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The Czech Legion during WW I

     

As little girl, I listened to the stories of my grandmyDen Haagcornelis dulfer edith ter qfather, how he joined the Czechoslvak Legion and fougnt on the Allied side in Russia. He told that after the Russian Revolution of 1917, they ended up fighting against the Bolseviks as well. Since all roads weastward toward home were blocked, their only option to go home was going eastward, all the way to Vladivostok. They did not want to walk all the way, so they confiscated a train and later also stole a train full of gold, and travelled to Vladivostok.

He also mentioned also that they were on the way to Yekaterinburg, where Tsaar Nicholas II Romanov and his family were imprisoned. Days before their arrival the Bolsheviks executed the Romanovs to prevent them from being liberated by the Legion. Finally, in 1920 or 1921, he got onto a sgip from Vladivostok to Trieste, and from there back to now Czechoslovakia.

I only much much later that the true story of him and his fellow Legionairs was even more unbelievable and impressive as he had told it.

Starting out as a few small units, the Czechoslovak Legion consisted of soldiers fighting against the Austro-Hungarian and German armies. At first, they were embedded into the Tsaristic armies, but later they fought as an independent unit. At the end of World War I and in the two years thereafter, their numbers reached close to or over hundred thousand soldiers. At times, they were fighting gainst White Russians, against Bolsheviks, and once against a train full of mainly Hungarian soldiers of the Austro-Hungarian army, who saw the Legionaires were traitors. The Legion actually was quite successfull and for a period even contriolled most of the Seberian Railroad, Troops already stationed in Vladivostok went back westward by train to help their comrades down the line.