author
Lewis E. Jahns
Best known as one of the compilers of a vivid firsthand history of the American intervention in North Russia, this early twentieth-century writer helped preserve a little-known chapter of military history. His work has endured because it combines the perspective of participants with a strong sense of the hardship and confusion of the campaign.
1 Audiobook
The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919
by Joel R. (Joel Roscoe) Moore, Lewis E. Jahns, Harry H. Mead
About the author
Lewis E. Jahns is remembered primarily for co-compiling and co-editing The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki: Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919, published in 1920 with Joel R. Moore and Harry H. Mead. The book stands out as an early, close-to-the-events account of the American North Russia Expedition, often called the Polar Bear Expedition.
Available catalog records and historical references connect him directly to that expedition and identify him as one of the officers involved in shaping its published record. That gives his writing unusual value for listeners interested in military history, memoir-like source material, and overlooked episodes from the period just after World War I.
Little biographical information about Jahns himself is easy to confirm from reliable public sources, so the safest picture is a modest one: he appears less as a widely profiled literary figure than as a participant-historian whose legacy rests on helping document a difficult campaign for future readers.