The Kiwi who invaded Russia
Private Thomas ‘Peter’ Smith, of Waimate, was the ultimate wartime adventurer, and a two-time winner of military medals. He was also part of a unique group of New Zealanders who invaded Russia, writes Matt McIlraith.
The Allied invasion of northern Russia in 1918-19 provided a little-known post-script to World War I. So much so that two modern American presidents had to be ‘‘educated’’ about it by their Soviet counterparts after having falsely claimed during the Cold War that Americans and Russians had never directly fought each other on the battlefield.
While Americans were in the thick of the conflict in the Russian Arctic, so too was an old boy of Waimate High School, whose story surely must rate as one of the most remarkable chapters in New Zealand military history.
He was, in colloquial terms, a ratbag. He was also listed by the New Zealand Defence Force as a deserter.
But Private Thomas ‘‘Peter’’ Smith was the ultimate war-time adventurer, and a two-time winner of military medals. He was also part of a unique group of New Zealanders who invaded Russia.
Smith was among the Commonwealth soldiers who answered the call of the British Secretary State for War in May 1919 to form the North Russia Relief force. The mission’s purpose was to help expedite the withdrawal of all British and Allied troops, who were allegedly under threat as they sought to end hostilities with communist forces.
A year earlier, the Allies had occupied Russian soil in an unsuccessful attempt to intervene in the country’s civil war and keep the former tsar’s disintegrating army in the fight against Germany.
Yet with World War 1 ending later in 1918, and the original expeditionary force’s withdrawal route via the Baltic Sea in no imminent danger, many believed the instigator of the additional deployment, the ardent anticommunist Winston Churchill, had loftier ambitions for the men, all of whom were volunteers.
If the reinforced multinational Allied force and its anti-communist allies could successfully defeat the local Bolshevik forces, allowing the troops of the north to link up with other ‘‘white’’ Russian armies fighting in the central part of the country, there might still be hope that Lenin’s fledgling Soviet government could be deposed.
In 1919, a war-weary British public had no desire for further military ‘‘adventure’’ to try to suffocate the communist movement in a stillborn state.
Britain was still full of demobilising soldiers, though, which provided a fertile recruiting ground for the relief force, especially as the pay rate on offer far exceeded the troops’ earlier earnings on the Western Front.
The enrolment ‘‘process’’, which eventually produced a well-organised force of 8000 men, took on many forms and involved all sorts of characters.
One of those was the Napierborn Maurice Newbould, a captain in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force (NZEF), who was believed to have been an active recruiter, targeting Commonwealth troops reluctant to get on the boat home.
Wounded at Gallipoli, Newbould was not dissimilar to Smith in that he appeared to enjoy the military way of life, which led him into many different combat theatres.
After recovering from his wounds in Turkey, he served on the Western Front and then in Russia, before heading to Mexico where he got tangled up in another civil war.
Although Newbould’s archival trail ends there, he is believed to have died in Central America.
The commissioned officer’s rank had gained him access to the demobilisation camps from which he recruited many of his volunteers. He would make a more personal pitch to those who showed an interest, often over a few ales at one of London’s overcrowded postwar public houses.
For some, who had arrived in England after coming halfway around the world only to find the Armistice already signed, North Russia offered the only opportunity for some action.
Smith, who had previously served in the infantry, and then as a gunner, had seen plenty of action by the time he signed up for the expedition.
Smith first saw action in 1902 as a 19-year-old trooper fighting the rebellious Dutch settlers in Britain’s prized African colony, earning a medal and the right to a wartime pension for his 160 days of service.
After being discharged, Smith worked as a carpenter, and later a bushman, before signing up again when war was declared in 1914. This time, he joined the main body of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force that was bound for Egypt ahead of the illfated Turkish campaign. Although the exact circumstances of Smith’s ‘‘departure’’ from the NZEF, 252 days later, are not known, records suggest he had found his way to Melbourne by the time he resurfaced with the Australian Imperial Forces using the name ‘‘Peter’’ Smith, in September 1915.
His enlistment with the AIF came four months after he had absconded from its Kiwi counterpart while among the Anzac troops not already at Gallipoli, who were being held in reserve at camps near Cairo.
As well as using his middle name for Australian service records, Smith altered his date of birth by two years and changed his religious citation to try to prevent details of his prior desertion being discovered.
The official records of New Zealand servicemen serving overseas in World War I, especially in the Middle East, noted that alcoholism and women were ‘‘the main preoccupations of many of the men, and there were associated problems, particularly with venereal disease from the local prostitutes’’. Infection rates among both Australian and New Zealand soldiers rose and the first batch of men to be so afflicted were treated severely.
‘‘Along with other sick men and general miscreants including those who had refused inoculation, they were sent home in disgrace, a dishonourable discharge,’’ the records state.
Desertion, to avoid the humiliation of dismissal, was not uncommon and appears likely in Smith’s case, given he later spent 24 days in an English hospital being treated for VD in 1916.
Absconding carried with it a grave risk, which underlines why Smith went to great lengths to conceal aspects of his identity from the Australians when he reenlisted.
While capital punishment did not feature in Australian military regulations, it was available as the ultimate disciplinary measure for the Kiwis. A total of 28 New Zealand soldiers were sentenced to death in World War I, five of whom were ultimately executed.
Those shot, each of them volunteers, were posthumously pardoned in 2000 through the Pardon for Soldiers of the Great War Act.
By the time of his discharge from the AIF after three years and 10 months of service, Smith had nine entries on his conduct sheet, with his war-time infractions collectively having resulted in the total forfeiture of 119 days’ pay.
Errant though he was, Smith was undoubtedly brave. He was also not easily deterred, as evidenced by the fact that he was invalided to hospital at least three times on the battlefield yet returned to the front every time.
One of the injuries was sustained at the Somme. He was hospitalised two months after being involved in the daring rescue under rifle and machine gun fire of two wounded comrades, who had become entwined in the barbed wire of no man’s land while trying to return following a raid on the German trenches.
Smith was one of four members of his company to receive the Military Medal, alongside a commendation from the AIF’s commander, Brigadier-General John Monash.
When not causing trouble for the Germans, he was often his own worst enemy, with his various misdemeanours including being absent without leave, late on parade, using abusive language to a non-commissioned officer, and signing false statements.
Smith ended the war in purgatory, being the subject of a successful court-martial just
12 days before the Armistice, which saw him spend the first 23 days of the peace in detention.
By the time he was discharged from the AIF in May 1919, Smith had already signed up for the Russian relief campaign, having joined the 201st Company, Machine Gun Corps.
The company sailed from Southampton in early July, arriving at Arkhangelsk eight days later.
After being withdrawn from Russia in September 1919, Smith remained in the British armed forces for two years, before calling it quits and, in doing so, ending arguably the most colourful individual military career in New Zealand history.
He remained in England until 1923 and got married during this time, before returning to New Zealand accompanied by his English wife, Rose.
Settling in Auckland and later Sydney, Smith worked as a drainer during the post-war economic slump.
The couple was back in Auckland when Rose died of acute lobar pneumonia, aged 41, in 1934.
Smith returned to Sydney with his 10-year-old son the following year and remained in Australia until his death, aged 72, in 1954.
As well as using his middle name for Australian service records, Smith altered his date of birth by two years and changed his religious citation to try to prevent details of his prior desertion being discovered.