Fifteen Flags ***Novel*** (About U.S. Intervention in Siberia During Bolshevik Revolution)

"Fifteen Flags" is a novel about the American Siberian Expeditionary Force of 1918-1920 which joined the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War. Given the task of protecting the Trans-Siberian Railroad, men of the American 27th and 31st Infantry were inevitably drawn into the bitter conflicts of an epic revolution. As White armies fought Red for control of Russia, the governments of fourteen nations tried to influence the outcome of the contest and Siberia disintegrated into a chaos of displaced people, roving partisan bands and contending military factions whose hope of victory or salvation focused on the railroad. Against this vast and exciting background Ric Hardman tells the story of Captain Hunkpapa Jack Carlisle, the Sioux who rediscovers his Indian heritage on the plains of Siberia and whose love affair with a Czech countess violates his sense of duty; of Maryenka Shulgin, a Russian candy seller who marries Sergeant Harry Austin and is torn from him by the senseless violence of the time; and of Lieutenant Ira Leveret, the civilian-soldier who is forced to define himself in the culminating action. In this fast-paced, densely populated novel the author has assembled a cast of people who lived at the time: General William Graves, commander of the American Siberian Expeditionary force; and Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak, leader of the White Forces. Dozens of fictional characters seem no less real. Major Subo Ikachi, a Japanese who aspires to understand the Western mentality; Colonel Robert Spaeth, commander of the 27th Infantry; Timokhin, the partisan leader and prophet, and, of course, Carlisle and Leverett, known to their men as the Sioux and the Jew. "Fifteen Flags" recreates a little-known episode in American military history with all its violence and confusion; it is a story of the conflicts of love and duty, of courage in an uncertain cause and of man's capacity to sacrifice and to survive.