WW1 1919 ‘North Russia’ Military Medal, British War Medal and Victory Medal Group of Three – Pte. H. Maycock, 13th Bn. Yorkshire Regiment (Green Howards)

A first world war 1919 ‘North Russia’ MM medal group of three awarded to 57783 Private Harry Maycock, 13th Bn. Yorkshire Regiment (Green Howards).

George V Military Medal named to 57783 Pte. H. Maycock. 13 / York. R.
British War Medal named to 57783 Pte. H. Maycock. York. R.
WW1 Victory Medal named to 57783 Pte. H. Maycock. York. R.

The medals are in good condition.

London Gazette: 13th August 1919 (MM)

Harry Maycock was born on 8th September 1894 at Clay Cross in Derbyshire, Maycock was the son of Joseph, a miner, and his wife Eliza.  The 1911 census recorded them living at 3 Centre Street, Holly Bank, Hemsworth.  Harry, then 16, was working as a pony driver in the pit while his 13-year-old brother was cleaning and sorting coal.

He enlisted at Pontefract on 11th December 1915 and after serving with the 3rd Bn was posted to the 13th Bn. Yorkshire regiment in 1918.  His Short Service Attestation form shows that he was then aged 21 years and 2 months, and lived at 103 Barnsley Road, Hemsworth.  He gave his occupation as miner.  Maycock will probably have joined 13th (Service) Bn, The Green Howards in the UK.  Having served in France and Flanders from 6th June 1916, the 13th Bn were reduced to a cadre after the German Spring Offensive and returned to the UK on 30th June 1918.  They were reconstituted in July 1918 to be sent to North Russia, where a mixed force including 13,100 British, 4,820 Americans, 2,350 French, 1,340 Italians, 1,280 Serbs and 11,770 White Russians would fight the Bolsheviks.  The purpose of the British campaign, which had begun in February 1918, had been to prevent British munitions, equipment and coal falling into Bolshevik hands, to maintain the Eastern front against Germany after the Russian collapse, to prevent Finland’s ports and equipment falling into German hands, and to strangle the Bolshevik menace at birth.  The armistice in November 1918 would negate many of these aims but, by then, the forces had been despatched and the Russian winter would render withdrawal impossible.

In the Green Howards’ Gazette, John Powell described the experience of their two battalions sent to Russia.
In July 1918, the 13th Green Howards began to reform at Aldershot, although no CO was appointed until February 1919.  Assembling at Dundee, the 6th and 13th Bns boarded the 10,000 ton ex-liner Traz-os-Montes. Trouble began at once.  A private soldier in the 6th Bn wrote that the vessel was a ship not fit for men to travel in… everywhere dirty… men have hardly room to move (yet officers live in absolute luxury).  A disgrace to the British Army and an insult to the men…  Some encouragement for men to fight for their country when quartered and treated like pigs.  Men disgusted.  Mutiny occurred on board… about 6pm.  About 300 men rushed the gangway and went ashore.  Cause of riot, officers allowed ashore, men not, insufficient food, bad treatment, quarters etc.  All men on board on decks cheering, shouting and booing.  Sight that will never be forgotten.  All men (of which I was one) played havoc with Brigadier-General, CO [of 6th Bn] and officers and sang ‘Tell me the old, old story’ in response to promises.  Things resumed about 8.30pm.  Sentries put all over the boat, wearing revolvers…

Another 6th Battalion man recorded his view of the same incident.
The officers were asking the men to play the game and be quiet, but they are told it is out turn now.  The Colonel draws his revolver and says the next man to go over the side of the ship will be fired upon, he is told that rifles will soon be fetched out and so he has to put his revolver away…  In another place the Brigadier-General has a crowd around him and the lads are just telling him what they think of him.

To prevent men disembarking, the ship was towed out from the shore and sailed in the early hours of 17th October.  Having developed a pronounced list and reached a point 40 miles north of the Shetland Islands, the ship burst a boiler.  A destroyer towed her into Swarbacks Minn, where the men fished over the side or went for route marches.  On 6th November she crept out of the Shetlands in very rough seas for Scotland for further repairs when the steering
gear broke and a man was lost overboard. Somehow they managed to reach the Orkneys and took refuge in Inganess Firth, where a gale blew up and ‘boat stations’ was called at night. 
Corporal Bradshaw remembers:
It was very difficult standing on deck, in consequence of the terrific wind and the ship’s list.  We had to stand in groups to hold one another up and keep one another warm… time dragged on and someone hit upon the splendid idea of improving our lot by singing.  Although in this terrible predicament, the lads sang ragtime with gusto, interspersed with some good old English home songs.

As dawn broke they were drifting nearer the cliffs of Marwick Head when the ship’s bottom struck the rocks; some of the men were landed on a beach but disaster was averted when the ship was eventually towed off. 

Next day, to everyone’s relief, they were towed into Kirkwall harbour.

Here the Green Howards celebrated news of the Armistice. They heard also that a District Court Martial had sentenced the leaders of the on-board mutiny at Dundee to between 14 days’ and 6 months’ detention apiece.  On 21th November they boarded Huntsend and landed at Murmansk six days later.

Disembarking at Murmansk, they were employed on working parties, guard duties, fatigues, train protection and helping the Sappers erect buildings.  On Christmas day a 6th Bn officer was found murdered and his Russian murderers were shot by firing squad ten days later.  One company of each battalion was designated a mobile company and trained in skiing and winter survival by Sir Ernest Shackleton and a team of polar experts.

At the end of January General Ironside, on the Dvina front below Archangel, asked the War Office for reinforcements.  It was no easy task.  The White Sea was frozen, there was no road from Soroka to Onegs [beyond which Ironside’s force would assume responsibility for transporting the troops], little overnight shelter and there was no fodder on the route for reindeer, the best form of transport.  Maynard was able to put 300 infantrymen and half the machine gun company on an ice-breaker making its last run to Archangel until the spring.  The rest of the men, numbering some 2,000, were first taken down to Soroka by train. Dog teams were harnessed to ambulance sledges.  Every available horse was requisitioned to carry supplies and the men set out across the bitter landscape, a white world where frozen trees burst with cracks like rifle shots.  They marched in parties of up to 300 on fixed stages and the whole movement was carefully controlled.  The men arrived at Onega with only a few cases of frostbite.  But it was no picnic and it was especially unfortunate that the only infantrymen Maynard had to send Ironside were those same men of the Yorkshire Regiment who had suffered such hardships on the voyage to Murmansk and who had then been employed in the back-breaking and soul-destroying work of labouring on their arrival there.   

In Feb 19 a CO, Lt-Col Henry Lavie, was finally appointed just as 237 Brigade (13th Yorkshires, 1st East Surreys and 253 MGC) moved to the Archangel area.  While 300 men of the 13th Bn travelled to Archangel by sea on board an ice breaker, the remainder, split up into three parties departing on consecutive days, began to leave on 4 Feb. Their War Diary records their movement, in various parties and by various routes and means of transport – including sleds drawn by reindeer – to Archangel and thence to Obozerskay and Seletskoe.

Here another short-lived but more serious mutiny took place. John Powell’s article continues the story:

…on the 22nd Ironside received a telegram from the Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Henry Lavie, with the stark news that his men refused to parade.  Lavie, an experienced and able 40-year-old regular officer from the Durham Light Infantry who had already commanded a York & Lancaster battalion in France, had taken over command only three weeks earlier, the day his men had set off on their epic journey by sleigh…

The leading elements of the battalion had reached the small town of Seletskoe by 22nd February and were billeted with the King’s, who were about to leave, as well as smaller units from the RAMC, the Army Service Corps and the Machine Gun Corps. Private Riley Rudd of the RAMC described what happened when the Yorkshires took over their billets:

“Saturday 22nd February – All have gone on strike – held meetings in the hut last night and passed resolutions that they must be withdrawn from Russia immediately. Others to the effect that censorship be removed from letters in order that the people in England may get to know the true state of affairs out here and that a cable be sent to L George demanding the immediate withdrawal of all troops in Russia.  They all positively decline to go up the line or to obey orders but are conducting themselves in an orderly manner.

Having arrested the two sergeants who acted as spokemen when he met them, Col Lavie seems to have succeeded in persuading the mutineers (mostly from the mobile ski company) to parade and march.  On 24th February Ironside visited the Bn and spoke to the men. Three days later he reported to the War Office:

Although the men were orderly, they were very obstinate and persistent.  I have (group omitted from secret telegram) 3 NCOs and 30 men for C[ourt] M[artial]… There appears to be questions troubling all men here whatever nationality.  It is largely lack of news from England and a feeling of isolation which upsets even the best of men.

Ironside later observed: I never wish to see the hang-dog look on the faces of both officers and men.  They were young and inexperienced and serving under very difficult circumstances in a political struggle of which they understood little.  It is to their credit that they did the rest of their service in Russia with the greatest energy and good will.

According to Lawrence James, two NCOs and thirty men from the Yorkshires, the ASC and the Machine Gun Corps were tried by court martial and several were sentenced to be shot.  The death sentences were commuted to terms of imprisonment by Ironside, who later attributed his clemency to ‘secret orders’ from King George V…

The two sergeants are reputed to have been sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment.   Many of the records of the courts martial – including theirs – seem not to have survived, but four that have record sentences of two years’ hard labour passed on a sergeant and three corporals of the 13th Bn.

The unrest was not confined to the Green Howards.  Other units, including the Royal Marines and a French ski unit, experienced similar troubles.  Meanwhile, within three weeks of the mutiny the 13th Bn were in action on the Dvina and at Shredmehrenga.  En route, according to Churchill’s Crusade:  along the road to the front [they] were covered by Russian machine guns at the request of the British commander.   

A few weeks later the War Office sent a reassuring cable to the GOC to be drawn to the attention of all troops.

Although you are cut off from your country by the ice, you are not forgotten.  Your safety and well-being, on the contrary, is one of the main anxieties of the War Office, and we are determined to do everything in our power to help you and bring you safely home.  You were sent to North Russia to help draw off the Germans from attacking our armies in France, and undoubtedly you helped last year to keep large numbers of German troops away from the battlefield and so enabled a decisive victory to be won.

Whatever may be the plan of action towards Russia decided on by the League of Nations, we intend to relieve you at the earliest possible moment, and either bring the whole force away or replace you by fresh men.  These reliefs are being prepared now and will come through the ice to your aid at the earliest moment when the ships can break through.  Meanwhile, your lives and your chance of again seeing your home and friends and your fellow countrymen, who are looking forward to giving you a hearty welcome, depend absolutely upon your determination and dogged British fighting qualities.  All eyes are upon you now, and you represent the British army which has fought and won and which is watching you confidently and earnestly.  You will be back home in time to see this year’s harvest in, if you continue to display that undaunted British spirit which has so often got us through in spite of heavy odds and great hardships.  Only a few more months of resolute and faithful service against this ferocious enemy and your task will have been discharged.  Carry on like Britons, fighting for dear life and dearer honour, and set an example in these difficult circumstances to the troops of every other country.  Reinforcement and relief are on the way.  We send you this personal message with the most heartfelt wishes for your speedy, safe and honourable return.

The Green Howards’ history continues the story of their two battalions in North Russia.  

Russian mud, which made much of the country all but impassable when the thaw arrived, was to receive the bones of many Green Howards during the coming months. To halt the steady Bolshevik pressure from the south towards Archangel involved holding the single railway line and the rivers, the sole arteries of communication with the rest of Russia. So it was that fighting devolved upon small forces. In this way, the Green Howards fought for the next three months, often in company detachments and switched from one area to another as the threat changed. More often than not they would be supporting and bolstering White Russian units which Ironside was equipping and training in the hope that the anti-Bolshevik forces might rally and form a stable government in North Russia, so allowing the British and Allied troops to leave. In defending and attacking small isolated posts, six officers of the 6th Battalion and thirty-six other ranks are mentioned as having been killed or wounded. The 13th was more fortunate, losing only three men. The Communists were not the only enemy.  When summer came mosquitoes swarmed, bringing malaria as well as making life almost unbearable for those operating in the forests.

Maycock’s MM was gazetted on 13th Aug 1919:

His Majesty the King has been graciously pleased to approve of the award of the Military Medal for bravery in the Field to the under-mentioned Warrant Officers, Non-Commissioned Officers and Men:-  Archangel Command

Yorkshire Regiment

 57783 Pte. Maycock, H., 13th Bn. (Hemsworth)

The Gazette published 59 MMs to British soldiers (and 30 or so to Canadian troops) serving in the Archangel Command.  21 of these were to men of the Green Howards – 6 of the 6th Bn and 15 of the 13th.

Harry Maycock married Esther J Clark in Hemsworth in the autumn of 1937.  In 1939 he was listed as a coal miner (hewer – heavy work) living at 103 Barnsley Road, Hemsworth with his parents and wife.  Esther was listed as an ARP Warden.

In 1961 his will was listed in the London Gazette:  MAYCOCK, Harry, 103 Barnsley Road, Hemsworth, Retired Collier. 10th June 1961.  Midland Bank Executor and Trustee Company Limited, 33 Park Row, Leeds 1.  The National Probate Calendar records his death in Headlands Hospital, Pontefract; his estate totalled £5,546 12s 1d.

Maycock’s Military Medal was one of 220 awarded for operations in the Archangel area 1918-19.