Themes

Conflict and Change

• Introduction

• In Focus: 1900

• In Focus: World War One

• In Focus: Interwar

  • Surface Fleet

  • Submarines

  • Royal Marines

  • Fleet Air Arm

• In Focus: World War Two

• In Focus: Post War Conflict

• In Focus: Cold War Climate

• In Focus: Falklands and Beyond

• Special Exhibition: Falklands 25

Learning

• How To: Understand Propaganda

• Propaganda Image Galleries

• Education Project: Sea With Your Own Eyes

Land service

Article highlights

• Sea soldiers on land again

• Russia 1918 -1919

• Shanghai 1927

Russia 1918 – 1919

Trouble with Communist Russia threatened peace in Europe. Britain came in to the conflict on the side of the White, Imperialist Russians in an attempt to topple the Communist 'Red Army'.

The Corps had already been involved in many other actions throughout the country during the war against the Germans, Finns and Bolsheviks.

In 1919 the Royal Marine Field Force was sent to the Murmansk and Archangel areas of North West Russia, in order to defend Allied ports from Bolshevik attack.

Royal Marines in North Russia c.1919. Informal group photograph of Royal Marines from the North Russia Field Force posed with skis and snowshoes. (RMM)

By January 1919 the Force, consisting of a field battery and a company and machine gun section, formed one of seven mobile columns.

The troops were equipped with Arctic gear and Westinghouse American rifles, which were considered more suitable for use in the temperatures often below - 40ºc than the standard issue Lee Enfield SMLE.

The Force never had more than 360 marines in the field with four 12-pdr and six Lewis guns for artillery protection.

In mid January the Field Force of 200 marines learned how to ski and fight in a snowy terrain including learning how to fire their rifles on the move or to take more accurate aim when their ski sticks made a bipod.

The troops lived like Eskimos during snow warfare exercises and platoon drill was carried out on skis. Before they could operate as Ski Troops, however, over half the force called away to garrison Kem.

This Russian Field Force was an early precursor to the role of the Royal Marines in their NATO capacity on the Northern Flank.

Nearly 40 years would pass before the Marines again trained as ski-troops, but the Field force had shown how adaptable a Marine could be in Arctic cold.

In August 1919 the Corps sent the 6th Battalion Royal Marines to cover the evacuation of Murmansk.

The company arrived in the Lake Onega region, but following rising unrest within the troops there was mutiny due to the conditions the unfair system of demobilisation.

At court martial proceedings the judge passed down 13 death sentences to the mutineers and ordered others to five years in prison.

Following a review the sentences were reduced in most cases. The Battalion remained in Russia until the British withdrawal in September 1919.