The Czechoslovak Review/Volume 3/An American Writes from Siberia

An American Writes from Siberia

An American engineer, employed by the Stevens railway commission in Siberia, has some interesting things to say about the Czechoslovaks in a letter written to his family, and dated at Harbin, August 22, 1918. Writing about his experiences on the Usuri River front he says:

Put in about ten days here with the Czechs—looking over track and bridges that had been blown up by the Bolsheviki whom the Czechs had chased to this point in a few weeks’ time since taking Vladivostok. They gave me the finest kind of treatment and are certainly strong for the United States. I was in the front line trenches on three different days, but there was nothing going on, except some artillery firing, as both sides were marking time after the battle which took place the day before I arrived. In that fight the Czechs lost 80 men killed and 25 missing; the Bolsheviks, consisting mainly of German and Austrian prisoners, outnumbering the Czechs three to one, lost over 1000 killed and no prisoners. The Czechs take no German and Austrian prisoners; Russians they do take prisoners and treat them as kindly as we do our prisoners, but Austrians and Germans, if they surrender, are shot at once. I asked one Czech officer, if he thought that the twenty-five missing men were prisoners. He said: “No, we shoot ourselves or use our hand grenades first, for we have had the experience of finding our wounded with their tongues cut out and their ears cut off, and we know what capture by these beasts means.”

I am ashamed to say that my knowledge of the Czechoslovak nation was so meager that when I first heard of them coming across Russia, I pictured a low-browed, illiterate, undisciplined mob of Slavs, beating their way across the country in a panic. I found instead a perfectly organized, highly disciplined army of as fine and intelligent a body of men as you will see anywhere in the world. They are perfectly trained, real fighting men in every sense of the word, absolutely confident of their own power and ability, afraid of nothing on earth, every last man fighting for the one single purpose—the downfall of Austria and Germany and a place in the world as a free and independent nation. A large portion of them speak good English; most of them speak French and all of them Russian and German, of course.

The Bolshevik army, driven out of Vladivostok, made a stand at Nikolsk, and here the Czechs led them into a trap, killing over one thousand and losing only fifty of their own men. The Bolsheviks then retired north up the Ussuri branch, first blowing up a large steel double track bridge at Nikolsk. Here the efficiency of these Czechs showed itself. They asked the railroad authorities, how long they would require to repair this bridge, and were advised that it would take ten days. The Czechs said: “Get out of the way,” and were running trains over the bridge in exactly twelve hours.

The next stand of the Bolsheviks was at a point about 50 versts north of Nikolsk. Here they entrenched themselves for three miles along the high ridge, the trench running under the rail road track at one point, where 1 was able to get a good view of it on the way upon my trip. It was a fine piece of trench work, typically German in construction, a nice piece of work; but the darn Czechs unload 4000 men twenty versts away, sent 2000 one way and the other 2000 opposite way, and came in on the trench behind, instead of in front, as they were expected to do. The result was simply a slaughter of Germans and Austrians caught in a trap of their own making.

The one outstanding feature about these Czechs is their absolute confidence in themselves as fighting men. They all tell you, when you speak of odds, that they are good for twenty-five of these Bolsheviks apiece in trench fighting and ten in open fighting, and they say it without a trace of boasting—just pure confidence of a fighting man who has tried it and knows what he can do.

I saw a map at the Czech headquarters showing the three Siberian fronts: the Ussuri, the Manchurian and Irkutsk. On this map was indicated the number of enemy regiments, the number of Germans and Austrians and Russians and Magyars in each regiment, and the shifting of these enemy regiments was indicated by little arrows. The officer who showed me this said: “This is a regiment of Germans shown moving from the Manchurian front back to the Ussuri front. The movement started only 48 hours ago and they will not reach there for another day yet.” I asked him, how in the world they got such information, and he replied with a wink: “About five hundred of our best men missed the train at various points on the way across Siberia.”

I take my hat off to the Czechs, the men without a country.