“A most adventuresome journey which…must certainly be regarded as unique even in the annals of their much travelled Corps” is how Alastair Grant’s grandfather, Tom Jameson, summed up his detachment’s participation in the Russian civil war in 1919.

A century on, Alastair Grant has given a vivid description of an extraordinary episode.
24 year-old Captain Jameson found himself leading a small party of volunteer Marines fighting and winning naval battles against the Bolsheviks, not on the sea, but on the river Kama in the middle of Russia; not on ships, but on converted paddle-steamers, tugboats and barges, using artillery pieces which had been lugged five thousand miles from Vladivostok.

Grant describes Jameson’s struggles to integrate Russian soldiers with his own disciplined force and to hold the line against Trotsky’s Red Army as Admiral Kolchak’s White forces fell apart and retreated in chaos. In the face of daunting obstacles, Jameson managed to extricate his beleaguered detachment and shepherd them across Siberia and homewards from Vladivostok. Having survived battle against superior forces, immense difficulties of communications and supply, temperatures ranging through 70 degrees Centigrade, and the vicious mosquitoes of the Urals summer, Jameson laconically ended his report on the affair that he “considered the threat of Typhus and Cholera the most to be feared”.

Alastair Grant has painstakingly pieced together this unlikely story from Jameson’s and other diaries, official archives, personal accounts and histories of the period, supplemented by his own visit to the places where the detachment fought and his perspective as an officer of the Royal Marines. His book is a remarkable tribute to his grandfather.

Sir Roderic Lyne (former Ambassador to Russia)

The Russian Revolution and subsequent civil war have received a lot of attention in recent years, including an authoritative volume by the doyen of British military historians, Anthony Beevor. To some extent this might be attributable to centennial echoes and certainly events in Ukraine – the crucible of the civil war – has attracted public and specialist interest.

For Beevor, it’s all about the heroic scale of Russian physical geography and historical tragedy. Alastair Grant in his Royal Marines in Russia 1919 weaves a more intimate tale, not least because it recounts the improbable adventures of his grandfather, Captain (later Major General) Tom Jameson, from Russia’s Pacific coast to its European river system. It’s a familial story in two senses in that not only does it connect a bloodline but also a regimental family, as both Grant and Jameson served as Royal Marines.

Grant sets an historical context but his achievement lies in recounting the detail - some mundane, some terrifying – of a small group of men led by the remarkably resourceful Jameson as they make their small mark on events of Tolstoyan scale. It’s a story that deserves its own record and in Grant it has found an author who has blended personal investment and historical objectivity in perfect balance.

Rob Fry