Archangel: The American War with Russia

A raw, bitter memoir from the frozen edge of empire. John Cudahy was a young lieutenant in the 339th Infantry Regiment, sent in 1918 to the godforsaken Arctic port of Archangel to fight the Red Army on behalf of powers who would soon become America's enemies. The mission was a lie: not to bring democracy to Russia, but to redirect German divisions from the Western Front. Thousands of Americans froze, starved, and died in the darkness of a Russian winter for a cause their own commander knew was doomed. Cudahy writes without sentimentality about the horror, the mind-numbing cold, the political cowardice that sent boys to die for nothing. Yet he also captures something unexpected: the fierce, wordless bond between men who knew their lives had been expendable. This is not a patriotic war story. It is an eyewitness account from a man who watched his country make a mistake it would never formally acknowledge, and who spent the rest of his life trying to understand why.