So with Rix's permission, I am going to take a little detour and go back a bit to determine how American troops ended up in Siberia in August 1918.
We have to start with the Czechoslovak Legion. These guys were pretty cool. At the outbreak of the war, a group of Czechs and Slovaks that were living in the borders
of the Russian Empire petitioned the Czar to support the independence of their homelands from Austria-Hungry in the event of an Entente victory. To assist they formed
a small military organization and were attached to the Russian 3rd Army in October, 1914. Their leadership desired to transform themselves into a powerful military
force but for that they needed more man power. While the practice was officially banned, they recruited more Czechs and Slovaks from POW camps and also through
gaining a number of deserters from the Austrian-Hungarian army.
The unit would fight well and they were the only group to have success during the disastrous Kerensky Campaign of 1917. It's failure would hasten the fall of the Czar
and in the Autumn of 1917 the Bolsheviks would make their move. They would take over Moscow and Saint Petersburg and began talks with Germany and Austria-Hungry
on ending the conflict. In early March, 1918 the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed and Russia was officially out of the war. A large portion of the Ukraine was ceded
to the Central Powers and this was were the Legion was based at the time. They were very nearly cutoff and surrounded by the Germans and they had to fight
their way out in a 5 day retreat. Eventually they were safe but where to go? They wanted to get back into the War but they couldn't go West, North - the Bolsheviks
and Germans were too strong. They considering heading South but that was full of uncertainties. So they decided to head East. The plan was to cross all of Russia
and then pick up transport in Vladivostok which would then take them around the World to France where they could get back in the fight. Wow.
The trip was painfully slow. Most of the rail lines were packed with German and Austrian POWs headed home in the opposite direction after the treaty was signed.
When Berlin learned that were over 60,000 soldiers trying to join the Entente they were none to pleased and they demanded that the Bolshevik's stop them. The
communist's were worried of renewed hostilities and they complied. On May 14th the Bolsheviks closed the rail line at Chelyabinsk some 1,000 miles east of
Moscow. The Legion won easily and an all out war broke out between the Legion and the Bolsheviks. It doesn't seem like it was much of a contest. They became
an army of the rails and they began seizing territory all along the Trans-Siberian Railway. By the summer of 1918 they were in control of a strip running from the
Volga River all the way to the Pacific.
They converted the trains into essentially rolling cities with barracks, bakeries, workshops and hospitals. Some of the rail cars were fitted out with heavy artillery
and were fortified. They also managed to liberate a substantial haul of the Czar's gold reserves and took that with them too. They allied themselves with the
White Russians and as they closed in on Yekaterinburg the Reds were worried that the Legion might yet save the Czar so the entire family was liquidated.
The Legion continued eastward to Vladivostok where they would link up with a multinational force of American, Canadian, British, French, Italian and Japanese troops that
had arrived their to secure their escape route. We'll discuss in the next post.
Legionnaire Uniforms
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loginHere is a 10 minute audio segment on the Legion:
https://www.radio.cz/mp3/podcast/en/czechs/100818-the-czechoslovak-legions-myth-reality-gold-and-glory.mp3