In Troy’s White Chapel Memorial Park Cemetery, next to I-75, a striking white marble polar bear monument stands out among the cemetery’s predominantly flat headstones. In 1918, as World War I neared its end, the Bolsheviks’ rise in Russia and their peace treaty with Germany alarmed the Allies. Concerned about German or Bolshevik seizure of Allied munitions in Archangel, Britain and France requested U.S. intervention. The U.S. deployed the “Polar Bears,” the American North Russian Expeditionary Forces to Archangel. About 75 percent of the 5,500 Americans who made up the North Russian Expeditionary Forces were from Michigan; of those, a majority were from Detroit.
Upon arrival, they found the munitions gone and were ordered to fight Soviet forces along the Vologda Railroad. Despite the November 11th armistice ending WWI, they continued fighting through the winter. Public outcry in Michigan eventually led to their extraction, delayed until June by the frozen harbor. In 1929, veterans secretly returned to Russia to recover fallen soldiers. The trip was sponsored by the federal government and the State of Michigan. The delegates recovered eighty-six bodies. Fifty-six of these were buried in 1930, in White Chapel Memorial Park Cemetery and the monument was erected to honor them.
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