Today, 100 years ago, as the world was celebrating the end of the Great War, 36 French officers and 493 French private soldiers were getting ready to travel the world for a new mission.
The end goal was to reach Vladivostok in Siberia and join the Allied Army that was already onsite to help the White Russian Army. They were sent there to create an Airforce that would support the Czechoslovak Legions, initially recruited by Imperial Russia, and that were fighting the Bolsheviks since early 1918. All these men were Air Force, experienced tank and armoured motorcar fighters that had volunteered for the mission.
As it was impossible for them to reach Siberia through Bolshevik Russia, they had to travel West crossing the Atlantic Ocean, then the United States of America and finally the Pacific Ocean.
Among them was my great-grandfather Robert Meyer, an infantry soldier and a mechanic & electrician in civil life, that had survived a mission in Macedonia, the Battle of The Somme, the Battle of Verdun, two injuries and Malaria.
During the trip, he wrote a detailed description of his journey in a diary that I have inherited. With him, were Captain François Tulasne and Lieutenant Joseph Kessel both experienced pilots and well decorated soldiers, that respectively documented their experience in a diary and in a book. 100 years later today until 10 December, I will follow their steps and share their experience, joy, fear and all these little moments that have made this journey so special to them…

On 11 November 1918, before embarking the American military ship “ The President Grant ” in Brest, France, Robert Meyer and his fellow soldiers were allowed by their commanding officer to go and celebrate the end of the war with the locals:

” Brest is celebrating. Great patriotic venture! We fraternise with the English and Americans. Very good welcome from the Brest population!”

In the meantime, Joseph Kessel, a young man in his early twenties from Russian origins was starting to have second thoughts about the mission he just had volunteered for:

” More than one of us started to regret this, at that moment. The War was over. It was in Paris that we should have been. The exaltation was starting and we were going to miserable icy shores, with planes unknown to us, and fellow soldiers that were unknown to one another.”

The following morning, the troops embarked the ship that would leave the port of Brest later that day, surrounded by five destroyers. They would spend twelve days on the Atlantic Ocean to reach New York City.