Month: September 2020

A fantastic audience joined the Zoom talk hosted by the Royal Green Jacket museum this week. All the regiments represented by the four famous military museums in Winchester played an important part in the British Military Mission to Siberia. The senior officer was Colonel Sir Edward Grogan Bt DSO of the Rifle Brigade, who attended Winchester College and was awarded a CMG in the Siberian Honours. One of his officers was William Gerhardie, who wrote so exquisitly that Evelyn Waugh exclaimed “I have talent, but he has genius!”. Gerhardie described the “courteous” Grogan as “meticulous to absurdity, but kind and very nervous – a great enigma”.

Grogan handed command of the Training School at Vladivostok to Lieutenant Colonel Henry Carter MC of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. Carter was the second British officer to die in Siberia in February 1919 and when he succumbed to the Spanish Flu, Major Thomas Baring of the Rifle Brigade stepped into his shoes and was awarded an OBE for his part in the campaign.

One of the young officers working in Vladivostok was Captain Henry Wellesley who had won three Military Crosses leading his Ghurkas in Mesopotamia, before deploying to Russia in 1918.

Probably, the most famous son of Winchester in Siberia was Colonel Robert Johnson who was later knighted for running the Royal Mint. He was President of the Oxford Union and commanded the 9th Hampshires from when they were raised in 1911 until they were part of the Anglo-Russian Brigade at Ekaterinburg. In April 1919, he uttered the famous words: “We hope to march into Moscow…Hants and Russian Hants together.”

Johnson was awarded a CBE as was Major John Fraser Neilson of the 10th Hussars, another Winchester Regiment. Neilson ran the Military Intelligence operation in Omsk and was accused by the French contingent of inspiring the coup that brought Admiral Kolchak to power one week after the Armistice.

So many extraordinary characters served in Siberia during the two years of the British Military Mission that ended with the last British Army PoWs of World War One.

In 1920 the House of Commons rose on Monday 16th August and did not return until nine weeks later (three weeks longer than the normal summer recess). The shadow of Russia again dominated the final day’s agenda. Tetchy questions covered the Government’s policies on the blockade of the Baltic and Black Sea, the international support for General Wrangel in southern Russia, the Japanese control of Eastern Siberia, the independence of Poland and the Soviet Trade Delegation.

The Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, reported that the naval mechanics in Baku were now living in a private house. He was less clear about the British prisoners-of-war in Moscow and said “I am not sure” when asked by the interventionist, Noel Billing, whether they had been “liberated”.

The five hour Motion for Adjournment was particularly bitter. The Government sought agreement to call the House back at two days notice if the Polish-Russian situation worsened, but the future Labour leader John Clynes attacked the Government’s “supply of munitions” to Poland and threatened a General Strike if Britain intervened against the Soviet Union. He suggested that if the Secretary of State for War, Winston Churchill, could not “accept the peace policy as announced by the Prime Minister, I fail to see how he can continue to hold office in a Government whose policy he so constantly contradicts…”

The nine-week adjournment allowed the Government to negotiate with Lenin’s envoys for a prisoner exchange and a trade deal. In its Cabinet Papers of September 1920, the National Archives holds a note sent by the Foreign Secretary, Lord Curzon to Lev Kamenev detailing the conditions for any treaty and emphasizing the need to release all the British prisoners in Russia. Meanwhile, as the situation in Poland eased, the Russian Trade Committee, headed by Sir Hubert Llewellyn, proposed an amendment to the secret Draft Trade Agreement with the Russian Soviet Government.

During the Anglo-Russian prisoner exchange negotiations in March 1920, Lenin’s envoy inserted a clause which allowed the Soviet Government to keep hold of anyone who had committed grave offences against the state. Chief among these were a group of ex-pats in the Committee for the Relief of the British Colony in Petrograd. This wealthy group of British subjects helped those less fortunate who were affected by the 1917 revolutions, but also provided funds for the MI6 network of agents, built up by Major John Scale and Captain Francis Cromie RN.

The leader of the committee was George Gibson, who worked for United Shipping. He was imprisoned following the successful British raid on the Soviet fleet at Kronstadt by the Royal Navy’s coastal motor boats on 18th August 1919. Another prominent member was Charles James Maxwell who ran John Hubbard & Co’s cotton mill. He was arrested with his niece and and cousin Miss MacPherson (his wife who died in 1907 was a member of the famous MacPherson family, who provided the first president of the Russian Football Federation).

When the Foreign Secretary, Lord Curzon, heard that these “grave offenders” were still in their Moscow jail, he described the situation as “scandalous” and made sure their release was made a condition of the Prime Minister’s trade deal.

Mrs Clara Sheridan was the widow of Captain William Sheridan, great grandson of the famous playwright, Richard Brinsley Sheridan.  Her husband was killed leading a Rifle Brigade assault at the Battle of Loos on 25th September 1915, five days after the birth of his son.  She became a renowned sculptress through her busts of Herbert Asquith and Winston Churchill, but her political sympathies lay with the Bolshevik cause, rather than the British government.

Clara was entranced by the head of the Soviet trade delegation, Lev Kamenev, when she met him in London and accepted his invitation to visit Moscow. Arriving after the Second World Congress of the Communist international on 11th September 1920, she was given privileged access to Russia’s magnificent art collections and completed busts of many Bolshevik leaders, including Lenin and Trotsky.

She did not visit Brian Horrocks and the other British soldiers in prison, who were appalled when they heard that she had sculpted a bust of the murderous head of the Secret Police, Felix Dzerzhinsky. They were even more shocked when they read her obsequious description of him: “one can see martyrdom crystallized in his eyes” and her feelings of “real sadness that I may never see him again” because they had witnessed the abject misery forced on millions of ordinary Russians by Dzerzhinsky’s Red Terror.

France was if anything closer to Imperial Russia than the United Kingdom during the First World War and continued to support the fight against the Bolsheviks after the British Army withdrew in summer 1920.

In Moscow, Madame Charpentier ran the French Red Cross mission after all the other countries evacuated their teams.  Accompanied by her two daughters, she brought food twice a week to the British prisoners-of-war in Ivanovsky and these supplements prevented Brian Horrocks and his compatriots from starving.  Potatoes were most welcome, but the real treat was when they were given an egg, or a portion of sugar.  They were also grateful for the occasional bone for Teddy their dog.

When the British prisoners were moved to Andronovsky, they met the son and brother of Madame Charpentier, who were languishing in a nearby cell.   This gallant family was released in October and when they left Russia, Mrs Margueritte Harrison took over the job of bringing food to the foreigners in the Russian prisons, until she too was arrested and sent to Novinsky Prison for Women.