Page:The Bohemian Review, vol2, 1918.djvu/231

 we could not keep our mouth shut, so we Czechs all numbled and twisted our lips, while the Germans swore aloud. It was a very different oath, when we swore obediance to our father Masaryk in March 1917. We all shouted the words of the oath with so much heartiness that the Russians flocked around from the neighborhood and wanted to know what the noise was about.

We got to the front near Luck and there we heard that the Russians licked our crowd at Rovno. So they rushed us over there to stuff the holes in the front, but it did not work. At night we saw villages burning on all sides and by this light we could see the Austrian Army marching back in great confusion. Later at night it was the turn of our regiment, and we ran back that night and all day without anything to eat, until we got back to Luck and started to entrench ourselves. I thought the Russians would not catch us so soon, but before we had the trenches dug, there was Russian shrapnel flying over our heads. We crowded into the holes that we dug each for himself and waited for the Russians. The evening was quiet, but about two o’clock in the morning we heard cries of hurrah on the right wing. We did not know whether it was the Russians or the Austrians. No orders came, until about half an hour later, I heard somebody call out to me in a mixture of Russian and Polish: “Just come out of there.”

And there I saw my first Russian, a very impressive one. He had a beard down to his belt, his head was wrapped in a kerchief and he had a rifle with that long bayonet that the Russians have; I thought that if he stuck that bayonet into my stomach I should never digest it. So we crawled out and we heard them say “Magyars.” We started to tell them that we were Czechs, but there was no chance for establishing friendly relations, because Austrian machine guns began to spray us. That is the way I took my leave of Austria—amid a shower of bullets.

We were taken back of the front, and there they counted us. The whole wood was full of prisoners. Here we had our first quarrel with the Germans, for they said that the Czechs were responsible for the defeat of the Austrian Army and promised that we would all be hanged when we got back. Then the Russians lined us up and led us into the interior of Russia. We did not get anything to eat, although we had been hungry for two days before our capture. In Rovno we received our first meal. Ten of us ate of one bowl, and one man could have swallowed all that was in that bowl, for we were awfully hungry. Then they led us into barns where our predecessors left many souvenirs for our benefit, little animals of whom we found many in the Austrian trenches, but in Russia we found ten times as many.

Then we were marched to Kiev, about 350 versts (about 250 miles). We got few eats, but many versts a day—only one meal each day and on that we had to march as much as 50 versts. The Russian people were good, they brought us bread, but the Magyars, who were at the head of the column got most of it and we Czechs in the rear went hungry. Here also I heard for the first time the word "Austriak"; I never knew there was such a term. We marched about three weeks and then we came to Darnica, a notorious prison camp near Kiev. We hoped that here at least we would be put in barracks, for on the march we had to sleep in the open near rivers, but in the camp it was the same thing—just a big plain wihwith [sic] barbed wire all around and fire tree to sleep under. The first night each found a tree for himself and soon fell asleep, because we were all hungry, and made a long march that day. But when we woke up in the morning, we found that somebody stole our last possession, a loaf of bread that we got at Kiev, and here was no one to appeal to, for the Magyars in hethe [sic] camp did as they pleased and woe to him who complained. He was so beaten that he could hardly crawl. I remember that one morning when I woke up I saw my neighbor lying dead with cut throat; the poor fellow was without his uniform and the murderers left him lying in his underwear, because it was so torn and dirty. I know that all of us who passed through Darnica will never forget the experiences.

I was there nearly a week, and then they picked us out for various employments. I was anxious to work, if that would get away from the prison camp. First they took us to the forts of Kiev, where conditions were no better, for the commander was a German sympathizer. We were almost naked and