tured. We got a lot of prisoners, and they all cried that they were Czechs, though they were not. In twenty minutes we got through the fifth line, a veritable fortress. I am sure the Germans who managed to get away did not call us cowards any more, as they used to do in the Austrian Army. From now on they called us the “white-red devils.”
But our victory did not do much good, for a few days later the Russian soldiers made up their minds to run away. When I asked those fellows why they would not fight, they always answered: “To h with fighting, now we got liberty.” You could see Russian soldiers everywhere, like clouds of flies, but none on the front. And so they switched our brigade from army corps to army corps; as soon as the line started to give, they rushed us there to stuff the hole. We had to cover the retreat of eleven armies. We were the last to go and picked up what the Russians left behind, so that the Germans did not find much booty after us.
Finally, General Brusiloff ordered that we should go to winter quarters to be re-formed. We were to take trains, but after waiting seven days we decided to march. It was about 300 versts, and there we found quarters in villages. Then the Bolshevik revolution came and there was fighting in the Ukraine, but we kept out of it. Finally the Ukrainian government invited the Germans to help them against the Bolsheviki, and we had to leave the country, for otherwise the Germans would catch us.
We were retreating to Kiev’ and pretty fast, for the Germans were right behind us. At Zitomir our first regiment had a brush with German armored automobiles, but we got to Kiev without a fight. Right the next day the Germans got there and attempted to capture the bridge across the Dnieper. The second regiment held the bridge and the rest of us retreated further. It was a sad sight—everywhere you could see rifles, machine guns and even cannon lying around, but without breech-locks.
Then all the regiments concentrated at Piratin where they were to entrain one after the other. That was very good news, for we were all dead tired. And then the report came that the Germans were marching on Bachmach to get in the rear of us. That was in the middle of March. Our Sixth Regiment held Bachmach and the Fourth Regiment was rushed there to its help. There was quite a battle, for the Germans were far stronger. But our boys were not scared and licked the Germans good and plenty. The Jews told us that the Germans carried away dozens of wagon loads of dead soldiers, and when the Jews said it, we could believe it, for the Jews in the Ukraine are all with the Germans. The German general had to conclude an armistice with us and later we read in the Ukraine papers that he was punished for it, because he had no business to deal with “Czechoslovak bands,” since the Germans did not recognize us as an army. That way all our trains got through Bachmach. From Kursk an armored train with twenty men rode back to reconnoiter. They went too far and the Germans pulled up the rails both in front and in rear of them. Our boys stayed there the whole day and kept shooting at the Germans, whenever the Germans tried to atack When night came, our boys started the engine and in the darkness jumped out of it. The Germans kept shooting at the running engine and a couple of versts further the train fell into the river, where the bridge was blown up. How the Germans must have been surprised, when they looked for our dead in the river and found none.
Our boys all caught up with at Kursk. Then we went on, but so slowly that we could have walked more in one day than riding in the train in two days; most of the time we stood still. Finally, we got to Penza, where we had to turn over our arms. That was a tough thing for our boys, for our boys, for each one valued his gun more than anything else. We had to obey our leaders, but we were sure that there would be trouble. Here, too, the Bolsheviki tried to recruit our fellows for a Czech Red Guard. They stuck to us everywhere and tried to talk us over. Now we were all impatient with all the long delays, and most of the time we did not have anything to eat, while the Czech communists were promising us high pay and good living. They took us to their barracks where they slept in white feather beds and had everything to eat they wanted, while the ordinary people were hungry. The Czech communists promised the Penza Soviet that they would gain 30,000 of us, but they hardly got 300, and these were fellows we did not want, men who were afraid to go to France or who were too keen after money.
Finally we got to Vertunovka, where we were sorted out into trains and in these trains we were to go as far as Vladivostok. Here we wainted a whole month, and since we had little to do we ornamented our cars; every platoon wanted to have the finest looking car.
Those cars were really nice to look at, and every car had something on it relating to the Hussite days. Hus, Žižka, Masaryk and other great men of our nation were on every car. There were inscriptions like: “Long live our little father, Masaryk, France and all the Allies.” Most of the inscriptions had some references to our long fight with Germany and Rome.
Most of our boys were against the Catholic church. Even before the Russian revolution our first three regiments in a body abandoned the Catholic church and joined the Russian church, and that was the time when my original name Frank was changed to Demitrij. We had flags with the Hussite chalice and all over Siberia we sang that glorious Hussite hymn: “Ye who are God’s soldiers.”
Our first regiment is called after John Hus, the second after King George Podebrad, the third after John Žižka, the fourth after the orphans of Procopius, and the whole first division is known as the Hussite Division. We got to Cheljabinsk on the
