The Allies take Obozerskaya

On 4 September 1918 Allied troops took Obozerskaya station on the railway from Archangel to Vologda, about 130 kilometres south of Archangel. This date is given by the British chronology of the war and also by General Frederick Poole, commander of the Allied forces in northern Russia. In his report he wrote that the station had been taken by the troops of Lieutenant Colonel Guard, known as “Vologda Force”. Some Russian works give a later date, 8 September. On the morning of 6 September, however, the French were already at the station, and the Americans came to relieve them. Obozerskaya was more than just another halt in the forest. The railway crossed the road to Onega here, and through the station ran the only railway line from Archangel into the interior of Russia.

Obozerskaya had been fought over ever since the Allies entered Archangel. From the start Poole wanted to cut the railway behind the Bolsheviks. As early as 31 July he sent a small detachment of Serbs and Russians under Colonel Thornhill to Onega, which was to reach Obozerskaya by road at the moment the Allies entered Archangel and stop the evacuation of rolling stock to the south. The detachment, however, ran into strong resistance and had to fall back to Onega. The Reds who had fled Archangel by rail at first retreated in panic from station to station, and around 7 August dug in at Obozerskaya. The headquarters of the newly formed North-Eastern Front brought in whatever it had to hand: a Latvian detachment, sailors, a battalion from Ryazan, partisans and regiments from Petrograd. The Allies advanced along the tracks with an armoured train. According to Russian sources its guns were manned by French artillerymen who had travelled across Russia from the military mission in Romania, and British marines also rode on its flatcars. The Reds blew up the bridges behind them, and the terrain, which apart from the railway was almost entirely forest and swamp, made any outflanking move difficult.

At the turn of August and September the fate of the station was decided unexpectedly. The Allies sent through the forests a column under the British Colonel Hazelden, made up of about 150–200 French, British, Russians and American sailors from the cruiser Olympia, with a train of 50 carts. The Reds intercepted a motorcyclist carrying orders for Hazelden, set an ambush on a forest track and drove the column into the swamps. Russian sources date this victory to 5 September, although according to one participant the fighting in the forests lasted a whole week. The accounts of the two sides differ as to exactly when the station’s defence collapsed. But the best units of the Obozerskaya garrison and the sector’s chief of staff himself had gone into action. Left at the station was the 3rd Petrograd Regiment, which had arrived on 16 August and had been restless even on the way. According to a report by the front commander, Mikhail Kedrov, some of the regiment’s soldiers and commanders went over to the enemy and most fled in panic, “opening the front”. The station was abandoned. Vladimir Gittis, later commander of the 6th Army, wrote that part of the regiment scattered and the rest were disarmed, and that most of its commanders were shot after a trial.

Poole presented the capture of Obozerskaya as a success achieved in the face of determined resistance by an enemy who had numerical superiority and, according to him, was helped by German officers. According to the general’s report the operation yielded about 200 prisoners. The Americans of the 3rd Battalion of the 339th Infantry Regiment, who came by rail from Archangel, saw on the way a train full of Bolshevik prisoners and deserters. At the station they found a French officer who warned that the Reds would at any moment start shelling again. Most of the inhabitants had fled the fighting, and some had been taken away by the Reds. Within a few days Obozerskaya became an Allied base of operations, with a landing ground for aircraft and an armoured train armed with naval guns. Poole aimed further, at Plesetsk and at Vologda, several hundred kilometres away. The front on the railway, however, came to a halt soon afterwards a short distance south of Obozerskaya and hardly moved for the following months.