Review: The Polar Bear Expedition: The Heroes of America's Forgotten Invasion of Russia, 1918-1919

The Polar Bear Expedition: The Heroes of America's Forgotten Invasion of Russia, 1918-1919 by James Carl Nelson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Interesting history of Americans fighting with their allies in Russia against the Bolsheviks through and beyond the WWI Armistice. And doing this in the frigid North of Russia. The book provides a combination of perspectives: the strategic perspective that shows how the fighting was perceived in Russia and by the military leaders of the Allies, and the personal perspective of the soldiers. Strangely, the most memorable part for me was that the strategic perspective wasn’t that memorable. This fighting didn’t seem to have much purpose, and had little historic impact. Many of the military leaders seemed to be, at best average and at worst, drunks. Also memorable were the individual stories of the American men, many killed, most all dealing with frigid cold. I’ll remember this as the “forty below” book – you knew you would hear of a temperature that low and of military action or hunkering down without shelter in that weather, time and again. I appreciated the ending, where the author continued the story to explain what happened to the remaining Allied soldiers and the continuing Bolshevik revolution when the Americans went home. I listened on audio. I found that it was difficult to follow the many place names without a map handy, and I would suggest an understanding of a battle map, or at least a map of the cities, towns, and rivers in the area of Archangel.

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