Heroic Story of the Czecho-Slovak Legions/Life in Siberia
IV.
LIFE IN SIBERIA.
The two officers who give me this account arrived at Kieff with an interval of three months between them. Their story from that moment onwards represents that of a hundred thousand Czecho-Slovaks, all treated similarly by the Russians, and eventually sent to the numerous camps spread over the vast Russian empire. Thousands upon thousands of their compatriots had surrendered in similar ways. Some belonged to Czech regiments, others had fought as individuals or small units in Austrian regiments. The former usually found an earlier opportunity for “going over“ to the Russians. Others followed later, after numerous adventures, as was the case of Captain “S.“, and the rest continued to serve until the outbreak of the Russian revolution. Those who, to their great disappointment, never had the chance to surrender, do not, of course, enter into this story. But there were not many left, and during the last year of the war there was bitter feeling among the Government elements and the Germans in Vienna when it was known that by that time the Czecho-Slovaks had surrendered en masse, and that few Czech troops remained in the Austro-Hungarian army.
Meanwhile, the Czecho-Slovaks in Russia agitated with the Russians and among themselves. They formed patriotic associations, which nearly all the prisoners joined, and it was these patriotic associations of prisoners, organised, on the one hand, by constant correspondence with Petrograd, Moscow, and Kieff, and, on the other hand, by visits of able leaders, and finally of Dr. Masaryk himself, that supplied the elements out of which the Czecho-Slovak legions were formed and suddenly came into fame. The two officers have given me in detail the evolution of their national army in Russia and Siberia, and I shall give the story of each in turn.
Captain “N.“, whom we left at Kieff, proceeded:
Our first humiliation was when, at Kieff, we were marched through the town as prisoners of war with German officers! No difference was made between us and them. We were getting away from the kind, inteligent officers at the front, and were in the hands of bureaucratic officials at the rear. These Russians at home could not understand us. To them, very often, a Czech was merely an Austrian. We protested, and we did it so energeticaly that they promised to separate us. On arriving at the prisoners’ camp at Kieff a sort of separation was established. We, of our own accord, grouped by ourselves and had no communication with the Germans and Magyars. We were put in a train the same day and told our destination was Moscow. We travelled with Poles and Bosnian Serbs, and had a very commodious second-class carriage reserved for officers. The Austrians and Magyars were kept separate.
TWO UNPLEASANT SHOCKS.
Our next shock, which brought us down somewhat from our admiration for Russia, was the pilfering of our allowance by Russian officers and officials. We were supposed to get one and a half rouble per day. We had received only half that amount during the two days we journeyed to Kieff. We thought it an oversight. But the practice continued. Our soldiers complained that most of the time they got nothing. We made mild protests at various times, and were always informed that we had received the full amount. It was paid to the officers in charge of our train, and they were presumed to have paid it over to us. The fact is a few officers were honest and gave us the full amount, but most of them did not. It was an inconvenience to us, but it was worse for soldiers. These hardly got anything, the Russian officers taking it for granted that they had the right to pocket anything coming to our men.
Apart from this annoyance, we rather enjoyed the ride to Moscow. It was very cold outside, but our carriage was heated. We could go to the buffets at each station and buy warm food or drinks. There was plenty of sleeping room in our carriages. When we got to Moscow we learned that we were to go to Siberia. This was another shock. We had read so much of the horrors of Siberia that we imagined it a land of doom. We were wrong, as we afterwards discovered for Siberia can be a very pleasant country to live in; and I even long to return thither, but at the time it seemed like aggravating our misfortunes. I remember the desolate look of all of us when we got to the news.
We spent a whole week in the station at Moscow, eating and sleeping in our carriages. We were not, of course, allowed to go into the town, though we would have liked to do so. But the prisoners’ rules were strictly enforced. Our train finally started on its long weary way to Siberia, and from the start we were unlucky. Many of the men got dysentery. I caught the malady myself. Several of our men died. I asked for a doctor, and was told it was not necessary. Dysentery was nothing very serious. They gave us some opium pills, which helped us a little. For eight days I lay in a state of lethargy, unable to eat, drink, or move. We passed the great bridges over the Volga, and got into the picturesque region of the Ural Mountains. By this time ten of our men had died.
TIME FOR REFLECTION.
We formed a convoy of thirty officers and about 1,000 soldiers. I recovered slowly, and in another week our train stopped at the first big town in Siberia, Kurgan. We were to stay here for a while, and were glad to get a rest. Kurgan is a typical Siberian town, of about 30,000 inhabitants, with big wide streets and all the houses built of wood or logs. Our soldiers were placed in a camp and separated from us, but we got a house in the town which was very comfortable. Now that we were in Siberia, far away from the actual tumults of the war, we had time to think and reflect. Many of us already talked of a scheme to join the Russian army. We did not anticipate staying very long, our idea still being that the war would be short. But some of us, as we had been in it at the beginning, would have wished to see it to the end. They only way was to join the Russian Army. But did Russia need us? She had so many millions of recruits to draw upon that she hardly knew what to do with them.
A small number of Czecho-Slovaks got permission to fight with the Russian Army. They were mostly men who had remained near Kieff and got into touch with officers from the front. They were organised into scouting and fighting columns of about thirty or fiifty men, and were called “Družina“, or “fighters to death“. They were not supposed to surrender on any condition. They were to fight or die. If captured by the Austrians they were, of course, bound to be executed as Austrian subjects. They fought well in numerous places, and later on they were taken as the first elements for our legions. But it was long before the Russians consented to their formation.
At Kurgan the prisoners were under the authority of the local commander, a Polish colonel, a sympathiser with Austria and an admirer of everything German. Kaiser Wilhelm would have found no more obedient servant than this colonel, and Kaiser Francis Joseph might have made him one of his Court chamberlains. When we got into a dispute with the Magyars, Austrians, or Croats, he sided with them, and abused us. He often said to us: „What are you Czechs but simple deserters? You know that if you get back to Austria you would be shot as traitors. You ought to be glad to be kept here!“ Another day he said to me: I am a better Austrian than you are!“ I did not deny it.
A SEVERE BLOW.
After we had been about three months at Kurgan an incident occured which excited our bitterest animosity against the colonel. The authorities at Petrograd, who had heard of the conduct of the 28th Regiment of Prague, and wished to show us special favour, decided that all the officers of the regiment should be released on parole and given their freedom. A telegram containing this decision was sent to our colonel. He deliberately withheld it from us, and instead of it showed it to the senior Austrian captain, who always wanted to assume authority over us. The Austrian captain came to me in a fury and said that we Czechs continued to be traitors, and had no right to accept the favours of the Russian Government. I told him to mind his own business, that we Czechs had a right to accept our freedom if it was offered us, without any comments from him. I informed the other Czech officers that we had been given our freedom by orders from Petrograd, and that the colonel refused to transmit the order to us. Their indignation was immense. It was the severest blow we had yet received.
Officers like this colonel—and we found others of a still worse type-ruined the Russian army and ruined the Russian people. Our colonel carried his duplicity still farther. When good news for the Russians came from the front he deliberately suppressed the bulletin and concealed the news from us. When bad news came with the story of any Russian reverses, he immediately communicated it to the Austrian officers, who went bragging about it and insulting us. The colonel favoured the Austrians all he could. There were four Austrian doctors from Vienna whom he allowed freely to go about and establish a large practice in the town. A Ruthenian priest also was a great Austrophile, and joined the Austrians in cabals against us.
We simply ignored them. We refused to speak with them or have any relations with them. With four Bosnian Serbs who were our friends we formed a club of thirty Czecho-Slovak officers. We corresponded with Petrograd, and we obtained real news of the progres of the war. After a while an order came to distribute the Czecho-Slovak soldiers, among the peasants to give them an opportunity to work, and with every detachment of soldiers an officer was sent. In this way we were for a while scattered in all directions. I was sent with a detachment of about 100 Czechs to Morsichinskoie Selo, a village about 120 kilometres from Kurgan.
KIND SIBERIAN PEASANTS.
The Sibarian peasants were always very kind to our soldiers. They treated the Czechs well everywhere, and we had only to show ourselves to be received as friends. The mayor of Morsichinskoie Selo was and old man, the richest man in the place, but he could neither read nor write. A Siberian peasant who can write his name is looked upon as a great literary man! I got my soldiers at once to study Russian and learn also the Russian alphabet. They quickly learned, and one day when the paymaster of the disctrict came to give them their pay in the presence of the mayor he asked the men to sign the receipts. They all did so, both in Czech and Russian, just to show him that they had learned to write their names in both languages. They paymaster looked astonished and struck the table with his fist, saying to the mayor: „Look at these men, they are here only a few months and they can all write in Russian. You and the like of you are born and brought up in Russia and never learn to write even your names!“
Our time was not altogether lost in these villages. We made the acquaintance of the real Russian peasant, and it gave us confidence later on when we knew that they were unanimously favourable to us, We also learned how to treat them and what to expect from them when our troubles with the Bolsheviks started. The peasants were to a man on our side in every town, village, and country spot. They are also fond of going shooting game. We soon joined them in places where we had our freedom. I bought a shotgun with a single barrel, called Bardanka, for shooting ducks and hares. Game was abundant everywhere, and after a few hours I always returned with any number of ducks and three or four hares in my bag. Hares are plentiful everywhere, and the peasants despise them. They never eat them, and give them to their dogs. When at Kurgan we could buy hares at three kopeks each! Eggs we got at the rate of 100 per 60 kopeks! On one-and-a-half roubles a day we could live in plenty and luxury! Even clothes were cheap at first, and I could get a pair of trousers for nine roubles. The cloth seems to have come from China or Japan.
RETURN TO KURGAN.
In the month of May, 1915, I returned with my men to Kurgan and to the Austrophile colonel. His connivance at all the doings of the German, Austrian, and Magyar prisoners was bearing fruit. I discovered something that explains many of the subsequent revolutionary events. Under the tolerant eye of the colonel, the Austrian, German, and Magyar prisoners had begun an open campaign against the Russian Government. The German prisoners, and the Poles were as active as they, told the people that it was their Government that was responsible for the war. They excited them by saying that the Russian Government was oppresing them, that they were slaves, and to the workmen they said that they were only working and sweating for the Russian Government, with no benefit to themselves. Where they could they incited the working-classes and the whole population, and told them they would have to change the Government. This was openly going on in our district, and as colonels of our type were rather the rule than the exception, it can be imagined what a vast propaganda these German and Austro-Hungarian prisoners were carrying on throughout Siberia and Russia. They became a pest and a danger wherever they were.
In order to be able to speak to the inhabitants freely, the officers used to give their Russian soldier guards ten kopeks to go and amuse themselves. During that time the Germans were free to go into all the houses and shops of the village, to preach discontent among the people and the necessity of changing their Government. They even collected crowds round them and made speeches to them. Sometimes our officers interfered and challenged the Germans, telling them they had no right to speak against the Russian Government. This made them furious, and one day a Croatian captain insulted M. Kotnia, a well-known Czech writer and editor of one of our newspapers in Prague. He had come from Petrograd, and was organising the Czechs. The Croatian captain publicly called M. Kotnia a “traitor to Austria“. He added, “All Czechs are traitors.“ Nothing could be done to him as the colonel would listen to none of our complaints.
On this occasion it came to blows between the Croat and the Czech. A Ukrainian officer listened, and took sides with the Germans. He had admiration only for the Germans, and said, “The Slavs are only second-rate nations.“ One of our officers answered, “You may speak for yourself, not for us.“ Hostilities between us became so great that the colonel finally had to separate us from the Germans, Poles Austrians, Magyars, and Croats. These were given a separate house, and we were at last in comparative peace. For days we had refused to sit or eat at table with some of the Austrian officers. Our “club“ then was very happy, and we could communicate freely with our compatriots at Moscow and Petrograd, and we then heard for the first time of the scheme of forming a great patriotic organisation.
But we were not yet so numerous as we became in 1916, and our agitation was limited to the few centres that were gradually being formed. We suddenly received notice that we were to be transferred farther into Siberia. The Germans, Austrians, and Magyars, in fact, were to be sent to the uttermost end of it—to Ust Kamenogorsk, on the Chinese frontier. We wished them to the most volcanic of all regions. Our orders, on the contrary, were to go to Ishim. What Ishim was we did not know, but it was not so distant. It is about 120 kilometres north west of Omsk. To our great delight, the order included further instructions that all officers of the 28th Regiment of Prague were to get their liberty. We left for Ishim with about 2.000 soldiers. But our company of officers was reduced to eight; the rest were sent to other camps.
THE “FRAU COLONEL“.
We hoped to find a different type of commander from the one we had known. But we were disappointed. The colonel at Ishim was worse than the one at Kurgan. The latter was mostly only tolerant and conniving to the Germans. The new colonel was openly their partisan. He had a German wife, and it was his wife who ruled supreme. We soon got to speak of her as “Frau Colonel“. And “Frau Colonel“ was a great busybody. She stuck her nose into everything. She really did command, as we later on learned, and her will was always appealed to by the German prisoners in the last resort. What “Frau Colonel“ wanted had to be done. She always spoke German to her husband in public, and he spoke to her in the same language. They made of Ishim a prisoners’ camp that would have been more at home in Mecklenburg than in Russia.
It seemed to rankle in the heart of Frau Colonel that we had our liberty by order of Petrograd. She could do nothing to us, nor could her husband, but they took revenge on our men. The Czech soldiers were kept as prisoners in barracks. They were badly fed and badly treated. They never got their pay, which went into the colonel’s pocket. The men felt most wretched. Disease broke out among them, and the colonel refused to do anything to improve their conditions. On the contrary he enforced iron rule and discipline.
A deputation of the Swedish Red Gross came, authorised by the Petrograd Government, with large supplies for the war prisoners generously offered by private donors to the Swedish Government. The colonel did not allow them to visit the camp, and told them that the men were very well off and needed nothing. The Red Cross delegates went away, and, in fact, distributed nothing at Ishim. “The Czechs.“ said the colonel, “are traitors,“ and he would not allow them to get anything. We were not allowed to keep the records of the barracks. This was “Frau Colonel’s“ business, and Petrograd knew nothing. The soldiers told us they were left without anything to eat, for complaining about the little bread, which was very hard, and got severe punishment for the most triflings things. They were often put under arrest and shut up for two days without anything to eat for complaining about the food. They were given no soap for washing. They were huddled together in wooden barracks, and slept in tiers of three, one above the other, on bare boards. They were so famished that they looked out for cats and dogs in the streets, and if they could catch any of them it was a feast tor them. Many of the men died, and they were taken out without ceremony to the cemetery, to be buried without a mark or cross over their graves.
This was all the work of “Frau Colonel,“ an ugly, brazen woman. A German doctor who was prisoner was given full liberty, and became the personal medical officer of Frau Colonel. He also enjoyed immense influence. What the doctor recommended was sure to be done. A GermanAustrian who did not want to be sent away to the remote Siberian camps, had declared at Kurgan that he was a Czech. He was sent to us, and we found him an authentic German. He could not speak a word of Czech. He was simply an impostor. We formally denounced him to the colonel. But the doctor of Frau Colonel intervened, and the pseudoCzech remained. He and the doctor, with the colonel’s wife, formed a trio of terror in Ishim.