Polar Bear Expedition - Allied Intervention

Allied Intervention

The Polar Bear Expedition was sent to Russia by the U.S. President Woodrow Wilson in response to requests from the governments of Great Britain and France to join the Allied Intervention in North Russia (also known as the North Russia Campaign). The British and French had three objectives for this intervention:

1. preventing Allied war material stockpiles in Archangelsk (originally intended for the recently collapsed Eastern Front) from falling into German or Bolshevik hands
2. mounting an offensive to rescue the Czech Legion, which was stranded along the Trans-Siberian Railroad and
3. resurrecting the Eastern Front by defeating the Red Army with the assistance of the Czech Legion and an expanded anti-Bolshevik force drawn from the local citizenry - and in the process stopping the spread of communism and the Bolshevik cause in Russia.

On July 14, 1918, the U.S. Army's 85th Division left their training camp at Camp Custer, Michigan for the Western Front in France. Three days later, President Wilson agreed to a limited participation by American troops in the Allied Intervention with the stipulation that they would only be used for guarding the stockpiled war material. When U.S. Army General John J. Pershing received the directive from President Wilson, he changed the orders for the 339th Infantry Regiment, along with the First Battalion of the 310th Engineers plus a few other ancillary units from the 85th Division. Instead of heading for France, these units were trained and re-outfitted in England with Russian guns and then sent to North Russia, where they arrived in Arkhangelsk on September 4, 1918 and were placed under British command.

• See American Expeditionary Force Siberia for information on the 7,950 American soldiers and officers who were sent to Vladivostok, Russia at the same time.