Hockaday, Warren F.,

The original mandate of the Russian Railway Service Corps (RRSC) was to aid the Russian Provisional Government by restoring and maintaining the efficiency of the Trans-Siberian Railway. The RRSC consisted of American engineers and railroad experts commanded by Colonel George H. Emerson. The rise of the Communists to power and the abolition of the Russian Provisional Government made it impossible for the engineers to carry out the original mandate. Members of the corps stayed in Japan through the winter of 1917. In March 1918 Bolshevik Commissioner-of-War Leon Trotsky requested that the corps carry out the original mandate on behalf of the Communists. Upon their return to Russia, Emerson and a small group of engineers were informed of violent altercations between Communists and Czech-Slovak soldiers at points along the railroad line. These skirmishes along the Trans-Siberian Railway were part of a series of events known as the Czech Uprising of 1918. Czech forces, the anti-Bolshevik White Army, and peasant factions eventually captured most of the railroad from Samara to Irkutsk. Through the summer of 1918 Czech-Slovaks continued to fight along the Trans-Siberian Railway. The Russian Railway Service Corps monitored activities along the railway while waiting for orders from the United States. American troops began arriving in the area in mid-August. The railway corps remained in Russia until at least July 1919.

Lieutenant Warren Franklin Hockaday was a locomotive engineer for the New York Central Railroad when he joined the United States Army in 1917. Information in the collection suggests he requested to be attached to the Russian Railway Service Corps.