Note 3 — Chapter III · THE TRANSATLANTIC FERRY

In the spring of 1919 the Transportation Service brought back to America from Archangel the American troops, about 4,500 in number, sent to northern Russia in September, 1918, to combat the Bolsheviki. It also, in late 1919 and early 1920, transported from Vladivostok to American Pacific ports about 10,000 American troops who had been sent to Siberia at different times to aid Czecho-Slovak, Japanese, and other Allied forces in operations against German and Austrian troops aiding the hostile native Russians in Siberia. In 1920 the Transportation Service, acting as an independent contractor, undertook to repatriate 30,000 of the Czecho-Slovak Siberian troops cut off from escape to the Balkans by the successes of the Bolsheviki in southern Russia. To the government of Czecho-Slovakia the Service named the price of $12,000,000 for this work, a price criticized in this country as too low. The last of the 30,000 Czecho-Slovaks were landed at Trieste about January 1, 1921, and the whole job had been carried through at a cost of approximately $8,000,000. The Service employed twelve U. S. transports for one or more trips in the movement of the Czech expedition, and two of them—the America and the President Grant, both ex-German liners—circumnavigated the globe in the process of the work, proceeding from New York to Vladivostok via Panama and thence to Trieste via the Indian Ocean and the Suez Canal, and from Trieste to New York via Gibraltar. The Czechs traveled under American military discipline with what that implies in cleanliness and sanitation, and therefore moved without the epidemics of disease that have usually accompanied the progress of Balkan forces.