French in Murmansk

On 26 July 1918 the French 21st Colonial Infantry Battalion (21e bataillon d’infanterie coloniale) arrived in Murmansk. This date is given both by the commander of the Allied forces in northern Russia, General Frederick Poole, in his report published after the war, and by General Charles Maynard, commander of the British troops in Murmansk, in his memoirs. The British chronology of the war records under that day that the main body of the French contingent joined the expeditionary force in northern Russia. According to Maynard it was the first of the promised Allied contingents to reach the north.

The French had been in Murmansk before, but in small numbers. The cruiser Amiral Aube lay in the port, and its sailors went ashore together with British and American ones. Even before Poole’s arrival the artillery of a small French military mission, originally sent to Romania, had made its way here across Russia. In his report Poole listed among the forces at his disposal on arriving in Murmansk about 300 French scattered along the railway, “mostly invalids”. Besides them he had about 500 sailors from Allied ships and about 1,400 Serbs, many of whom were sick and half of whom had no rifles.

That is why Poole was waiting for the battalion. From the start he had wanted to take Archangel, the main port on the White Sea, where huge stocks of war material previously delivered to Russia lay. The ice on the approaches to the port, however, broke up only around the middle of July, and in the meantime the Bolsheviks had strengthened the city’s defences. They mined the entrance to the harbour channel and fortified Mudyug Island at its mouth. Poole judged his forces too weak and decided not to attack until the French battalion arrived. After the agreement with the Murmansk soviet he could more safely withdraw some of his troops from Murmansk.

The battalion did not stay long in Murmansk. Poole planned to sail on 3 August, but on 30 July he received word that the opponents of the Bolsheviks in Archangel could wait no longer and would raise a rising the next day. That same night ships with the first echelon sailed from Murmansk, and the rest of the troops were to follow the next day. The landing force numbered just under 1,500 men: officers and instructors of the British “Elope” training mission, the French battalion, a handful of Poles and soldiers lent by Maynard, above all a hundred Royal Marines and part of a machine-gun company. On 2 August the Allies entered Archangel. The French colonial soldiers later fought on the Dvina and along the Archangel railway. The British historian Damien Wright points out that the battalion, which later numbered about 900 men, was recruited largely from the French colonies in North Africa and was poorly prepared for service in the harsh winter of northern Russia.