Siberia, 1918
Where the Wolfhounds Earned Their Name
In the summer of 1918, while the Great War still burned in France, the 27th Infantry shipped not east but north — to Vladivostok, on the frozen edge of the Russian Far East, as part of the Allied Expeditionary Force sent into Siberia. Their orders were to help guard the Trans-Siberian Railroad and the vast stores of Allied materiel along it. What they found was a three-sided chaos: Bolshevik partisans in the hills, the remnants of Admiral Kolchak’s collapsing White armies, and a pair of predatory Cossack warlords — Kalmykov and Semenov — who terrorized the countryside under Japanese protection.
A Thousand Miles in Pursuit
Sent to scout the rail line, the regiment marched more than a thousand miles through brutal cold, pressing a retreating Bolshevik force all the way to the capture of Blagoveschensk. The Russians who watched these Americans hunt — tirelessly, refusing to break contact — gave them the name they have carried ever since: the Wolfhounds.
Kraeffski, June 1919
At a rail station near Kraeffski, a handful of Charlie Company men were surrounded at dawn by more than a hundred and fifty Bolshevik irregulars. When a relief platoon under Lt. Wilson Rich was in turn attacked, a single Wolfhound cook, Edward Evans of F Company, found himself alone a hundred yards forward of the line. From the roof of a small shack he poured fire into the enemy flank and accounted for nine of the attackers by himself, helping break the assault. Two other Wolfhounds, captured on patrol, were held twenty days and returned in a prisoner exchange — said to be the only Americans taken by the Bolsheviks in Siberia who lived to tell of it.
Uspenka, 12 June 1919
Ordered to find and destroy the band’s headquarters at Uspenka, the Wolfhounds advanced under fire across open ground. When a nine-man patrol was pinned, Lt. Fairfax Channing led the charge on the enemy trenches and reached the fortified line alone before he could be supported. Pinned in turn, he was pulled to safety by Lt. D. M. Ladd, and the following day Channing led six squads back into Uspenka, clearing it with automatic-rifle fire. Channing and Lt. Christian Gross were awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for the action.
Posolskaya, January 1920 — Sergeant Carl Robbins
The last and hardest fight came at the village of Posolskaya. A Cossack armored train named the Destroyer — cannon and Mongol troops behind steel plate — halted in the night beside a 38-man detachment of M Company under Lt. Paul Kendall. Warned by a friend that the train had not stopped for the scenery, Sgt. Carl Robbins passed the word and the Wolfhounds slept away from their boxcars. After midnight the Destroyer opened fire, blasting the empty cars to splinters — and the Wolfhounds swarmed out of the dark, surrounding the train with rifle fire and grenades. Finding they could do little against the armor, Robbins dashed to the locomotive, vaulted into the cab, and threw a grenade into the firebox, killing the engineer and himself. The crippled engine died a few miles out of town, and the Mongols telegraphed their surrender. It was the last battle of the American Expeditionary Force in Siberia. Sgt. Carl Robbins received the Distinguished Service Cross posthumously; Lt. Kendall also received the DSC and went on to command the 88th Division in the Second World War.
The Last Out of the World War
As Kolchak’s White Army collapsed and refugees streamed east, the Americans were ordered home. The Wolfhounds withdrew to Vladivostok in January 1920 and sailed for Manila — having been, by most reckonings, the last American troops out of the First World War, in 1920. They carried home battle streamers, a clutch of Distinguished Service Crosses and the French Médaille de Guerre — and a name, given by their enemies, that they would never set down.
Adapted from the regimental history and the 27th Infantry’s Siberian records.