Ironside takes command at Archangel

On 14 October 1918 General Frederick Poole, commander of the Allied forces in northern Russia, sailed from Archangel for England. Officially he had been summoned to London for consultations or sent on leave, but he never returned to the north. Command at Archangel was taken over by General Edmund Ironside, who had arrived there on 1 October and for the first two weeks had been Poole’s chief of staff. The British chronology of the war states that Ironside took command as early as 4 October. Other sources, however, do not confirm this date. As late as 5 October Poole signed at Archangel, as commander-in-chief, a report on operations up to the end of September. Canadian and American studies and modern British works on the intervention link the change of command with Poole’s departure in the middle of the month. Ironside himself, in his 1919 dispatch, counted his period of command from 1 October, and his formal appointment was announced in the London Gazette only in November.

Why Poole was recalled

From the moment he entered Archangel in August, Poole had governed there as if in a conquered country. He backed Russian officers hostile to the socialists, and at the beginning of September Commander Georgi Chaplin, on whom the general relied, kidnapped members of Nikolai Chaikovsky’s government. The government was restored only under pressure from the Allied diplomats. The American ambassador, David Francis, complained to Washington again and again about Poole’s methods. At the end of September Washington also stipulated that the American soldiers, the largest contingent in the Archangel area, were only to guard the ports and their surroundings. Poole also had plans for which there were not enough troops. He wanted to advance up the Dvina to Kotlas and by rail to Vologda, to link up with the Czechoslovaks on the Volga. By the autumn the Allied columns had stalled far from these objectives. London preferred to change the commander quietly. Poole was later given the post of head of the British military mission to General Anton Denikin in southern Russia.

The new commander

Ironside was 38. He stood about 193 centimetres tall, so his fellow officers ironically nicknamed him “Tiny”. He was a gunner and a veteran of the Boer War, and according to his biographers he knew several languages, including Russian. During the war he had served on staffs, among others with the 4th Canadian Division, and in the spring and summer of 1918 he had commanded an infantry brigade on the Western Front. After arriving at Archangel he toured the fronts and concluded that with such small forces there could be no question of reaching Vologda or Kotlas before winter. He ordered the troops to dig in and prepare for defence. The port of Archangel froze at the beginning of November, and until the spring the Allies would be cut off from reinforcements.

The scope of the command was also changed. Ironside now commanded only at Archangel, while General Charles Maynard was given an independent command in the Murmansk area. Ironside regarded his main task as the creation of a Russian army that might one day defend the north by itself. Mobilisation was proclaimed in October. Meanwhile on the Dvina the Bolsheviks had been attacking since 4 October, supported by the fire of river gunboats, in an offensive that lasted until mid-November. Ironside commanded at Archangel until the autumn of 1919, when the British evacuated northern Russia. When he was raised to the peerage in 1941, he took the title Ironside of Archangel.