With Memorial Day Weekend fast approaching, Balladeer’s Blog does a seasonal look at a neglected aspect of American military history. Spare some thoughts today for the men who perished in this action.
AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES IN RUSSIA – The battles fought by these Americans carried over from the end of World War One into the early stages of the Russian Civil War. The Allied Nations of the First World War were fighting alongside the White (anti-Bolshevik) Russian Forces for a time.
Like any of my fellow World War One geeks I could drone on about it for hours, but I’ll try to keep this brief and on-point. The Red (Communist) Russians had taken Russia out of the war by signing a treaty with Germany. This had left German forces free to reinforce their armies on the Western Front, had jeopardized a large amount of Allied supplies which were already in the Russian port city of Archangel (Arkangelsk in Russian) on the White Sea AND jeopardized the safety of the Czech Legion along the Trans-Siberian Railroad.
With the World War still raging, the other Allied Nations prevailed on President Woodrow Wilson to divert some American forces intended for the Western Front to Archangel and beyond, joining a combined army of Brits, Poles and White Russians. The fighting in North Russia dragged on past the end of the global conflict in November of 1918 into June of 1919. The fighting in Eastern Russia dragged on until January of 1920. In other words, if the Americans sent to Russia had instead gone to their original destination of France, their combat operations would have ended on November 11th, rather than continuing for more than a year of further bloodshed and loss of limbs from frostbite. All the more reason to remember the often-neglected troops who served there.
On July 17th, 1918, American General John J “Black Jack” Pershing ordered 5,000 soldiers drawn from the 339th Infantry Regiment, the 1st Battalion of the 310th Engineers and assorted other units from the 85th Division to re-train for new battle conditions and head for Archangel. Those Americans became known as the Polar Bear Expedition. Meanwhile, 8,000 American soldiers were sent to Vladivostok, Russia as the American Expeditionary Force in Siberia. Continue reading
LANCELOT LINK: SECRET CHIMP (1970-1971) – From Sandler-Burns-Marmer Productions came this fun children’s show that presented trained chimps in a spoof of secret agent stories. Dialogue was dubbed in over the usual twitchy mouth movements of chimpanzees to attempt the illusion that the “performers” were speaking. 
Lancelot Link was a secret agent for A.P.E. (Agency to Prevent Evil), the heroic spies who opposed the agents of C.H.U.M.P. (Criminal Headquarters for Underworld Master Plan). Lance’s cover was that he was a guitarist and singer for a bubblegum pop band called the Evolution Revolution. His fellow agent Mata Hairi was also in the band along with other chimps, and novelty songs credited to the group were released in the real world. 
MR. GHIM’S DREAM (1878) – This anonymous work is set in the autumn of 1877. Mr. Ghim is a poor American who dreams of ending the “current” unemployment crisis through a massive construction project that will employ thousands. Ghim tries to enlist some of the most well-known tycoons of his day – William Vanderbilt, Robert Roosevelt, Jay Gould and others – in his scheme. 
TWO – Aeneas and his companions, the survivors of the Fall of Troy, are still lingering in Carthage. Queen Dido, not knowing that the Roman State which Aeneas will spawn will also be the future destroyer of Carthage, remains deeply in love with Aeneas. 
Playing into (or maybe establishing) the enduring cliche about people in a burgeoning romance being driven closer by needing relief from a downpour, Dido and Aeneas start to feel even friskier. Juno manipulates things further by having nature and animal life in the cave behave in ways that parallel a wedding ceremony. 
FROM AUGUST 31st, 2017 – Balladeer’s Blog is on record as despising both of the rival gangs of white-collar criminals called Democrats and Republicans. Mother Jones once again did some posthumous communicating with me about our de facto Third Party President Donald Trump, who is squaring off against both those sets of villains like Clint Eastwood in A Fistful of Dollars. 
It is below. But first a photo of LYNN YAEGER, the Fashion Fascist who tried ridiculing First Lady Melania Trump (Mother Jones told me Melania is our greatest First Lady since Jackie Kennedy). This fashion writer (honestly) made fun of Melania for wearing high heels as she entered Air Force One with her husband – United States President Donald Trump – to visit Houston in the wake of Hurricane Harvey. 
Barack Obama truly is garbage. Not only did this squirrely, wormy little man wait until he was DONE with his golfing vacation before visiting flood-ravaged Louisiana but when the delicate-minded child was pressed a little about his callous attitude toward the human suffering he was ignoring all that time this alleged human being ACTUALLY, REALLY said “I’m out in five months.” 
ASTONISHING TALES Vol 1 #1 (Aug 1970) 
Dr. Doom Title: Unto You is Born … the Doomsman 
Recent movie news about the latest screen adaptation of The Odyssey happened to make me reflect on the lack of a big screen version of the poet Virgil’s epic The Aeneid. For newbies to the tale, I’m posting this very brief synopsis of the story – the first half a mythic voyage like Jason and the Argonauts and The Odyssey and the second half a tale of warfare as Aeneas leads his fellow survivors of fallen Troy in their mythic conquest of what would become Rome. 
SOLO (1980) – Written by Jack Higgins. Solo is not exactly one of my favorite espionage novels but it is definitely my favorite by Jack Higgins. It’s the story of efforts to catch an international assassin code-named the Cretan Lover. Luckily that ludicrous codename is often shortened to just “The Cretan” throughout the novel. I’ll use the same review format that I used for my look at The Top Seven Robert Ludlum Novels. 
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