Dimitrij Chaloupka

“ Before I close, I want to say a few things about our life in the army. The Czechoslovaks were like one big family, all called themselves brothers: discipline is very thorough, for without perfect discipline we would have all been killed there, but obedience is all voluntary, and there is no difference socially between officers and privates. ”

“ Chaloupka was born in 1894 in Svratouch, Bohemia, was a baker before the war, and his experiences and sentiments are typical of those of the average
I was drafted in Liberec on July 11th, 1915. On the 21st of July I presented myself at Kutná Hora for service with the 21st Regiment of Infantry. We were put at once under guard of Magyar soldiers who were to take us to training quarters in Hungary. Even before we left Bohemia we had a sample of the kind treatment of the Austrian Government for the Czech soldiers; we were not allowed to sing our Czech songs. ”

“ I am sure the Germans who managed to get away did not call us cowards any more, as they used to do in the Austrian Army. From now on they called us the “white-red devils.”
But our victory did not do much good, for a few days later the Russian soldiers made up their minds to run away. When I asked those fellows why they would not fight, they always answered: “To h—— with fighting, now we got liberty.” You could see Russian soldiers everywhere, like clouds of flies, but none on the front. And so they switched our brigade from army corps to army corps ”

“ 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. ”

“ The last fight that I was in took place at Knazopavlosk, where the Bolsheviki threw up lines in defense of Ekaterinburg. The country was all hills and they had the high spots occupied. We got around them and caught them in the rear. There we tore up the tracks, so that their trains could not get away. The Bolsheviki set them afire; and in these trains was a car jammed with arrested people, mostly peasants and railroad employees. We found them all burned to cinders after the Bolsheviki ran away. Among other things we captured 70 machine guns here. ”

“ The Czech communists promised the Penza Soviet that they would gain 30,000 of us, but they hardly got 300, and these were fellows we did not want, men who were afraid to go to France or who were too keen after money. ”

“ Finally we got to Vertunovka, where we were sorted out into trains and in these trains we were to go as far as Vladivostok. Here we wainted a whole month, and since we had little to do we ornamented our cars; every platoon wanted to have the finest looking car.
Those cars were really nice to look at, and every car had something on it relating to the Hussite days. Hus, Žižka, Masaryk and other great men of our nation were on every car. There were inscriptions like: “Long live our little father, Masaryk, France and all the Allies.” ”

“ That is how we call the Y. M. C. A. workers from the United States. We will never forget what these men did for us. They lived with us like our own boys, and they kept us jolly in the most difficult times. ”

“ They opened up movies for us and refreshment rooms. In my regiment we had “Uncle Miller” from New York; everyone of these uncles is kept on the roll of the regiment. Our uncle knows Bohemia quite well, he spent a year in the old country before the war, so that he knows what we like and he always tried to give it to us. So for instance this Mr. Miller opened in Cheljabinsk a factory for making Bohemian sausages and smoked meat. They were as good as those we used to get at home before the war. This uncle found customers for al he made; in fact the whole army wanted uncle’s sausages. ”

“ 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 atacks, 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We had rifles, but no cartridges. Brusiloff promised that we would get everything at the front. When we were starting for the front, the people all cried and brought us flowers of which we made wreaths for our rifles. We went by train to Zbaraz, then we marched to Jezerna where German airplanes welcomed us with bombs, and two days later we started out at night and marched all night to the front trenches. We relieved Finnish regiments who had fraternized with the Germans.
In the trenches we found neither cartridges nor bombs. Machine guns were so dirty that we could not use them ”