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Churchill'S Abandoned Prisoners - The British Soldiers Deceived in the Russian Civil War (Hardcover)
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Churchill'S Abandoned Prisoners - The British Soldiers Deceived in the Russian Civil War (Hardcover)
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List price R629
Loot Price R498
Discovery Miles 4 980
You Save R131 (21%)
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
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Winner of the Britain at War Book of the Month Award for May 2019.
Churchill's Abandoned Prisoners tells the previously suppressed
story of fifteen British prisoners captured during the Russian
civil war. The Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 seriously compromised
the Allied war effort. That threat rather than an ideological wish
to defeat the Bolsheviks was the driving force behind the formation
of an Allied force including British, American, French, Czech,
Italian, Greek and Japanese troops, who were stationed to locations
across Russia to suppor t the anti-Bolsheviks (the ‘White
Russians’). But war-weariness and equivocation about getting
involved in the Civil War led the Allied powers to dispatch a
sufficient number of troops to maintain a show of interest in
Russia's fate, but not enough to give the 'Whites' a real chance of
victory. Caught up in these events is Emmerson MacMillan, an
American engineer who through loyalty to his Scottish roots joins
the British army in 1918. Emmerson travels to England, where he
trains with the Inns of Court Officer Training Corps and volunteers
for service in the Far East. The book explains how the bitter
fighting ebbed and flowed along the Trans-Siberian Railway for
eighteen months, until Trotsky’s Red Army prevailed. It includes
the exploits of the only two British battalions to serve in the
East, the “Diehards” and “Tigers”. An important chapter
describes the fractious relationships between the Allies, together
with the unenviable dilemmas faced by the commander of the American
Expeditionary Force and the humanitarian work of the Red Cross. The
focus turns to the deeds of Emmerson and the other soldiers in the
select British group, who are ordered to “remain to the last”
and organise the evacuation of refugees from Omsk in November 1919.
After saving thousands of lives, they leave on the last train out
of the city before it is seized by the Bolsheviks. Their mad dash
for freedom in temperatures below forty degrees centigrade ends
abruptly, when they are captured in Krasnoyarsk. Abandoned without
communications or mail, they endure a fearful detention with two of
them succumbing to typhus. The deserted group become an
embarrassment to the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George and the War
Secretary, Winston Churchill after a secret agreement fails to
secure the release of the British prisoners. Deceived in Irkutsk,
they are sent 3,500 miles to Moscow and imprisoned in notorious
jails. After a traumatic incarceration, they are eventually
released, having survived against all the odds. The spectre of
armed conflict between Russia and the West has dramatically
increased with points of tension stretching from the Arctic to
Aleppo, while cyber warfare and election interference further
increase pressure. As a new Cold War hots up it is ever-more
important to understand the origins of the modern relationship
between Russia and the West. The events described in this book are
not only a stirring tale of courage and adventure but also only
lift the lid on an episode that did much to sow distrust and
precipitate events in World War Two and today.
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