Too many options? Treat your friends and family to their favourite stores with a Bayshore Shopping Centre gift card, redeemable at participating retailers throughout the centre. Click below to purchase yours today!Purchase Here
Coles Frozen Mandate: America's Secret War in Siberia, 1918–1920 at Bayshore Shopping Centre in Ottawa, ON
*Product information may vary - to confirm product availability, pricing, shipping and return information please contact Coles
In August 1918, eight thousand American soldiers arrived at the Russian port of Vladivostok with orders that simultaneously authorised their deployment and prohibited almost everything a soldier normally does. They were there to guard a railway, protect some supplies, and assist a Czech army that had already rescued itself. They were not to take sides in the Russian civil war raging around them. They were not to interfere in Russian internal affairs. They were not to do what every one of their Allied partners was doing.
For nineteen months, their commander — Major General William S. Graves, a Missouri-bred officer of absolute professional integrity — followed those orders with a literal-minded fidelity that enraged the British, frustrated the French, alarmed the Japanese, and produced the only morally defensible American military conduct in one of the most savage theatres of the twentieth century. Around him, Cossack warlords financed by Japan massacred thousands of civilians. A White Russian admiral struggled and failed to win a war his own forces were losing with their terror. The Czech Legion fought its way across a continent to a country that had not yet existed when it set out.
Frozen Mandate is the full, unsparing narrative of America's forgotten war in Siberia — the first act of the Cold War, conducted without a declaration, concluded without victory, and buried without honest reckoning. It is a story about what happens when a great power deploys its soldiers with inadequate orders into an impossible situation, and about the rare officer who holds to his mandate when everyone around him demands he abandon it.
In August 1918, eight thousand American soldiers arrived at the Russian port of Vladivostok with orders that simultaneously authorised their deployment and prohibited almost everything a soldier normally does. They were there to guard a railway, protect some supplies, and assist a Czech army that had already rescued itself. They were not to take sides in the Russian civil war raging around them. They were not to interfere in Russian internal affairs. They were not to do what every one of their Allied partners was doing.
For nineteen months, their commander — Major General William S. Graves, a Missouri-bred officer of absolute professional integrity — followed those orders with a literal-minded fidelity that enraged the British, frustrated the French, alarmed the Japanese, and produced the only morally defensible American military conduct in one of the most savage theatres of the twentieth century. Around him, Cossack warlords financed by Japan massacred thousands of civilians. A White Russian admiral struggled and failed to win a war his own forces were losing with their terror. The Czech Legion fought its way across a continent to a country that had not yet existed when it set out.
Frozen Mandate is the full, unsparing narrative of America's forgotten war in Siberia — the first act of the Cold War, conducted without a declaration, concluded without victory, and buried without honest reckoning. It is a story about what happens when a great power deploys its soldiers with inadequate orders into an impossible situation, and about the rare officer who holds to his mandate when everyone around him demands he abandon it.
Coles is renowned for its outstanding customer service and great selection of books. Along with the vast array of magazines, stationary, audio-books, children's literature, fiction, non-fiction and reference books, you can find accessories to make your reading experience more pleasurable. We can recommend the very best in reading today. We will help you search our titles for exactly what you need, and if we do not have it in stock, we will order it for you.
