Page:Albert Beaumont - Heroic Story of the Czecho-Slovak Legions - 1919.djvu/60

 emissaries had already arrived. Early in January one of our delegates was at the Government House of Kieff when he heard that preliminary negotiations for peace had already begun. He asked the Ukrainian officials if it were true, and was told that it was. He at once went to report the conversation to Professor Masaryk, who convened the National Assembly, or, at least, as many of the members as were in or near Kieff, and consulted with them. The first Ukrainian Government had been everthrown, and a Germanophile Hetman, General F., took command and supreme power. He executed a real coup d’état, relying on German and Austrian support.

Our National Assembly declared that as the new Government had begun separate peace negotiations, it was obliged to sever all relations with it. To sever our relations with a Government in whose territory our whole army was stationed was too paradoxical a situation to last very long. There would soon be no more fighting on the front; an armistice, to which our troops could not consent, was about to be proclaimed, and rapid measures had to be taken if our army was not to fall into the hands of the enemy. Our council decided on the immediate removal of our troops from the front their transportation to the Western front. It was impossible to think of conveying the army north to Murmansk, as that region was deserted; there were no supplies; the railway lacked material; and the Bolsheviks would give no end of trouble.

The only was to transport our whole army by way of Siberia to Vladivostock, and thence, by ships supplied by the Entente, to Europe. The consent both of the Ukrainians and the Russian Bolsheviks to this plan was reluctantly given. The question of disarming us was not yet broached, but there were many other questions still to be decided. Instructions were given to all our regiments to prepare immediately for transport eastward. Our Assembly could not even lose its time in idle negotiations with the Ukrainians, who had betrayed the Allied cause, for railway transportation for our troops. If such immediate transport was lacking, the only way was to start on foot. Our entire first division was in this critical situation. In a few days its camps were struck, its convoys, ammunition, supplies, and artillery trains were set moving, and the men started on foot on a march of 200 kilometres from Volhynia to the banks of the Dnieper, in the direction of Jakotin.

This was the beginning of what afterwards became the famous “Retreat of the 100,000.“ We anticipated many difficulties, hardships, and reverses, but I think few of us thought that after more than one year, in the spring of 1919, our “Legions“ would still be waiting in Siberia for the famous retreat to finish. The march began on Feb. 15, 1918,