Northwest History. International Diplomacy & Politics. Russia (U.S.S.R.)

• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 1919
• Subjects: North Russain front; Long fight of a Serbian Battalion against the Bolshevik forces and Russian allies; battle at Murmansk; Northwest; Pacific > History > 20th century; United States > International Diplomacy & Politics > 20th century; Gora; Murmansk; Pacific; karelia*; karelian; Lapland
• Online Access: http://content.libraries.wsu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/clipping/id/85023

Serbian Battalion of Veterans, Weary From Battlefields of 1914, Still is Fighting; in Russia Now Serbian Battalion of Veterans, Weary From Battlefields of 1914, "Still Is Fighting; in Russia. Now Medvejia, Gora, Russian, Lapland, July 25.- (correspondence of the Associated Press.)- A Serbian battalion who has been fighting under one flag or another since August, 1914, still is fighting up here in Karelian Russia. The role of those Serbs on the North Russian front has been similar to that of Czecho-Slovaks in Serbia and reads like an unfinished Iliad. They are big, strapping, well disciplined soldiers, five years and several thousand miles from home, and, just now, when they go into action against the bolsheviki, along with their Russian, British, French or, until recently, American allies, they display the same dash and battle enthusiasm that characterized the Serbs in the early days of the war. One way or another, these Serbians reached Odessa, where they were formed into a battalion for service against the central powers. They want to get somewhere to fight Austria so they started for Archangel, hoping eventually to join the allies in France. The Serbs seized a locomotive and sufficient box cars to carry the bat- alion and after four months' journey arrived at Murmansk. The allies landing at Murmansk in the spring of 1918 found the Serbian battalion ready to fight against the bolsheviki and, for the first few months of the campaign, the Serbs formed the backbone of the force opposing the Reds. They speedily wrested several hundred miles if Murmansk railway from the Communists. Throughout the subsequent fighting on this front Serbs have distinguished themselves, and now they are awaiting the day when they can return to the new greater Serbia, which includes Bosnia and other territories where they lived when impressed into the Austrian army.