When Joseph Adelard Brusseau was born in Tibury, Canada on December 7, 1895, his farmer father, Peter, was 44 and his mother, Marie Suphranie (Sophie), was 38. He was the second youngest of 16 children. Two older brothers died in Ontario, both at the age of nine, a year apart, 1898 and 1899.
Toward the end of the 1890’s when Adelard was under 5, the family traveled to Vermont and then Massachusetts, working in the cotton mills. How could a poor farmer feed 14 children in harsh Ontario! The large family had several marriages in the U.S but tragedy occurred in 1902 when brother James was struck by a train. Shortly thereafter, the family returned to the closest port to Ontario–Detroit. Joseph Adelard’s immigration year is noted as 1911, most probably the year he started working.
As a young man, Joseph Adelard found work as an electrician with the McLeary Harmon Co. in Detroit per his WWI draft card. Earnest McLeary along with Mr. Colquitt, formed the McCleary-Colquitt Electric Company in 1898. Mr. Colquitt withdrew from the company in 1905 and the McCleary-Harmon Company was founded. McLeary was a member of the first NECA Code Committee. Joseph A was very lucky to have the work.
Joseph Adelard joined the 339th Regiment at its inception. The Regiment was constituted 0n August 5 1917 in the U.S. National Army as the 339th Infantry and assigned to the 85th Division7 at Camp Custer, Battle Creek, Michigan. The 339th Regiment was composed mainly of young draftees, for the purpose of fighting on the Western Front in France. Most of the 4,487 men were from Michigan, but some 500 draftees from Wisconsin were included. The facility trained or demobilized more than 100,000 troops during World War I. The Regiment was commonly referred to as “Detroit’s Own”. They were sent to fight the Bolsheviks in Northern Russia. They were nicknamed the “polar bears” because of their service there.
On July 14, 1918, the U.S. Army’s 85th Division left their training camp at Camp Custer, Michigan for the Western Front in France. Three days later, President Wilson agreed to limited participation by American troops in the Allied Intervention with the stipulation that they would only be used for guarding the stockpiled war material.1 On 30 July 1918, General John J. Pershing, by order of President Wilson, chose the 339th Infantry Regiment, the 1st Battalion of the 310th Engineers, the 337th Field Hospital, and the 337th Ambulance Company, (all from the 85th Division) to form the Murmansk Expedition. These units were assembled and equipped at Cowshott Camp, Surrey, England. The expedition, 143 officers and 4,344 enlisted men, sails from Newcastle upon Tyne, England and arrives at Archangel, North Russia where it becomes part of the command of Maj Gen F. C. Poole, British Army.
When the British commanders of the Allied Intervention arrived in Arkhangelsk on August 2, 1918, they discovered that the Allied war material had already been moved up the Dvina River by the retreating Bolshevik forces. Therefore, when the American troops arrived one month later, they were immediately used in offensive operations to aid in the rescue of the Czech Legion. The British commanders sent the First Battalion of the 339th Infantry up the Dvina River and the Third Battalion of the 339th up the Vologda Railroad where they engaged and pushed back the Bolshevik forces for the next six weeks. American Headquarters is established at Archangel with distribution of American troops along a front 450 miles long, extending from Onega in the west to Pinega Russia in the east with at some points 200 miles distant from the Archangel base.2 By the end of October 1918, they were no longer able to maintain the offensive and acknowledging their fragile situation and the rapid onset of winter, the Allies began to adopt a defensive posture.
The British military involvement of 1918-1920 in several parts of European Russia were the outcome of the Russian Revolution of Nov 1917, and were closely connected both with events in Asia (particularly in Persia and in Siberia) and with the general course of the War in the West. The continued German and Turkish threats to India by way of Persia and Afghanistan, and the crisis of 1918 in France caused by the withdrawal of Russia from the Entente, formed the background to the North Russian Expedition and the Allied intervention in South Russia.3
The Allied commanders soon realized they would be unable to raise an effective local force of anti-Bolshevik soldiers. Thus they gave up the goal of linking up with the Czech Legion and settled in to hold their gains over the coming winter. During that winter, however; the Bolshevik army went on the offensive, especially along the Vaga River portion of the Dvina River Front, where they inflicted numerous casualties and caused the Allies to retreat a considerable distance. Tired of fighting Russian soldiers in Russia with no gains, early in 1919, instances of rumored and actual mutinies in the Allied ranks became frequent. On July 15, 1919, it was reported by the Alaska Daily Empire that rumors of mutiny were “bunk” and that commander Major Nichols reported “What gave rise to the story that Company I, of the regiment, had mutinied was an Incident to which an order was misunderstood by a soldier who could not understand English well.” Newspaper accounts differ though where Company I refused orders, Company I consisted almost entirely of men from Detroit. President Wilson directed the War Department on February 16, 1919, to begin planning the withdrawal of AEF in North Russia. In March 1919, four American soldiers in Company B of the 339th Infantry drew up a petition protesting their continued presence in Russia and were threatened with court-martial proceedings. The men were rounded up and put on a ship, only after leaving England, were the men told of their stateside destination. Spanish Influenza broke out on two of the three transports, and seventy-two men would eventually succumb to the disease or resultant pneumonia. Joseph Adelard was on the Plattsburg and survived it all as a young man of 23.
Upon his return to Detroit, Joseph Adelard returned to work as an electrician, this time as a contractor. His parents divorce in 1921, creating quite a stir in the Catholic bation of Detroit, his mother Suphranie cited cruelty and drunkenness. Trouble had been brewing for many years with all the tragedies a parent could take, year after year as parents of 16 children.
Three years after his return from service and less than 30 days after the death of his father, Joseph Adelard married Angeline Mayer on July 11, 1923, in Detroit, Michigan. They had three daughters during their marriage, Alma (1930-?), Jeanette (1925-1993) and Constance (1927-2005). Angeline and Joseph divorced in 1936. Was the tremendous burdens of WWI to blames as it was with many marriages of WWI veterans?
He died on June 11, 1938, in American Lake, Washington, at the age of 42, and was buried in Tacoma, Washington. What was he doing in the state of Washington at American Lake? Was he on vacation or working? Back in the military? Was it a drowning accident, a lumbering accident? Angeline died at the age of 99 in 1997.
French Canadian Connections 