X The New British Army
In June a splendid new British army took over the fronts in North Russia from the Americans and the Canadians and the old British “category” men. They came to finish the job, to clean up North Russia, to take Kotlas by July fifteenth, Viatka and Vologda in another thirty days, and Petrograd before snowfall. This was quite on the cards. This new army had come to Russia with much boasting and had been received in Archangel with great ceremonial and flourish. They were “men from France” who “knew how to fight,” and they would “show the Yankees how to lick the Bolos.”
This boastfulness was unlike that of the first Yankees to go to France in that it was indulged in more by the officers than by the men. Many small British officers had acquired with reason a feeling of resentment toward the Yankee privates which during the spring found relief in big brag about what the new army was going to do in comparison with what the Yanks had done.
There were ex-colonels who came as corporals, and lords who came really to fight. It was an army to be proud of, an army of which much could be expected, an army which certainly would put across its program. It was very much bigger than the army that had borne the winter’s campaign. The equipment was better in every way. They had new rifles that would not jam at every other shot as the old ones often did. They had more and better artillery. They had a large air force with an abundance of equipment. More than all they had the best time of the year in which to conduct a campaign. Moreover, they had small Bolshevik forces to contend with, as the Bolsheviki seemed to be busy just then elsewhere.
In the address of welcome that was made to this new army on its arrival, the commanding general said that no better equipped army had ever been sent out by the British Empire. This was easy to believe. Not only was there the newest and latest equipment, there was quantity, such amplitude of everything as to inspire the greatest of confidence, and we who had lived through the poverty of the previous winter felt that there would be no such handicap upon those who should now turn the tide of battle and march victoriously to Petrograd.
About half of the men in this new army were volunteers. Many of them told me that they had enlisted because they could not find work, but that they had specifically volunteered to come and rescue besieged British soldiers from Archangel. When they found themselves three hundred miles up the Dvina River engaged in an expensive offensive they groused as hard as the Americans or Canadians ever had, but this did not interfere with their fighting. These men gave a good account of themselves, and they would have gone right through to Kotlas and Viatka and Vologda if something entirely beyond them had not changed the British plans.