- Thursday, April 2, 2020
- 3:00 PM–4:00 PM
- Covenant Fine Arts Recital Hall
The Polar Bear Expedition 1918-1919, The Forgotten Invasion of Russia
An erased moment in history, 5,000 U.S. soldiers, nicknamed “The Polar Bears,” found themselves hundreds of miles north of Moscow in desperate, bloody combat against the newly formed Soviet Union’s Red Army in the winter of 1919. Temperatures plummeted to sixty below zero. Their guns and their flesh froze. The Bolsheviks, camouflaged in white, advanced in waves across the snow like ghosts. The Polar Bears, hailing largely from Michigan, heroically waged a courageous campaign in the brutal, frigid subarctic of northern Russia for almost a year. And yet they are all but unknown today. Join us as Paula Vanderhoven, Mary Kool Van Harn and Bob Yonker will share details of this expedition. Special emphasis will be placed on the men from the families of the presenters who are all from West Michigan.
