BOLOS AND BARISHYNAS (Archangel 1919)

The unusual title masks a barely remembered episode in British naval and military history. The Sadleir-Jackson Brigade and the Altham Flotilla were part of Britain’s ‘Forlorn Hope’ forces – sent to Russia in a bid to reverse the 1917 Bolshevik revolution under the command of General Ironside, later Chief of the Imperial General Staff. The scene of the action was the port of Archangel and the mighty River Drina in Russia’s far north. The time: the summer of 1919 in the wake of the Great War. Divided and gven scanty outside help, the White Russian forces were no match for the disciplined, driven ‘Reds’ and the Allied intervention was short-lived. As the Roll of Honour that concludes the book underlines, the venture, failure that it was, was not without a high human cost. Illustrated with photogaphs and accompanied by appendices listing officers served etc.