Slavic-British Legion

• the battalion (then regiment) of Captain Dyer.
• captain burke battalion
• artillery division (commander - lieutenant colonel G. A. Rozhdestvensky)
• Belomorsky Horse-Mountain Detachment (Regiment) Commander - Captain A. A. Bers
• Slavic-British Air Corps (Slavo-British Air Corps, SBAC; commander - Colonel A. A. Kazakov )
• icebreaker "Bonaventure" (before enlisting in the British fleet called Rusanov)

The decision to form the Slavic-British Legion was made on June 14, 1918. The Legion was to become the basis of the White Guard forces in the North in the summer of 1918 , despite the fact that the first point of the contract with the new recruits was British non-interference in the internal affairs of Russia ^[1] . The Legion began to be created immediately after the landing of British expeditionary forces in the North of Russia . At the initiative of the commander of the British Expeditionary Force in the North of Russia, Edmund Ironside .

The first formed unit of the legion was the battalion, named after Captain Dyer, the first commander of this unit, who died in battle with the Bolsheviks. Soon a second battalion was created, named after its commander - Captain Burke. Soldiers serving in the Legion did not have the right to continue serving in the British Army and were associated with the British Command with special contracts. People of different nationalities served in the legion: Russians , Canadians , Poles , Finns , Lithuanians , Magyars , Irish , Czechs , Estonians .

Soon, at the suggestion of the English colonel Mound, under the leadership of the famous Russian aviation officer A. A. Kazakov , who received the rank of lieutenant of the Royal Air Force, the Slavic-British Aviation Corps was formed. On August 15, 1918, Arkhangelsk Kazakov formed the 1st Slavic-British Air Force. The detachment was based at Obozerskaya station 123 miles south of Arkhangelsk. The squad included both Russian and British pilots (in particular, the De Haviland division DH.9 under the command of Captain Robinson). On September 11, 1918 , the 2nd Slavic-British aviation detachment was formed under the command of Captain Belousovich.

All soldiers of the Slavic-British Legion wore the English uniform (with the exception of the coat of arms on the cap). Russian officers who entered the service of the legion bore the distinctive signs of British officers. By order of the commander of the British Expeditionary Force, General Ironside, all members of the Legion received British food rations and were provided with weapons and ammunition. An order insignia for service in the legion was created, which looked like an adam head with swords on a white metal cross covered with red enamel . Several British and Russian officers were seconded to the legion. Ordinary soldiers of the Legion received a salary of 100 rubles per month. The assistant commander of the legion was an experienced officer captain V.N. Gomolitsky. The legion belonged to the officer infantry school on Bakaritsa, the artillery school and some Russian units (the White Sea Horse-Mountain Detachment under the command of Captain A. A. Bers, the artillery division of Lieutenant Colonel G. A. Rozhdestvensky).

Discipline and morale in the legion were an order of magnitude lower than in the parallel-formed company of the French Foreign Legion , despite this, the legion was initially replenished with a significant number of Russian officers who did not want to serve in the semi-decomposed parts of the White Guard Northern Army or were dissatisfied with the nature of the new government. These officers often went to the legion as ordinary soldiers (but in the winter of 1918-1919 a large number of officers transferred to the Russian units). Be that as it may, but on a voluntary basis, the legion was replenished extremely slowly, and therefore up to a thousand people were forcibly mobilized into the legion.

In July 1919 , a pro-Bolshevik revolt broke out in parts of the legion. The soldiers rioted, arrested and shot their officers. The rebel legionnaires tried to cross the front line and break through to the units of the Red Army, but were surrounded by soldiers of the 3rd Northern Regiment. Some of the rebels surrendered without any resistance, some managed to break out of the encirclement and flee. By order of the British command, the captured instigators of the riot were shot without trial. The uprising very soon became the property of the British press, and subsequently the incident was voiced at parliamentary hearings in London . The Legion ceased to exist with the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force in September 1919. Legion officials who did not want to remain in Russia were evacuated by the Allied forces to Europe .

• Goncharenko O. G. White movement. Trekking from the Pacific Don to the Pacific Ocean M., 2007 Veche Publishing House LLC ISBN 978-5-9533-1988-1
• S. Volkov The tragedy of Russian officers
• Marushevsky V.V. Bely in Arkhangelsk
• M. Khairulin, V. Kondratyev Military aircraft of the deceased empire. Civil War Aviation
• John Kelly Memoirs
• SV Volkov White movement in Russia: organizational structure

• NORTH REGION