William S. Graves

United States state institutions 1865–1940 ○ Natural death

General who led the American Expeditionary Force in Siberia in 1918–1920 and kept it strictly neutral in the Russian Civil War

Born in Texas in 1865, the son of a Baptist minister, he graduated from West Point in 1889, fought in the Philippine–American War and served on the Army General Staff. In 1918 he was given the American Expeditionary Force in Siberia on the direct orders of President Wilson and reached Vladivostok in September. Ordered to stay strictly apolitical, he concentrated on keeping the railway running and on the evacuation of the Czechoslovak Legion, and refused pressure to help Kolchak’s Whites. He condemned the killing and robbery committed by the soldiers of Semyonov and Kalmykov and suspected Japan of planning to annex eastern Siberia. The last American soldiers left on 1 April 1920. He retired in 1928, wrote the memoir America’s Siberian Adventure, and died in New Jersey in 1940.

Also known as: William Sidney Graves