The Czechoslovak Review/Volume 3/Czechoslovak Adventures in Russia

Czechoslovak Adventures in Russia

Mr. Frank Zajíček of Chicago, received recently a letter from his nephew, who was at that time in Vladivostok—a letter that gives an excellent idea of the adventures through which so many Czechoslovaks passed during the war. This young man says:

“I was mobilized June 16, 1915, and attached to a Salzburg regiment. The first time I found myself at the front was in the Carpathians, but right the second day I was sent back, as I received the surgeon into thinking that I was seriously sick. The second time I found myself in Russian Poland and was at the front three weeks; in the very first fighting in which my regiment took part I shot myself in the foot so as to be sent back to a casualty. The third time I landed in Bukovina and had to stay at the front a long time. By this time the officers got suspicious of my sentiments; I was under observation, was frequently punished with arrest and barely escaped court-martial. General Brusiloff’s offensive saved me, and on June 30th, 1916, I ran over to the Russian side safely.

In Russia I had a devil of a time at first. In most cases the Czechs were treated in the same way as Magyars and Germans; most of the Russian officials did not know anything about us and those that did were German tools. I spent ten months in various internment camps, in Ekaterinoslav, Kharkoff, Orel, Voronezh, Moscow, Petrograd and other places. At the end of May, 1917, I got to Kiev, which was at that time the Czechoslovak center.

There I found my cousin, formerly a first lieutenant in the Austrian Army, and before the war, Police inspector in Vienna. He managed to be captured in 1914, serving with the Serbian Army where he was made captain, and later got transferred to the Czechoslovak troops, serving with the Russians. Through his assistance I was appointed to the intelligence division of the 8th Russian Army sand worked on the Austrian front in Eastern Galicia, When the Russians fell back after the revolution, I was nearly captured by the Austrians. I remained with the staff of the 8th Army several months longer, but when I saw that our work—there were nine Czechs in this division—was useless, because Russian officers communicated everything to German and Austrian spies, I went to Kiev. Just then the Bolsheviki and the Ukrainians were fighting for the city, and as I had nothing to do with their quarrels, I went to Petrograd where I hoped to find work. But in Petrograd there was nothing but hunger and misery, so I returned in a few days to Kiev, and after the street fights were over I made up my mind to visit a friend who was a music teacher in Baku in the Caucasus.

I thought that I would be able to take it easy after three years of strenuous life, but I was disappointed. I found work in the Caucasus as a commercial traveller Cc of course had to be on the road most of the time. Twice our train was held up by Tartar robbers. The first time nothing happened except a few shots, but the second time I went through horrible scenes. I was going from Batum to Baku, when our train and ten military trains ahead, carrying Russian soldiers returning home from the Turkish front, were held up by Tartars, There was fighting for two days, and then the Tartars won and captured three-fourths of a million roubles and important military supplies; all soldiers and civilians were robbed of everything. The dead numbered 250 and the wounded 760. They burned down our train and held us as prisoners over night and then sent us by freight trains to Baku. I was lucky to get out of this alive. Later on, Bolshevism began to spread in the Caucasus and in March 17, 1917, fighting broke out in Baku between the Bolsheviki and the Tartars. About 15,000 fought on each side and after three days the Tartars were defeated. I realized that conditions would grow still worse.

In the middle of April a young man who was related to the family in which I boarded came to Baku from Siberia and he told me that the Czechoslovaks were going across Siberia to France. I went immediately to the military commandant for papers that would enable me to join the Czechoslovak Army and after running eround three days I got the necessary documents. On April 19th I went up the Caspian Sea to Astrakhan, thence up the Volga to Samara, and there I met our boys. It was lucky that I left Baku, for the Turks captured the city soon after. From Samara I was sent to Omsk in Siberia where I met my cousin again. He was greatly surprised to see me alive, for all members of the Army Intelligence Service who were in Kiev at the time of the Bolshevik fighting were drowned in the Dnieper. In Omsk I was attached to the Army Corps Staff, but had an opportunity to take part in fighting; later I was again assigned to the work of military intelligence under the command of my cousin who is now Colonel. I am in Vladivostok on official business, and in February I except to be back in Omsk. I am getting along quite well, but like everybody else I am terribly anxious to return home. Our invalids and soldiers over forty years are already returning from Vladivostok to Bohemia. How we all envy them!”

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Another story of a Czechoslovak pioneer in Russia is given in the following account received by a Bohemian in Chicago from his brother who after four years and a half returned home for Christmas, He says:

“I was captured early in the war, and the Russians kept me only five weeks in the prison camp near Moscow. Soon they sent me to the rear of their military positions to dig trenches. I started digging near Warsaw and then, fell back. with the Russian army during that awful summer of 1915 as far as Plock. We had a very miserable time, nobody seemed to care, whether we had anything to eat and we subsisted on what we found in the fields. Fully 70 per cent of my fellow prisoners died on the retreat of hunger, exhaustion and sickness. About October 15th we stopped retreating and life became more bearable.

I was employed on trench work until May 1917 when I was sent as a machinist to a shop making nails; my work was to repair steam engines. At first they paid me only one and a half rubles a day, as I was still classed as a prisoner of war. Later I made eight rubles a day, but when I was due to get twenty rubles as foreman of the shop I had to run away, because the Germans were invading the Ukraine.

As early as 1916 I sent in my application to be taken into the Czechoslovak legions with a number of friends, but we waited in vain for permission to join, as the Russian Government did not favor the Czechoslovak army. Finally a call came at the end of 1917 just when I was sick in a hospital, so that I could not go with my comrades. When I got well I hastened after the legions which were retreating from the Ukraine in order to go to France by way of Siberia and America. I got to the town of Romadan a few days after the last train with our soldiers had left; there were no more trains running and the Germans were twenty miles away. Only armored Bolshevik trains delayed the Germans. At that time the Bolsheviki were fighting the Germans, and so I made up my mind quickly to enlist in the Red Army, where I was soon made a company commander.

But when the break came between the Bolsheviki and our boys, I left the Red Army and started to go to America. I went as far as Orenburg, where there existed a fighting front making it impossible to go to Siberia; so I changed my plans and started out for Turkestan hoping to cross Persia and go to France or England. But I did not succeed and returned from Taskend back to Russia and lived for a time in Saratov, where I supported myself by making jewelry. I left Saratov on December 6th and came home without any great difficulties on December 22nd.”