Carey’s book is based on a diary he kept while serving with the Allied Intervention Forces in Russia in 1918-1919. He supplements his personal account with excerpts from letters he sent home and that were sent to him from home and with quotes from home front newspaper articles detailing the exploits of his unit while in Russia. The details of his experience while serving in a foreign country are both timeless and atypical. Timeless in the sense that his descriptions of his day-to-day experiences in a combat theater mirror the daily experiences of men in combat everywhere and atypical as far as the geographical area in which his unit served and the circumstances under which they operated.

His book provides the interview-with-the-man-in-the-street view of the intervention effort and is an excellent companion to general histories of the intervention such as Midnight War by Goldhurst and America’s Secret War Against Bolshevism by Foglesong. In addition to being a companion to general works on the fighting his book acts as a prologue to Red Scare by Murray – the history of the post-World War I anti-Bolshevik movement and witch hunt in the United States. ( )

Fascinating first-hand account of the Allied incursion into Russia during the First World War. A lost piece of history that the U.S wanted to forget and the Soviet Union never would forget. ( )