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

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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.

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.

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.

If you're looking for an explanation of what the US and its' allies were doing fighting in Russia in 1918-1919, this isn't it. If you're looking for a book that relates what war is like for the men who actually fight and die in the front lines, this is a good start.
Carey was drafted and went with the 339th Infantry to Russia as a part of the Allied Intervention in the Russian Civil War. The common soldiers knew nothing of what they were doing there - most of the officers had no clue, either. His unit wound up under British command, and was put in the front lines with no clear mission or purpose.
This is a book about the day-to-day grind of Army life in WW1; the marching, the drills, the dirt, horrible food, and hard work.
This is a look at war from a private's viewpoint.

Tales of World War I are often the most overlooked in military history. Everyone knows the war happened; many know the parties involved; few even know the causes of that war. Yet, it typically serves as a footnote to its much bloodier, more devastating, and clearer cut offspring of two decades later. Those who know some of World War I do know that November 11th, 1918 served as the day of the armistice between the Allied and Central Powers, ostensibly declaring the end of the physical portion of the war and the beginning of the treaty negotiations. What few people know is that fighting involving the Allies continued almost a full year after Armistice Day, but it didn't involve any of the defeated Central powers. With Russia having had to withdraw from the Great War in 1917 because of the Bolshevik rebellion, many western nations looked to that country with fear of the new `red menace' that was being propagated by the Bolsheviks and Communists. As a result, during the dying days of World War I, the Allies sent what amounted to a police force to such northern Russian provinces as Siberia to contain the Bolshevik threat. Some skirmishes were fought, men died, but in the end, nothing much changed. The Bolsheviks still controlled all of Russia and sat as an impending threat to the west and the Allies who were involved in this action were disillusioned by the weather and the need to continue fighting well after their compatriots on the Western Front had returned home.

Very little has been written about this specific military action. However, one of the privates in the U.S. Army who served in Bolshevik campaign did keep an extensive memoir from beginning of basic training until being relieved from duty at the end of this action. "Fighting the Bolsheviks" is Private Donald E. Carey's remembrance of that difficult time. One of Carey's sons edited his father's journal and filled in the missing elements that would enable the reader to better understand what was happening there. Unfortunately, "Fighting the Bolsheviks" isn't a very good book. It's possible that this is because Donald Carey only intended his journal to be a personal or family record, but there's no getting around the boring, dry nature of the narrative and the events that take place. Carey does convey the monotony and misery of the environment he served in, as well as the tremendous displeasure he and his fellow American soldiers felt at being enduring the patronizing attitudes of their British superiors. The problem stems from Carey's preoccupation with needing to make constant reference to and commentary on things like the camp VD inspections, immoral actions (read: sex) by fellow soldiers, and his strong dislike for his British superiors. While the dislike of the British faction can be understood, Carey's obsession with the carnal behaviors of his fellow soldiers seems self-righteous and distracting. The first time it's mentioned and Carey expresses his revulsion for those behaviors because of his devout faith, we get it. We don't need to keep `getting it' throughout the rest of the book. It almost seems as though the battles fought are merely glossed over so that Carey can launch into another moral commentary about his colleagues. This is tremendously disappointing and renders what should an insightful look into a largely unknown event into a ponderous and tasking read. "Fighting the Bolsheviks" could have been so much more. It's too bad that it's not.

Great first person account of a little known WWI campaign. The book is an easy read with insightful accounts on the personnel sacrifices required by our troops in such a severe climate.