William Sidney Graves was born on March 27, 1865, in Mount Calm, 24 miles northeast of Waco on old Highway 31. Before his death on February 27, 1940, he would experience several lifetimes’ worth of adventures, be called a revolutionary and a counter-revolutionary, see much of the world, and become the central figure in one of the most quixotic episodes in American history.
The son of a Southern Baptist minister, little is known of William’s early life. He enrolled in Baylor University in Independence from 1882-1884, followed by his brothers Daniel Elbert Graves (who later became a Baylor trustee) and Cicero Houston Graves, as well as sister Josephine Pearl Graves.
The Texas Collection’s copy of The Catalogue of the Officers and Students of Baylor University, Independence, Washington County, Texas, Thirty-Seventh year, From February 1881-February 1882 lists Graves as one of Baylor’s 126 students, notes that he’s from Osage and that he studied “L. M. E.”
Nearly 30 years later, at the request of one of his professors, Graves wrote a long letter to Baylor students, which was published in The Lariat on August 22, 1918. Since William left virtually no personal record, the letter, excerpted below, provides clues as to his unfailingly stoic personality, which sustained him in the tumultuous years to come, even as it glowingly touts both the university and the village of Independence in the most general of terms:
It is indeed a great pleasure for me to recall the many happy and profitable days spent at Independence. No one who was fortunate enough to be guided by such men as were in charge of Baylor University at Independence could have other than the most pleasant memories of the institution. Not only the personnel of the institution, but the many good people living in that section of the state, had a great and lasting influence on the lives of the young men who were there and under the charge of that magnificent man, Dr. Wm. Carey Crane. He was in every way so equipped that a young man could not help but feel proud that he had been one of his pupils.
Independence as a town and the personnel in charge of Baylor University were both suited for the high moral training of young men. All the boys were what can properly be called poor boys. No one was expected to do very much in the way of entertainment. Notwithstanding the simple and inexpensive amusements, we had splendid times; our pleasures were real and wholesome. We formed friendships which were lasting. After these many years, when I think of the young men with whom I was associated in Baylor University, I still have the greatest admiration for the methods employed in training these young men and all were substantial and real improvements.
My army career was suggested to my mind by the visit of [Lt.] Colonel [Charles Judson] Crane to his parents, Dr. and Mrs. Wm. Carey Crane. I was very much impressed with Lieutenant [Colonel] Crane’s appearance and immediately decided I would try to go to West Point. At that time very few young men desired the appointment, and I had no trouble in getting Governor [S.W.T.] Lanham, who represented in congress the district in which I lived, to give me the appointment.
May the good work of Baylor University be continuous in the future along the same lines it has in the past. – Wm. S. Graves, Major General
(However, one historian writes that Graves actually chose the military because he had been “outwitted” in buying and selling horses while in Gatesville and Independence.)
Graves arrived at the United States Military Academy in West Point in Fall of 1884, although as a freshman he caught pneumonia and missed the entire school year. It’s a testament to his resolve that Graves eventually graduated second in his class of 49 in June 1889. Somewhere along the way, Poet Margaret Royalty Edwards writes, Graves acquired the nickname of “Doc.”
He was assigned to different duty stations throughout the American West and included more than one skirmish with Native Americans, particularly the Apache.
By 1899, now a captain, Graves was transferred to the 20th Infantry division in the Philippine Islands, where the United States was involved in what would later be called the Spanish-American War. While serving with Gen. J.F. Bell in battles against “insurgents” in the Philippines, he was wounded in a skirmish and recognized for his “gallantry” under fire. A few years later, he was particularly commended for his leadership of American forces during various “disturbances” along the Mexican border.
Graves was also sent to San Francisco to be part of the reconstruction of that city following the devastating earthquake and fire of April 18, 1906.
By 1909, Graves had been promoted to Major and served on the General Staff of the 26th Infantry in Washington D.C. By 1916, he had been made a Lt. Col. in the Army Chief of Staff’s office in D.C.
One intriguing footnote: While World War I still raged in Europe, the now Col. Graves was sent on a “confidential mission to Great Britain, Belgium and France” from May 29 to July 23, 1917.
He next appears in the Army’s records as Major General Graves on June 27, 1918, at Camp Fremont, California, commanding the combat-ready 8th Division, with every expectation – according to military historian John M. House – of being sent with the Eighth as part of the United States’ final push in the war effort in Europe.
And this is where the story gets weird...
While in San Francisco, on the morning of August 2, Graves received an urgent “Eyes Only” communication directing him to immediately and discretely meet the U.S. Secretary of War Newton D. Baker at the Baltimore Hotel in Kansas City. He was instructed to tell no one of his assignment and if Baker was late, he was to await his arrival at the hotel. House writes that Graves just managed to snag the last coach on the noon train heading east and, because of multiple delays, spent two uncomfortable days on the train.
Baker, who had been inspecting military installations at Fort Leavenworth, had wanted to meet with Graves to brief him on a direct communication from President Woodrow Wilson. But the delays meant that Baker only had a few minutes in the hotel waiting room to quickly bring Graves up to speed on Wilson’s personally crafted but incredibly ambiguous seven-page aide-mémoire.
Baker shook Graves’ hand and said, “This contains the United States’ policy in Russia, which you are to follow. Watch your step. You will be walking on eggs loaded with dynamite.” Baker paused, then added, “If in the future you want to cuss anybody for sending you to Siberia, I am the man.” Baker then returned to Washington.
Historian Richard Goldhurst described Graves in September 1918 as a “tall, well-set fifty-three-year-old West Pointer” who “wore rimless glasses, affected a Pershing mustache and was a humorless man in a profession noted for humorless men.”
Graves had been recommended for the position by his boss, Chief of the United States General Staff Peyton March, who described him as “self-reliant, well-trained, intelligent” and as someone who was endowed with “common sense and a self-effacing loyalty.” According to Goldhurst, March and Baker soon learned that while Graves was “capable of rigorous restraint,” he also possessed a “moral indignation with a low boiling point.”
But as historian Clarence Manning points out, the State Department had not been notified of the assignment, Graves received no additional information from the war department, nor had he even been given the most cursory briefing about the situation in Siberia. Even America’s closest allies — England, Poland, and France, which had significant interest and thousands of troops in the region — were not notified of Wilson’s plans. Graves and his men were on their own.
The good soldier that he was, Graves immediately got to work. On the train back to San Francisco, he instructed his adjutant to choose soldiers from the 8th Division — but ensure that men from all 48 states were represented. If casualties were heavy, he didn’t want them all from the West Coast.
Graves had reason to be worried. Simply put, Russia was in chaos.
As World War I wound down, the Bolsheviks had toppled the Russia Czarist regime in a popular revolution following centuries of corruption, violence, famine, and repression. The departure of Russia from the war, however, left the Allies — Great Britain, France and others, along with the late-arriving United States — with a one-front war with Germany.
At the same time, in distant Siberia, an estimated 45,000 Czech (or Bohemian) prisoners of war from the now-defeated German ally Austro-Hungary Army had miraculously freed themselves, availed themselves of weapons from the late Czar’s vast armories, quickly organized themselves into an efficient fighting force, and began marching westward along the railroads toward Moscow.
The Bolsheviks (the Reds) controlled Moscow and most of western Russia and were gradually moving east toward Siberia, opposed by fragmented Czarist armies (the White Russians), and numerous heavily armed Russian and Chinese warlords who wanted Siberia for themselves.
This left the Allies in a dangerous conundrum. Who to support? Britain, France, Czechs, and Japan all initially chose, then supported Admiral Alexander Kolchak of the Imperial Russian Navy, whose armies fought against the Reds. But when Kolchak, the last, best hope of a unified front against the Bolsheviks was killed, the Czechs then turned to fight their way east along the Trans-Siberian Railway, hoping to get home.
The Japanese had their own motives — they were intent on annexing Russia’s easternmost ports and Maritime Provinces to finance their own burgeoning industrial (and military) mobilization.
It soon became clear that the better organized Reds would inevitably overwhelm the White Russians, who alienated most of the citizens in the vast territories to the east where they brutalized peasants and raped and murdered tens of thousands of innocent people.
Wilson’s quixotic, ambiguous response was to send a small force into Siberia, ostensibly to relieve the beleaguered Czechs, but also to keep Russia’s Maritimes out of the hands of the Japanese, even as the U.S. government played a waiting game to see who would emerge victorious in the civil war between Bolsheviks and White Russians.
Incidentally, the region called “Siberia” is one and half times larger than the entire United States at the time — and virtually all of it is located north of the contiguous lower 48 states, with winter temperatures reaching 40 below.
Yet, that’s what Wilson’s short aide-mémoire to Graves contained: Command a single reinforced infantry regiment without artillery or air support into Siberia, secure the Trans-Siberian Railroad and save the Czechs, the act of which would somehow unite the fragmented White Russian armies and topple the Bolshevik regime without angering the Japanese — and do it all with a tenuous supply chain back to the Philippines and without losing many men — while facing constant pushback from large segments of the American government that didn’t think the U.S. needed another war on the heels of World War I… all the while coping with various bandit warlords and the ferocious Siberian winters.
Graves, of course, was the consummate professional soldier, despite whatever private misgivings he had about the prospects for success of the newly dubbed American Expeditionary Force.
Only in his detailed military history of the incursion, America’s Siberian Adventure, 1918-1920, written 30 years after the fact to clear his name, does Graves include this mild rebuke in the final chapter, titled “The Debacle:”
“I must conclude that the reasons for intervention by the United States as given out on August 3, 1918, were not frank and complete…”
Regardless, Graves worked tirelessly to ensure that his newfound command of 7,000 troops (with an additional 2,000 in support capacities) had the resources they needed. He chose the understrength 27th (known as the Wolfhounds) and 31st (Polar Bears) Infantry Regiments for the mission.
After a two-week trip across the Pacific to Manila, Graves undertook another nine-day journey to the port city of Vladivostok which, with no functioning government, was in total chaos. The situation was made still more difficult by the fact that in addition to the city’s 100,000 residents, another 250,000 Russians had fled the violence in the countryside for refuge in Vladivostok.
“I have often thought it unfortunate that I did not know more of the conditions in Siberia than I did when I was pitch-forked into the melee at Vladivostok,” he ruefully wrote years later. “At other times, I have thought that ignorance was not only bliss in such a situation but was advisable.”
In fact, the only official representative Graves met in Vladivostok was Gen. Narimoto Oi of the Japanese Imperial Army, who told Graves on behalf of his own superior Gen. Kikuzo Otani: “I have the honor to inform you that … I am entrusted, unanimously, by the Allied Powers, with the command of their Armies in the Russian Territory of the Far East.”
Graves had received no such communication, unanimous or otherwise, from Washington. When he explained this to first Oi, then Otani, the matter was discreetly dropped. Otani, incidentally, spoke perfect English, and had been chosen as a military cadet to accompany U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant on his trip through Japan in 1879.
Unknown to Graves, the Japanese already had an estimated 72,000 troops in the Russian Maritimes and harbored dreams of an eastern empire with limitless natural resources.
Graves rushed his troops into Vladivostok, where massive depots and armories of Czarist military supplies were clearly at risk, then began the arduous process of posting them along the length of the Trans-Siberian Railway. The vastness of the territory they were asked to protect – although from whom, the soldiers were never quite sure – meant that most of the men were quartered in freight cars throughout the fearsome Russian winter.
Manning writes that Graves feverishly strove to understand the situation on the ground as his men defended the railway during constant, sometimes bloody skirmishes with groups of both Red and White soldiers, as well as Russian and Chinese criminal warlords. It quickly became apparent to the Americans that the real danger wasn’t from the Bolsheviks but from the perpetually warring, incredibly brutal factions that claimed to be aligned with Whites.
In fact, Graves soon believed that one such leader, Ataman of the Ussuri Cossacks was actually “criminally insane.” Manning notes that Ataman boasted of personally executing hundreds of suspected Bolsheviks and never using the same methods of torture or execution twice.
Both Graves’ headquarters in Vladivostok and his men on the front lines received constant streams of heart-breaking appeals and protests from “apparently harmless and abused peasants” about atrocities committed by the Whites and Cossacks. Graves quietly instructed his soldiers — whenever possible — to prevent abuse and outright murder.
Unfortunately, Graves’ insistence that he obey the details the aide-mémoire (and all subsequent communications from the White House) meant a policy of absolute non-involvement, which infuriated entire departments in the U.S. government that saw the Bolsheviks as the existential threat and demanded Graves and his small force aid the Whites exclusively — and militarily. Some large newspaper chains joined in the chorus of attacks on Graves, calling for his removal; some commentators even claimed that American soldiers in large numbers were actually joining the Bolshevik forces.
The British, who had chosen the Whites, strenuously objected both diplomatically and publicly to Graves’ policies on non-interference. Even the Japanese, who had their own agenda, argued that the Americans were pro-Bolshevik.
But Graves, who for all intents and purposes, was operating behind White lines, “hotly denied this and drew his own conclusions as to the motives in back of such a steady and virulent propaganda,” Manning writes. The General instead had seen first-hand the unrelenting atrocities and savage disregard for human life that the White commanders both tolerated and too-often encouraged.
And thus it went for two long, dangerous, mostly very, very cold years.
The Polar Bears and Wolverines, deployed in small detachments guarding isolated railroad stations throughout the entire length of the line, endured six months of night and constant harassment and assaults while keeping the 1,073-mile Trans-Siberian Railroad open.
One particularly harrowing story was told by an American soldier doing late-night guard duty at a remote station. One night he heard horrific howls coming from the impenetrable black forest surrounding him. Having been warned of wolves, he was shocked to see shadowy grey figures emerging from the woods and advancing towards the station. Just as he was about to open fire, the soldier saw that the figures were actually Cossack soldiers crawling towards him, their feet too frozen from frostbite in the sub-zero weather to support their bodies … and the sounds were their agonized cries of pain.
Finally, in spring 1920, when it was clear that the Reds had secured control of most of Russia and the AEF, by controlling the vast railroad lines had enabled the doughty Czechs to reach safety, Graves and his battered Wolverines and Polar Bears received orders to withdraw. The decision was aided by the fact that some of Wilson’s advisors had also become worried about the prospect of war with the victorious Bolsheviks, should the AEF remain on Russian soil much longer.
By this point, all sides were happy to see the Graves and American expeditionary force depart. Or, as John White wryly observes in his history of the affair, the ill-fated American intrusion into Russia was “characteristic of a confused and warring nation which hated neutrals only a little less than its enemies.”
The Polar Bears and Wolverines fought hundreds of small skirmishes throughout the intervention, usually outnumbered and always in a defensive posture. Total losses included 27 men killed in action, eight who died of wounds, 135 who died of disease and other causes, 52 wounded (primarily frostbite), and 50 desertions (mostly Russians who had enlisted in California who desired to return home).
The 27th Infantry, incidentally, did not return from Siberia empty-handed. They were accompanied to Manila by a Russian bear they had adopted as their mascot, perhaps as a tribute to Graves’ Baylor heritage. When the bear got too large, they donated it to the Manila Municipal Zoo.
Graves’ son, Capt. Sydney C. Graves, after serving with distinction in France, had accompanied his father throughout the Siberian campaign and returned with him as well. Sydney, also a West Point graduate, was given the Oak Leaf Cluster for bravery for his heroic actions outside Vladivostok where he fearlessly entered a zone swept by both Red and White machine gun fire to rescue six civilians trapped in a railroad station.
Graves received the Distinguished Service Medal for his service in Siberia and successfully completed assignments in the Philippines, New York, Chicago and the Panama Canal zone, though harsh criticism in the press and certain sectors of the government dogged him throughout his career, which doubtless kept him from more significant assignments and postings.
He retired from the Army in 1928 but retained a keen interest in Siberia and the Russian Maritimes. In 1932, he gave a lengthy interview to the United Press International warning of the “ominous” invasion by Japanese armies into Manchuria a year earlier — an action he said could lead to future escalation with Western powers.
According to Goldhurst and others, Graves was constantly “shadowed” by Director J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, which believed him to be a “potential subversive” for speaking candidly of what he had seen and experienced in Russia – but not publicly denouncing the Bolsheviks. When Graves was informed that FBI agents were present at a formal banquet he was addressing at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City, “the tough old Texan canceled the affair on the spot.”
He returned to his alma mater in Waco several times, where he was feted as “Baylor’s foremost military man,” and was honored by local businessmen at a luncheon at the Raleigh Hotel in late 1930.
When Graves’ book America’s Siberian Adventure, 1918-1920 was published by Jonathan Cape & Harrison Smith in 1931, he was challenged to a duel by Lt. Gen. Konstantin Sakharoff, who had been one of the last commanders of the White Russian forces. In his typical laconic fashion, Graves replied, “I can’t make any comment on the charge. The book speaks for itself.”
On a vacation with his wife in November 1932, Graves visited his hometown of Gatesville, where he spent his time “quietly with relatives and old friends.” While there, Graves gave the Fort Worth Star-Telegram an extensive interview on his experiences in Siberia, where he said he had grown “strangely attached” to the Russian people.
“I found them hospitable, kindly, generous and with no degree of viciousness whatsoever,” he said. “Most certainly they were never trying to destroy civilization. The population endured whatever had to be faced, with the same stoicism that marked their lives with the czars and under the domination of the priests…”.
At the invitation of President Pat Neff and Prof. Neil S. Foster, Graves also spoke in Baylor’s chapel services on November 21, 1932. When Graves, who was accompanied to Baylor by his brother Dan, was introduced by Neff at chapel, the entire student body and faculty rose and applauded.
The Waco News-Tribune’s coverage of Graves’ speech focused on his time in Russia:
Siberia is usually thought of as a cold, barren country but I found it one of the most beautiful I have ever seen. Not a mile of the soil in my travels over 3,750 miles west of Vladivostok was unfertile, while the general resources of the country cannot be surpassed by another other section of the world.
But he also took the time to advise students to make an “intensive study” of national and international affairs as a “preparation for intelligent citizenship and the assumption of the duties of civic leadership in the years ahead.” According to The News Tribune coverage of the speech, Graves ended by adding that “such preparation is more necessary now than it has ever been in this country, the speaker said, because of the embroilment of this country in international affairs, brought about by its varied interests on many sides of the globe.”
At their home in Shrewsbury, New Jersey, the couple received a steady stream of visitors, including soldiers who had served under Graves in Siberia, including one who wrote that he was the “darnedest, finest man that ever lived.”
William S. Graves, now aged 74, died of an apparent heart attack on February 26, 1940, at his home in Shrewsbury, New Jersey. His death was widely reported and for many his obituary was the first they knew of America’s unfortunate incursion into Russia. Graves was buried in Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors. A memorial service at the Presidio in San Francisco later that week drew hundreds, including top military officers and members of the diplomatic corps from several nations.
An editorial in The Austin American-Statesman a few days later decried the ill-planned, ill-advised Siberian mission that cost dozens of American lives to no obvious advantage, but had nothing but praise for Graves and his leadership:
Had this episode had in charge of it a lesser man, these losses no doubt would have been much greater. Even so, it was a dark chapter in American history, brightened only by the gallantry of the men and sagacity of their leader.
One final curious coincidence: Graves’ home in Shrewsbury was the very house where President Ulysses S. Grant, mentor of Gen. William Sidney Graves’ Japanese counterpart in Siberia, Gen. Otani, played poker every Friday night while the 18th president had lived in nearby Long Branch, New Jersey.
