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.
Rupert Wieloch 