Page:Albert Beaumont - Heroic Story of the Czecho-Slovak Legions - 1919.djvu/61

 and a week later the advance echelons formed their junction with the Second Division at Jakotin. At the very outset the “Retreat“ was marked by skirmishes, and the Dnieper Division did not finish its march without some serious engagements.

It appears that before our division in Volhynia started, Austrian offers were made through the Ukrainian Government for an honourable surrender. Kaiser Karl’s agents, either hypocritically or seriously, offered that if we surrendered we should not only not be treated as traitors, but should be sent back to our country, and that, furthermore, Bohemia would obtain its full autonomy. It was an offer that could only be rejected with indignation by our leaders, as they knew too well the perfidy and treachery of Austria towards our nation. It was evidence, incidentally, that the Austrians and Germans knew of our resolution to retreat, and as might well be expected, they took measures to prevent it. On its line of march through Volhynia our division was obliged to pass through the very centre of large German-speaking colonies not very favourably disposed to us. They, no doubt, would give the enemy indications of our movement. We soon learned that German and Austro-Hungarian troops were making forced marches to overtake us and cut off our retreat. Had they succeeded, our enterprise would have been defeated at the very start. But our scouts were also active everywhere, and we were able to elude the pursuit.

The first contact our echelons had with the enemy was at Zitomir, or, as it is variously spelt, Jitomir or Zytomierz. It was a short skirmish with German detachments sent in pursuit in armed motor cars. Several of these cars passed our troops, and they were allowed to get well beyond our last columns. Then, from each side of the road, our companies who had been prepared to stop them, opened fire on them. The first car contained an officer, who happened to put his head out of the car just as our machine-guns opened fire on it. His head sank, never to rise again, and the soldiers jumped out after the car came to a halt. Two of them were killed, as we learned, and the rest captured. The other cars that followed the first one met a similar fate. None of the Germans cars thus sent in pursuit ever returned to their own. The next engagement was at the big bridge over the Dnieper at the outskirts of Kieff.

It was a warning to us that we had not begun our retreat a minute too soon. The Germans had full liberty to enter Ukrainia. The whole southern front had ceased to exist. The soldiers of the former Russian army had either voluntarily abandoned their trenches and scattered over the country, or had fraternised with the Germans and Austrians, selling