XV The Mutinies
Early in the year there had been a few small defections of conscripted Russians at Shenkursk, Murmansk, and later at Toulgas, but the thing that broke loose in July when the Yankees had gone home and the new British army had come and started its big campaign was quite another matter. At Troitsa, at Onega, at Pinega, at Obozerskaya, on the Vaga and on the Murmansk railroad our Russian soldiers mutinied, killed their officers, and went over to the Bolsheviki. On six of our seven fronts these mutinies occurred. They were evidently not concerted, not uniform in method, but spontaneous, having the same nature, and springing from the same causes.
There were some distinctive features about the Troitsa affair of July seventh. The Dyer’s Battalion that mutinied here was composed of ex-Bolsheviki prisoners who had been given the option of joining our army or remaining prisoners of war, and who for obvious reasons had chosen to join the army. This battalion had been fêted and honored in many ways, and the privilege of wearing the British name on their shoulders was supposed to give assurance of their loyalty to our army. We did not conceal our stupidity about the Bolsheviki from these men. We did not keep them from hearing the stories on which we had fed our men. They saw the attitude of the English military toward the Russians and had learned the true state of Russian peasant feeling toward the military. They despised the name of the Slavo-British Legion that they wore. On Troitsa’s fateful night they murdered five English officers and eight Russian officers and went over to the Bolsheviki. We recaptured a considerable number of them and executed them. Those that had not been in the mutiny we disarmed and put to labor. We had lost heavily and by treachery. It was enough to get the wind up of anybody. It got ours up. I heard many an Englishman say after that that he would never again trust any Russian anywhere. He would not discriminate. They were all treacherous, ungrateful swine. Every Russian was a Bolo. There was no longer possible any big coöperative campaign.
On the other fronts the mutinies were not of ex-Bolsheviki prisoners but of the “mobilized” conscripts who had never been tainted by Bolshevist theories or ideals and whose defection is therefore of greater significance. These men were the peasant inhabitants of North Russia who had welcomed our advent at Archangel. They had been in a sense our hosts all winter. They had worked for us, driven our transport, sold us hay and potatoes, smoked our cigarettes, and hated our enemies. But also they had told me in the spring that if the Americans went home the English, would have to go home too. Now they were murdering their officers, surrendering their positions to the enemy, refusing to advance, going over to the Bolsheviki in large numbers.
The British fought wonderfully well under these trying circumstances. At every point except Onega they re-took all positions that had been lost by treachery. They caught and shot traitors. And they also shot all other Russian soldiers who were suspected of treason. They did this with a brutality the details of which I will spare you, but not one item, of which escaped the Russian people.
The British wind was up. They were soldiers, and prepared for any fight that might be in store for them. But being shot in bed by your own men is not fighting. It is not war. There was no question of courage involved. The army had courage enough. But this was next to suicide, to go to the front leading traitors.
There was evidence one day on the railroad front that a new mutiny was brewing. All the men of the suspected company were put on a train and then disarmed. A guard went through the train and counted off the men, taking every tenth man outside to be shot without trial. The men had not mutinied, but they might, and something had to be done.
I was told about another company of eighty Russians who were under suspicion at the same time. The British officer in command gave them the option of declaring who the ringleaders were or being shot en masse. Under the fear of this threat fifteen out of the eighty men were named and shot without trial.