ABSTRACT
On November 14, the War Cabinet had approved the War Office and Foreign Office decision to remain in North Russia. In fact, all hope of a peaceful withdrawal from Archangel had vanished on Armistice Day, when heavy fighting broke out on the Dvina river front. Though driving snow soon brought matters to a close, General Ironside then had to cope with the Russian winter as well. At the front line, he found the French troops exhausted, and the local Russians uninterested; the Allies, they thought, had some ‘private quarrel’ with the Bolsheviks. There was a terrible silence in the forests, broken only by the cracking of the branches in the intense cold: 87 degrees of frost was recorded one night. ‘It was all very weird’, wrote Ironside.
