly 13,000 American troops fought in Russia as part of an international invention in the Russian Civil War that had started immediately following the 1917 revolution.

The Russian Civil War had two major contestants, the Red Army (Bolshevik socialists) and the White Army (monarchists, capitalists, alternative socialists, democratic and undemocratic). Additionally, the Green armies (rival socialists and non-ideological) fought both the Reds and the Whites.

Fearing Bolshevik socialism, eight countries intervened to prevent the Reds from consolidating power. The British and French had three objectives. First, prevent the capture of Allied war materiel in Arkhangelsk. Second, help the Czech Legion stranded on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Third, get Russia back in the war and reopen the Eastern Front. They asked the Americans for help, and President Woodrow Wilson agreed, overriding objections from his War Department.

The U.S. sent 5,000 troops to Arkhangelsk (in North Russia) and nearly 8,000 to Vladivostok (in East Russia). In Arkhangelsk, the Americans arrived to find the war materiel had already been captured by the Reds and moved. Under British command, they went on the offensive to help the Czech Legion and pushed the Reds back for six weeks, though they failed to link up with the Czech Legion. The front became too large to sustain, and American forces went on the defensive. During the following winter, the Reds went on the offensive and pushed them back, inflicting many casualties. Conditions were miserable. Morale plummeted, and unrest began to spread in the ranks.

In Vladivostok, U.S. forces stayed under American command, with General Graves seeing his mission as limited to protecting Allied war materiel and refusing to take part in offensive operations.

Early in 1919, mutinies in the Allied armies were spreading. President Wilson ordered the withdrawal of American forces from Russia.

The Red Army went on to defeat the White Army by 1920, though it took until 1934 to completely crush all resistance and gain control over the entire country. An estimated 7 to 12 million Russians, mostly civilians, died during the war from the fighting and various hardships, including the Spanish Flu. Relations between the Soviet Union and the Allies started on very cold terms as a result of Allied intervention and countries like the U.S. refusing to formally recognize the USSR. President Warren G. Harding called American intervention a mistake and blamed the Wilson administration.

In 1930, the last American dead from the North Russia campaign buried in Russia were returned and re-buried at the “Polar Bear” Monument in Troy, Michigan. The last surviving veteran of that expedition passed away in 2003.



In 1917-19, as the First World War was coming to a close and afterwards, the French and British Armies were reeling as thousands of soldiers mutinied. As a result, through the remainder of the war, the French Army virtually stopped being effective as an offensive fighting force, and the British Army agreed to big improvements in the conditions of the soldiers while speeding up demobilization.

In April 1917, French General Robert Nivelle proposed a joint French-British offensive against the German lines that promised rapid victory in two days. After hard fighting, the offensive captured a few of its objectives but failed to achieve the promised victory. As a result, morale in the French Army, which had suffered losses of more than a million men since the start of the war, collapsed. Divisions refused to follow orders, a mutiny that spread to eventually involve nearly half the entire French Army.

The offensive was called off as the French High Command moved swiftly to suppress the mutiny using loyal troops, resulting in numerous courts martial and convictions, though most of the sentences were reprieved. As a result of the mutinies, French commanders became reluctant to launch another big offensive, and decided to wait for the Americans, who had decided to enter the war. The French Army didn’t recover until early 1918, when the revived army, fighting alongside the British and Americans, defeated the last great German offensives in March and April.

As the war came to a close, the UK faced its own mutinies. The British ranker suffered significant abuse by the officer class along with poor conditions and severe discipline, which led to numerous mutinies in the last months of the war and into 1919. Between September and December 1917, troops demonstrated and staged strikes to protest their treatment. Scores of Chinese and Egyptian soldiers were shot when they tried to break out of camp. In 1918, Royal Artillery units rioted and burned army depots, troops in Shoreham marched out of camp to protest brutal treatment by their officers. Unrest spread in Calais until 20,000 troops joined a mutiny that seized control of the Army headquarters there. The soldiers formed a Calais Soldiers and Sailors Association, issuing orders to units based on a delegate system. Local French rail workers supported the strike, refusing to move British military supplies.

General Byng arrived to put down the mutiny, but many of his soldiers defected to the mutineers. As a result, the Army chiefs were forced to give in to the soldiers’ demands for better food, new barracks, and more. The success of the mutiny rippled across the British Army, with a wave of mutinies across the Army in January 1919. Fearing the rebellion could turn into revolution, the chiefs quickly improved conditions and accelerated the demobilization of the Army.