|
The Battle of Bolshie Ozerki was a major engagement fought during the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War. Beginning on March 31, 1919, a force of British, American, Polish, and White Russian troops engaged several Red Army partisan regiments at the village of Bolshie Ozerki. Although the initial Allied attacks were repelled, the outnumbered Allies managed to repel the Soviet flanking attempts that followed and the Red Army was later ordered to withdraw. The battle was the last engagement of the intervention to involve British forces. It was also one of the last significant engagements of the intervention to involve American forces, though they successfully defended their camp from a Russian attack at Romanovka composed of forces that greatly outnumbered them two months later and inflicted hundreds of casualties during the Suchan Valley Campaign the following month. Allied forces began to withdraw rapidly from northern Russia shortly thereafter.〔 ==Background== Bolshie Ozerki was a small village situated between the port city of Onega and an important Allied position at Obozerskaya Station, along the Arkhangelsk-Vologda railroad. Because the port of the main Allied base at Arkhangelsk froze every winter, reinforcements had to be brought overland to the front line from the port of Murmansk, which did not freeze. The road linking Murmansk to Obozerskaya ran through Bolshie Ozerki, so when the British 6th Battalion, Yorkshire Regiment ("Green Howards") was dispatched to the front, the Red Army decided to seize the village in order to prevent the British column from reaching Obozerskaya. After destroying the British column and taking control of the railroad, the Red Army would then proceed by clearing the way to Arkhangelsk, which would then be taken.〔〔 Several skirmishes occurred at Bolshie Ozerki immediately before the main battle, which began on March 31. The first occurred on March 17, when a Red Army ski detachment led by Osip Palkin reconnoitered the village's defenses. Stealthily, the Reds captured two sentries and learned the precise locations of the Allied positions. Armed with this information, Commander Petr A. Solodukhin's brigade of 600 to 800 men attacked and overwhelmed between 80 and 160 French and White Russian troops garrisoning the village, capturing the outpost intact. On the following day the Allies launched an abortive counterattack. The 6th Red Army commander, Major General Aleksandr Samoilo, ordered his men to cease all offensive operations on the same day, citing shortages of warm gear and other necessities, the tenuous hold Commander Solodukhin (who had not captured every building) had on the village, and reports of troops in other sectors being frozen to death or frostbitten by bitter -30 °C (-22 °F) temperatures. Samoilo issued orders for the 6th Army to resume offensive operations on March 25, but the Red Army commander-in-chief, Colonel Ioakim I. Vatsetis, countermanded it "because of the severe frost."〔 On March 23, about 320 British soldiers from the 6th Battalion, Yorkshire Regiment〔http://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/polar/86526.0001〕 and 70 American troops from Company H, 339th Infantry Regiment launched coordinated attacks on Bolshie Ozerki from positions west of the village. Waist-deep snow, which prevented the Allies from charging, and heavy enemy machine gun fire repulsed the attack. Simultaneously, 300 White Russians and between 40 and 80 British soldiers assaulted the eastern approaches along the road, also foundering in the face of effective enemy withering fire. Company E, 339th Infantry attempted to flank the enemy defenses by skirting through the forest north of the road. However, the movement required the unit to cover three miles of snow-covered forest in four hours time. Exhausted from already marching ten miles and hampered by awkward Shackleton boots (canvas and leather footwear with smooth soles and low heels designed by the Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, they were extremely slippery on ice or packed snow and generally considered inferior to the natives' felt boots by the Allies), the Americans failed to traverse the forest in time and were ordered to return. The Allies lost about 75 men as result of the two attacks. General Edmund Ironside, who had personally taken command in the sector, ordered an artillery bombardment of Bolshie Ozerki. With the village mostly destroyed by March 25, General Ironside returned to Arkhangelsk.〔 Despite the weather, both sides continued to bring up reinforcements. The Allies constructed a series of wooden blockhouses, log barricades, and troop shelters at a site about 4 miles east of the village on the road to Obozerskaya, which was 12 miles further east. By the end of March, the Allies had brought up all of their available artillery from their railroad, mostly consisting of 75 mm guns manned by White Russians. They also concentrated all available troops from Arkhangelsk and other sectors, including Companies E, I, and M of the 339th Infantry Regiment, three White Russian companies (three infantry, one machine gun), two Yorkshire platoons, and one invaluable section from the US 310th Engineers. The Allied force, totaling less than 2,000 soldiers, faced an estimated 7,000 Red Army troops drawn from the 2nd Moscow Regiment, the 9th Saratov Regiment, and a Kamyshin brigade, possibly from Commander Fyodor Kuznetsov's Kamyshinsk Division. A Soviet artillery battery of 4.2-inch guns had been hauled into position over 37 miles at the cost of uncounted dead horses.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Battle of Bolshie Ozerki」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|