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Archiver > GREATWAR > 2001-02 > 0981438532


From: Iain Kerr <>
Subject: Re: [WW1] Operation Syren
Date: Tue, 06 Feb 2001 05:48:52 +0000
In-Reply-To: <003901c08fc0$67445c40$55b068d5@oemcomputer>


At 22:09 05/02/01 +0000, Dianne Young wrote:
>Can anyone help with information re Operation Syren? So far I have had
>little success in finding out anything except that it was in North Russia.
>E-mail me at:
>

Dianne,

The aim of a mailing list is to share information, especially answers to
questions since these may be of interest to others.

I have not heard of the operational codeword. but the following notes and
suggestions for further internet sources may help:

British Forces in Russia 1918 - 1919

The British military involvement of 1918-1920 in several parts of European
Russia was the outcome of the Russian Revolution of Nov 1917. The activity
was closely connected both with events in Asia (particularly in Persia and
in Siberia) and with the general course of the War in the West. The
continued German and Turkish threats to India by way of Persia and
Afghanistan, and the crisis of 1918 in France caused by the withdrawal of
Russia from the Entente, formed the background to the North Russian
Expedition and the Allied intervention in South Russia, which are
summarised below.

In the spring of 1918, the main Russian Government was neutral towards
Germany and Austria. Russia however was surrounded by various hostile
regional Governments on the fringes of the former Russian Empire. Its
western front was open, and German troops had been transferred in very
large numbers to France. Finland, independent since Dec 1917, was torn by
the struggle between "White" and "Red" factions, and strong German forces
entered the country and secured, in May 1918, the ascendency of the "White"
Government.

All these facts suggested British and Allied intervention. This took the
form of landings in the North of Russia around Murmansk and Military and
Naval Missions with armaments and stores in the South and in the
Vladivostok area in the East. The Northern expedition lasted from 1918 to
1919, and was a separate military operation. The intervention in the South
was linked with the advance of detachments from the Allied armies in Greece
and Mesopotamia, and it lasted from 1919 to 1920.

Operations in North Russia

By mid 1918, the North Russian ports, through which the Allies had assisted
Russia with supplies and munitions, were now open to German
occupation. The Black Sea, the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea were as yet
beyond the reach of Allied forces, and the Russian half of the barrier
between the Central Powers and India had failed. A small British-French-US
expeditionary force under British command was sent to North Russia to
retrieve Allied munitions that had been supplied to the Czarist Army.

In Apr 1918, a force of 150 Royal Marines landed at Murmansk, off which a
British battleship had been stationed for some time. By the end of May,
500 British marines and sailors, 300 French soldiers, 1,400 Serbian
soldiers and 500 Finnish "Red Guards" (the Finnish Legion) were holding the
Kola Peninsula and Kandalaksha. The danger was considered to be in
Finland, and the Murmansk force, gradually strengthened, occupied the line
of the Murmansk railway as far South as Soroka by the end of Jun
1918. These operations were begun with the consent of the main Russian
Government.

On 1-2 Aug 1918, another Allied force occupied Archangel. In Aug and Sep
the force advanced westward to Onega and South and South-East, along the
Vologda railway and the Dvina, to Yemtsa and beyond Bereznik
(Semenovka). Behind these two forces were the friendly local Soviets, but
already both had become engaged in hostilities with the Russian Bolshevik
troops. On 18 Sep Admiral Kolchak announced the formation of an
anti-Bolshevik Government and "assumed power" over all the Russias, basing
himself on Siberia and the South. By Oct 1918, nearly 20,000 British,
French, American, Italian, Polish and Russian troops were on the Archangel
front, and nearly 15,000 British, French, Italian, Serbian and Russian
troops on the Murmansk front.

The danger from Finland disappeared in Dec 1918, with the withdrawal of the
German troops and the establishment of a friendly coalition
government. But the hope of junction with the Czech Legion in the Urals
was disappointed. Some of the Allies had believed that this joint force
could link up with the Czech Legion in the Urals, thereby contributing to a
unified White Russian counter-revolution and overthrow of the Bolshevik
regime. However wiser heads prevailed. The Czech Legion had emerged from
the late Russian armies; two Czechoslovak divisions, 100,000 strong and
formed of ex-Austro-Hungarian prisoners of the Russians. The Czechs
eventually fought their way east along the Trans-Siberian railway until
they were rescued by an American-led expedition. The Czechs and Allies
were evacuated from Vladivostok in Apr 1920.

In the north, the winter was spent in repelling determined Bolshevik
attacks on the Archangel force and in advancing the forward positions of
the Murmansk force beyond Segeja. With the early spring of 1919, news
arrived of considerable successes won by Admiral Kolchak in the East and by
General Denikin, the "White Russian" commander in the South. But in Mar
and Apr the Allied governments decided on an early evacuation of North
Russia. War against the Bolshevik Government had not been one of their
objects.

The two North Russian forces were to be strengthened, disengaged through
local offensives, and withdrawn. Friendly governments were to be helped to
establish themselves, if possible, on a firm military basis. The Siberian
army of Admiral Kolchak might perhaps be linked, before the Allied soldiers
left, with the troops of the Archangel Soviet. General Lord Rawlinson was
sent to co-ordinate the operations. Only the first of these aims was
realised. The Murmansk force reached Lake Onega by 18 May and fought small
actions on or near the lake through the summer. The force captured Lijma
between 14 and 16 Sep, and within another month it had successfully
evacuated from Murmansk.

The Archangel force, fighting on a wider front and more severely attacked,
won the Battle of Troitsa on 10 Aug, and evacuated Archangel without
further difficulty on 27 Sep. The friendly Governments held out for some
months, but the Bolsheviks entered Archangel on 20 Feb 1920. On the
Finnish border, fighting between Soviet forces and Finnish troops or
Karelian insurgents continued at intervals until the end of 1921.

Deployment in Russian Far East

The Americans landed a small force in Vladivostok between Aug 1918 and Apr
1920 to counter Japanese ambitions to seize that area from Russia. There
were also British deployments to Vladivostok between August 1918 and late 1919.

Kolchak's Siberian forces were decisively defeated in the summer of
1919. Denikin, after a successful summer campaign which reached as far as
Kiev in September, was driven back throughout the winter of 1919-20 until
his last position, at Novorossisk, was lost in March.

Campaign in the South

The White Russian Army did not form until the Bolshevik Revolution of Nov
1917 (beginning in St Petersburg) had divided the Czarist Army. General
Deniken rallied the White counter-revolutionary army and drove the
Bolsheviks (Red Army) out of the Caucasus in Jan 1919. Deniken assumed
command of the entire White Army in Apr 1919. There were somewhat high
hopes that the British-French-American force would contribute to the united
White Russian counter-revolution.

The south was the major theatre of the civil war, with White Russian forces
fighting in a somewhat uncoordinated and winding arc from Odessa to the
Volga estuary on the Caspian Sea (where the British had a flotilla
operating out of Persian ports!) They pushed as far north as Kiev and
Voronezh, but were rolled back to the Black Sea between Dec 1919 and Mar
1920. A hurriedly assembled British fleet evacuated most of the White
Russian forces from Novorossisk at the end of March, but Gen. Peter Wrangel
held out in the Crimea, from where he launched another offensive. With the
end of the Polish war in Oct 1920, the Reds were able to concentrate their
forces and push Wrangel back into the Crimea. In Nov 1920, General Wrangel
was forced out of Sevastopol, and thus organised resistance to the Russian
Soviet Government ended. Another British fleet evacuated the remnants of
Wrangel's forces to Constantinople in late Nov 1920.

British Battle Honours

The British awarded five battle honours to eleven infantry regiments for
the actions in the north and east, but nothing in the south. In the north:
"Murmansk 1918-19", "Archangel 1918-19", "Troitsa". In the east:
"Dukhovskaya" and "Siberia 1918-19".

Units Employed in Russia

The following infantry battalions are known to have served in Russia:
2/10th (Cyclist) Battalion, The Royal Scots (Territorial Force) as infantry
- Archangel
45th and 46th (Service) Battalions, The Royal Fusiliers (City of London
Regiment) - Archangel
17th (Service) Battalion (1st City), The King's (Liverpool) Regiment -
Archangel
6th (Service) Battalion Alexandra, Princess of Wales's Own (Yorkshire
Regiment) - Archangel
Unknown Battalion, The East Surrey Regiment - Murmansk
11th (Service) Battalion (1st South Down), The Royal Sussex Regiment - Murmansk
1/9th (Cyclist) Battalion, The Hampshire Regiment as infantry- Siberia
Unknown Battalion, The Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry -
Archangel
25th (Garrison) Battalion, The Duke of Cambridge's Own (Middlesex Regiment)
- Siberia [and other elements in Murmansk?]
2/7th Battalion, The Durham Light Infantry (Territorial Infantry) - Archangel
Unknown Battalion, The Highland Light Infantry - Murmansk and Archangel.

A small detachment of the Tank Corps, some 49 other ranks plus officers,
served in Russia between Apr and Dec 1919.

The following Royal Artillery units served in Russia from 1918-20:

(a) North Russia:

6th Brigade, RFA (formed of 420th Battery and 434th Battery which served at
Maselga and Medvejya Gora;
435th (Howitzer) Battery which served in Retchenga and Maselga;
1203rd Battery which served in Murmansk); and
421 (Howitzer) Battery which was attached to the 6th Brigade, RFA and
served in Archangel.

(b) South Russia:

1st Brigade, RFA which consisted on 11th Battery, 98th Battery and D
(Howitzer) Battery and served from Batum to Tblisi.
10th & 28th Brigade also served in South Russia but did not take part in
any fighting.

(c) Those are the only organised Royal Artillery units identified as
serving in Russia, but individual members of the RFA and RGA also served in
staff positions at headquarters and in training and advisory positions.


Possible Web Sites

http://www.ppcli.com/index2.html

http://secretwar.hhsweb.com/

http://www.cfcsc.dnd.ca/links/milhist/wwi.html

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/wolfhounds/Russian_intervention.htm

http://raven.cc.ukans.edu/~kansite/ww_one/memoir/aef_cong.htm

http://vladivostok.com/rus_mag/eng/N_2/1KOLCHAK.HTM

http://www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/wwi/1918/archangl.html

http://raven.cc.ukans.edu/~kansite/ww_one/bio/k/kolchak.html

http://www.eurekanet.com/~fesmitha/h2/ch11.htm

http://www.cfcsc.dnd.ca/links/milhist/wwi.html

War Memorial:

There is a Russia Memorial at Brookwood Cemetery, Surrey on which those
that fell in this campaign are remembered. The Memorial commemorates 662
sailors, soldiers and airmen of the Armed forces of the British
Commonwealth who died in Russia during both World Wars

This memorial was erected there about 1983 since the CWGC could no longer
tend the graves or memorials in Russia, due to the Cold War. With the
recent changes in Russia it is believed that although some are lost, the
graves area and or the memorials are once again in the care of the
CWGC. There is a possibility of the Brookwood Memorial now being removed
since it is the policy of the CWGC to have only one mention of each fallen
i.e. to be named on a grave or on a memorial.




Yours aye,

Iain Kerr in Windsor, Berkshire, United Kingdom
Web Page at: http://home.clara.net/iainkerr/index.htm
RootsWeb Sponsor and Listowner for the WORLDWAR2 Mailing List.

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