American Expeditionary Force, Siberia
미국 시베리아 원정군
The United States Army force sent to the Russian Far East in 1918–1920. Commanded by Major General William S. Graves, it numbered 7,950 officers and men (8,763 by another count). President Wilson’s stated aims were to rescue the Czechoslovak Legion and to protect the military supplies and rolling stock the United States had sent to Russia; the force guarded sections of the Trans-Siberian Railway until its last soldiers left on 1 April 1920.
In depth
Wilson’s reasons were as much diplomatic as military: to rescue the 40,000 men of the Czechoslovak Legion held up along the Trans-Siberian Railroad, to protect the large stocks of military supplies and rolling stock the United States had sent to Russia, and to "steady any efforts at self-government or self defense" by the Russians themselves. He also wanted to keep Cossack marauders and the Japanese military from exploiting the chaos along the railway and in the resource-rich regions it crossed. The force drew on the US Army’s 27th and 31st Infantry Regiments and volunteers from the 8th Division. The first 3,000 men landed at Vladivostok between 15 and 21 August 1918; Graves arrived only on 4 September. Under the inter-Allied railway agreement the Americans guarded the line from Vladivostok to Ussuriysk and a section near Verkhneudinsk, and a Russian Railway Service Corps of American personnel was formed to run the railway.
Graves held that the mission was to protect American property and help the Legion leave, not to fight the Bolsheviks. He proclaimed "non-interference in Russia’s internal affairs" and "complete neutrality", and clashed repeatedly with British, French and Japanese commanders who wanted a more active intervention. In the American zone the troops left the Red partisans alone and allowed meetings of the Suchan coal miners; Russian-language sources say a Red force of several thousand grew up in Primorye as a result, and that the pro-Japanese ataman Semyonov accused Graves of aiding the Reds. Conditions for the soldiers were miserable: fuel, ammunition and food ran short and water-cooled machine guns froze. In 19 months 189 men died. American sources judge that by every measure the intervention failed: the Eastern Front was not restored, the supplies were not saved, no non-Communist government took root, and even the Legion’s extrication owed little to Graves’s small force. Army Chief of Staff Peyton C. March called the Russian expeditions "a military crime".