PBA Galleries

6 pp. 5½x3" original pale yellow wrappers.

Roster of a light-hearted social group of the first American officers and soldiers sent to Siberia two months before the end of World War I, showing their hometown addresses. While most were drafted civilians, one notable military professional on the list was Lt. Col. Philip Faymonville, a Stanford and West Point graduate who was chief Ordnance officer of AEF Siberia; 15 years later, he would become the first US Military Attache to Stalin’s Russia. With two original photographs: One, captioned on verso “The Sacred Order of Siberian Snow Dogs/Woof! Woof!” 3½x5½ inches; and a photo of 11 American officers and the Danish Consul, named on verso, and captioned “The Staff, Taken, Dec. 1918, in front of Officers’ Quarters, War Prison Camp, Krasnaya Retchka, Siberia”. These were undoubtedly some of the first of the 8,000 American officers and men who would eventually be sent to Vladivostok, Siberia between August 1918 and April 1920, ostensibly to  protect military railroads and supplies during the raging Russian civil war between Bolshevik Reds and the Czarist Whites. One special unit comprised officers of the 29th Infantry shown in the second photograph who took charge of the Krasnaya Retchka POW camp where 2000 captured Germans, most of officer rank, were awaiting repatriation to their homeland. Both imprints and photos of the US forces in Siberia are rare.