Fighting the Bolsheviks: The Russian War Memoir of Private First Class Donald E. Carey, U.S. Army, 1918-1 919 [Hardcover]

Neil G. Carey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 12, 1997

It was war at its worst.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Presidio Press (August 12, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0891416315
• ISBN-13: 978-0891416319
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #970,709 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A superb addition to the literature, July 11, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Fighting the Bolsheviks: The Russian War Memoir of Private First Class Donald E. Carey, U.S. Army, 1918-1 919 (Hardcover)

Fighting the Bolsheviks: The Russian War memoir of Private First Class Donald E. Carey, 1918-1919. Edited by Neil G. Carey. Presidio Press, Novato: Ca. 1997

This is truly one of the most important memoirs to come out of the so-called, Great War. To make it even more important, it didn't appear until nearly eighty years after the events. It, like the Elton Mackin memoir, is an extremely valuable addition to what we know about the ordeals suffered by the American soldiers so many years ago. In addition to some excellent personal photos, two superb maps and a chronology of events add to the value of this book, one of the few, about the famed "Polar Bears," the fighting 339th Infantry from Michigan.

Carey was a school teacher at the rather advanced age of twenty-five when Uncle Sam beckoned. Like most of his contemporaries, he was no hero, but he knew his duty and went-but not to France, where most of the action was, and where most American soldiers wound-up. No, his crowd was shipped off to North Russia. We had no declaration of war versus Russia so technically sending Americans to attempt to put down a revolution in a foreign country was fait accompli but not legal. Congress didn't like our intervention, and neither did the American soldiers sent there. Most to remain long after the war in the rest of Europe, the real war, was terminated. The lads didn't like it. But, they did their duty and were the first Americans to fight the Reds.

If you are a WWI buff, and so many people are now becoming that-as they realize what a confused, convoluted, and downright fascinating period that was-you will throughly enjoy this very personal memoir. It is great. Five stars at least. More if they are allowed.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Educated Man Serves in A Strange Situation, January 3, 2002

By 

El Cutachero (MD USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fighting the Bolsheviks: The Russian War Memoir of Private First Class Donald E. Carey, U.S. Army, 1918-1 919 (Hardcover)

I am always on the lookout for "grunt" history that covers little known theatres and periods.
His unit was sent to North Russia to protect the vast stocks of war materials left behind on the docks when the Kerensky government lost power. They had already ceased active operations against the Germans but it was the Bolsheviks who signed the peace treaty in 1918. Since the Allies did not want the Germans to capture this booty materiel an expedition was sent made up of British, French, and US army and naval forces.
In the course of guarding the lines of communications, the allies brushed against the Reds who took to raiding them. The resulting hostilities poisoned US-USSR relations for many years and it was not until the 1930s that ambassadors were exchanged. On the other side, the Allies and Japanese forced landed and took over Vladivostok and advanced west intending to garrison the Trans Siberian Railway, and relieve the Czech Legion which had been formed from POWs from the Austro Hungarian Empire, since they could not march westward through the German Army to get home to Czechoslovakia. Remember, that before 1918, neither Poland nor CZ nor Yugoslavia existed as modern governments. All were carved out of the remnants of the German, Russian, and Austro-Hungarian empires.
This Siberian expedition which ended up aiding the White Russians also served to alienate the Red government which won the Russian Civil War. Later on US troops who fought against the Bolsheviks formed a society of remembrance, a veteran's club, if you will, and held annual meetings, were thought suspect simply because they had touched Reds, and the federal authorities kept track of their activities for years after.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Where the streets are mud, August 7, 2003

By 

Robert (Syracuse, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fighting the Bolsheviks: The Russian War Memoir of Private First Class Donald E. Carey, U.S. Army, 1918-1 919 (Hardcover)

PFC Donald Carey was drafted into the U.S. Army in the waning days of WW I. Instead of the fields of France, He and the 339th Infantry Regiment were sent to the icy plains of Northern Russia, to fight Lenin's Bolsheviks, in a place as unfamiliar to a Michigan schoolteacher as hardtack is to troopers today.
This excellent account of America's forgotten true "Cold War" with the Soviets is bound to captivate and surprise, as this conflict is generally forgotten or relegated to a few lines in foreign policy texts. (See George F. Kennan's excellent "Soviet-American Relations, 1917-1920, Volume II: The Decision To Intervene" for a fascinating diplomatic and military discussion of the American North Russian Expeditionary Force).
Carey's journal is lucid and revealing of a small town man placed into a larger and unfamiliar world that he deals with extremely well. The parochialisms of 1900's America do show, as he refers to some of his fellow soldiers as "wops", but he never denigrates them further, and learns from them. His penchant for temperance leads him to remark on the passage of Prohibition as good for America, as he also is celibate while overseas, unlike many of his fellow soldiers, who succumb to various venereal diseases.
All in all, a very good book on an obscure but still important chapter of American history.