Page:The Bohemian Review, vol2, 1918.djvu/235

 boundary of Russia and Siberia, and from this point started our campaign.

We got here at the end of May and were greatly surprised at what we saw there. In Russia we heard that there was better order in Siberia, but soon we found out that in the cities everything was in the hands of the Germans and Magyars. They looked on us as on murderers, and if you went to the movies in the evening or out for a walk, you were not sure of getting back alive, for if the Red Guards met our soldier alone, they beat him up mercilessly. So we had to go in groups and each was armed with a knife and had a rock in his pocket. The girls did not dare to walk with us; if a Red Guard met a Russian girl with our soldiers, he arrested her at once.

If we wanted to buy something in the stores, the storekeeper did not want to sell anything. If we dropped into a cafe, we heard only Magyar speech. It made you feel as if you were in Budapest or Berlin. It was hard to bear all this, and finally a break came. On May 16th a train was going through Cheljabinsk to Europe with returning prisoners of war. A Magyar from that train threw a chunk of iron at one of our boys who was so badly wounded that our men thought he was dead. Then the boys of the Sixth Regiment caught up with the train and pulled the Magyars out. The Magyars did not want to give away the man who threw the iron, but finally somebody told on him and he was killed. The next day the local soviet started to investigate this trouble, called in our men as witnesses and arrested them. We got sore and sent a deputation to demand the release of our men, but the soviet arrested the officer who headed the delegation. Then our patience gave out. Order came to march into the city, the band started to play and the boys danced to the tune, those that had a rifle hidden dug it out, the others picked up rocks and we marched singing into Cheljabinsk. When we got to the Soviet buildings, the bolsheviki were gone, but we found some rifles there. Every one was anxious to grab one. That put us into better humor; some of our boys even carried two rifles and a sabre. Then order came to go back to the trains, because the arrested men had been released.

Everything was quiet again until May 24th, when a convention of our entire army decided that we would go on to Vladivostok regardless of what the Bolsheviki said. And soon after fighting started in earnest. Two trains with men of the Sixth Regiment left Cheljabinsk and were surprised by the Red Guards at Marijonoska; about 20 Czech soldiers were killed and many were wounded. We heard it in Chiljabinsk the next morning, but at first our boys did not know what would be done. Then when I got up on May 28th, I heard that the town was in our hands. The Russians were very pleased about it, and whenever they met a Czechoslovak soldier, they said: “We greet you on this holiday;” for thethey [sic] took the occupation of the city by us as a great event that made them free. We did not have to fire a shot, when we took over Cheljabinsk. In the morning we gathered rifles, ammunition and cannon, and everybody was smiling, because we got such a big lot. From then on we had a fighting front toward Zlatoust, Troick and Ekaterinburg; the third regiment with which I was serving and a part of the second regiment fought here. The Bolsheviki made atacksattacks [sic], but were always thrown back with great losses. I fought at Argass, Troick, Zlatoust, then later on with our boys from Penza I fought near Ufa and Knazopavlovsk.

At Argass the fight was started early in the morning. Our commander was Colonel Vojtechovsky and I was in the third battalion of the Third Regiment which was commanded by Lt. Gajda. We had an armored train under Lt. Malek. We marched against the Bolshevik trenches, while the armored train went along the tracks. There was a great force of Bolsheviki here, and most of them were on the railroad tracks, where our machine guns shot down large numbers of them. There was quite a fight here and my commander Gajda was wounded, but we went at them very fast and licked them in a little while. The commander of the Red Guards was killed and the regimental flag captured, although the inscription on it said that nobody could capture it. The trenches were filled with dead Red Guards, and the Tartars stole there uniforms because the Bolsheviki had previously taken everything from the Tartars. The next day the battlefield looked al white because of the naked bodies and the stench was awful.

We returned to Cheljabinsk and a week later marched on to Troick. Here it was not so easy. The country was as level as a table and the Red Army was well entrenched. We attacked in the morning, but the Bolsheviki had many times more men than we. At that, we would have got the city, if the Cossacks had attacked in time. My company attacked the depot and there were only about 20 of us left, when we got to the railroad cars from behind which the Red Guards were shooting at us. They killed five our men, but we managed to drive them away. And then order came to retreat, be cause they got reenforcementsreinforcements [sic] and we were so few. We took back our dead and wounded, so that they would not get into the hands of those savages. But the third day Colonel Vojtechovsky concentrated our forces and the fourth day we attacked again. This time they got what was coming to them. They sent against us two armored automobiles, but the storming company of our regiment went at them with bombs and captured one auto immediately, while the other got stuck in the sand. The crews of both automobiles were killed.

After the capture of Troick we were taken by trains to the towns of Mnas, and from there we marched forward across the Urals against Zlatousk. In the Urals we only met scouting parties of the enemy; they ran, as soon as the armored automobile began to shoot at them. We captured Zlatoust without a fight, although the Bolsheviki had very strong positions here. But the fact is that