© courtesy Bentley Historical Library

The Washtenaw Polar Bears

Local soldiers in Russia's civil war

by Josh Warn

posted 1/31/2013

If you live through a winter, is it hyperbole to call it brutal? Probably not for Ethol Fred Nordman, LaVerne Drake, Robert Granville, and other young Washtenaw County men who welcomed January 1919 fighting for their lives near the Arctic Circle. Certainly not hyperbole for Milan's Joseph Cwenk, their comrade, who lost his life that month in a battle with the

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