In 1918, as the Great War in Europe was nearing its climactic end, Allied nations sent troops up to Archangel in North Russia. This is the story of those soldiers, told in their own words.

An account of the little-known involvement of Royal Marines as they engaged the new Bolsheviks immediately after the Russian Revolution. After three years of great loss and suffering on the Eastern Front, Imperial Russia was in crisis and on the verge of revolution. In November 1917, Lenin’s Bolsheviks (later known as “Soviets”) seized power, signed a peace treaty with the Central Powers and brutally murdered Tsar Nicholas (British King George’s first cousin) and his children so there could be no return to the old order. As Russia fractured into loyalist “White” and revolutionary “Red” factions, the British government became increasingly drawn into the escalating Russian Civil War after hundreds of thousands of German troops transferred from the Eastern Front to France were used in the 1918 “Spring Offensive” which threatened Paris. What began with the landing of a small number of Royal Marines at Murmansk in March 1918 to protect Allied-donated war stores quickly escalated with the British government actively pursuing an undeclared war against the Bolsheviks on several fronts in support of British trained and equipped “White Russian” Allies. At the height of British military intervention in mid-1919, British troops were fighting the Soviets far into the Russian interior in the Baltic, North Russia, Siberia, Caspian and Crimea simultaneously. The full range of weapons in the British arsenal were deployed including the most modern aircraft, tanks and even poison gas. British forces were also drawn into peripheral conflicts against “White” Finnish troops in North Russia and the German “Iron Division” in the Baltic. It remains a little-known fact that the last British troops killed by the German Army in the First World War were killed in the Baltic in late 1919, nor that the last Canadian and Australian soldiers to die in the First World War suffered their fate in North Russia in 1919 many months after the Armistice. Despite the award of five Victoria Crosses (including one posthumous) and the loss of hundreds of British and Commonwealth soldiers, sailors and airmen, most of whom remain buried in Russia, the campaign remains virtually unknown in Britain today. After withdrawal of all British forces in mid-1920, the British government attempted to cover up its military involvement in Russia by classifying all official documents. By the time files relating to the campaign were quietly released decades later there was little public interest. Few people in Britain today know that their nation ever fought a war against the Soviet Union. The culmination of more than 15 years of painstaking and exhaustive research with access to many previously classified official documents, unpublished diaries, manuscripts and personal accounts, author Damien Wright has written the first comprehensive campaign history of British and Commonwealth military intervention in the Russian Civil War 1918-20. “Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War remains forgotten. Wright’s book addresses that oversight, interspersing the broader story with personal accounts of participants.” —Military History Magazine

At the end of World War I, the U.S. Army 339th Infantry--nicknamed the "Polar Bears"--was deployed to northern Russia to prevent Allied supplies stockpiled near the port city of Archangel from falling into the hands of the Bolsheviks. Drawing on firsthand accounts from men in the regiment, their 18-month campaign is narrated from the point of view of the riflemen, NCOs and officers of companies I and M. Each chapter highlights an individual soldier's experience fighting the Red Army and the Arctic winter, a quarter century before the Cold War.

When the war is lost, what else is worth winning? Lt. Francis Ransome is newly promoted and completely miserable. After a year and a half of fighting in Russia’s revolutionary fallout, his regiment is retreating across the bitter Siberian wilderness, the war lost. Home has never been so close and yet so far, and any breath could be their last. When they stumble upon the remains of a Czech evacuation, they offer what help they can, but out here, it’s every man for himself. Francis is instantly drawn to Sasha Jandáček, a handsome but withdrawn young soldier. The attraction is mutual—and enthralling—but it could spell the end for them both. Despite their best efforts, hesitance grows into friendship, and friendship blossoms into something else. Together, they struggle to conceal both feelings and fear in a world that won’t accept either. As war stalks their footsteps and relentless winter gnaws on their morale, the journey home becomes a fight for survival. Francis and Sasha face the threat of discovery, death, and one burning question: even if they make it home, what future can they possibly have together? **See this title's page on RiptidePublishing.com for content warnings.**

This work explores the reasons for the Allied intervention into Russia at the end of the Great War and examines the military, diplomatic and political chaos that resulted in the failure of the Allies and White Russians to defeat the Bolshevik Revolution.

“The only armed combat that has ever occurred between Soviet and American forces... An astounding story.” —Harrison E. Salisbury, The New York Times “A narrative of combat superbly told.” Chicago Sun-Times “Vivid...almost unbelievable.” Omaha World Herald “Engrossing...a superb re-creation of the battles.” Spokane Chronicle Blood and Ice On November 11, 1918, World War I officially ended. But for the men of the ill-starred American Expeditionary Force to North Russia, the fighting had only begun. Plagued by meager supplies, poor leadership, and the lack of a clear-cut objective, this small but valiant American contingent fought impossible odds, scoring several stunning victories against the Bolsheviks before superior numbers and the bone-breaking arctic winter that had defeated Napoleon forced them to withdraw. Now, in the clear, forthright account, E.M. Halliday re-creates one of the most obscure but important of America's foreign interventions: an epic of confusion, endurance, failure—and gallantry—that history almost forgot and the Russians never forgave. Perhaps the Russians have never forgotten these events?

Instant interpretive history is a difficult and demanding task, and certainly more of an art than some would suggest. USA and the World endeavors to describe not only what happened, but to put events in the context of the past and to criticize policy actions as appropriate. The result goes deeper than most of what appears in current publications. USA and the World is solid enough to be useful for those who write future books in due course. It is meant for the lay reader, but with a special eye to students of all ages.

Instant interpretive history is a difficult and demanding task, and certainly more of an art than some would suggest. USA and the World endeavors to describe not only what happened, but to put events in the context of the past and to criticize policy actions as appropriate. The result goes deeper than most of what appears in current publications. USA and the World is solid enough to be useful for those who write future books in due course. It is meant for the lay reader, but with a special eye to students of all ages.

USA and the World endeavors to describe not only what happened, but to put events in the context of the past and to criticize policy actions as appropriate. The result goes deeper than most of what appears in current publications.