Guts and Glory

: y r o l G in on a & r i t T s t a Gu War a N d e e h p T ha S t a h T

Illustrated by Rachel Marie-Crane Williams, Written By Kevin J. McNamara and Rachel Marie-Crane Williams

The assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian thrones, Archduke Franz Ferdinand,

by Serbians, in the summer of 1914 sparked the First World War. Germany supported Austria-Hungary’s attack on Serbia, Tsarist Russia came to Serbia’s defense, and France and Great Britain mobilized to defend their ally, Russia (the Allies). On the Western Front, German troops fought the French and British, while in the East, Austria-Hungary and Germany fought Serbia and Russia. Romania and Italy joined the Allies, but Germany and Austria-Hungary defeated all Allied armies in the East – Serbia (1915), Romania (1916), and Russia (1917), and turned to attack the Allied Western Front. The United States joined the Allies with a declaration of war in April 1917, but substantial U.S. forces would not arrive at the Western Front until mid-1918.

It starts with all of the dignity of a bar room brawl, when a brief but furious altercation on May 14, 1918, leaves two men dead on a train platform at a sleepy railroad station outside the Russian frontier town of Chelyabinsk. This is where one of several dozen Hungarian POWs being returned home, still loyal to Austria-Hungary, and angry at the Czech and Slovak betrayal of their homeland, kills a Czech legionnaire. The culprit is quickly killed in retaliation, before officers can intervene.

The local Chelyabinsk soviet release the Hungarians but subject the Czechs to repeated arrests.

The legionnaires finally take matters into their own hands, march into Chelyabinsk, and liberate their comrades from the local jail, without killing a single person. Having done so, they prepare to resume their journey, singing in unison as they march away from Chelyabinsk. The bloodshed can end right here – but it doesn’t.

I see our Hungarian friends are heading home to rejoin our oppressors. They go west to Austria-Hungary, and we go east to – who knows where

Some say the British and French want us to fight this new Russian regime – Bolsheviks or communists or whatever they call themselves.

To France, brother! The French will let us fight our oppressors – finally!

And the Bolsheviks?

They can’t decide if we are imperialist lackeys or possible recruits for their own Red Army!

...but if these Red Army units keep taking our weapons and ammunition, we won’t have anything to fight with, and then you’ll never see any French girls!

Masaryk assures us the Allies want us on the Western Front, fighting the Germans.

COME QUICKLY JOSEF!!!

There’s a fight! One of our brothers was hit in the head with a piece of iron from a train of Hungarian POWs leaving the station. He’s not moving.

We can’t let them get away!

HURRY!!!!

That’ll teach him to kill our brother!!!

Our men were angry, They pulled the Hungarian swine right off the train and killed him!

Josef wake up!

The Communists let the Hungarians go! But, they arrested our guards instead. Then, when we sent 2 officers to investigate, they were arrested too!

They will arrest us all and send us back to Austria! We will be shot for treason!

Get ready brothers.

It has been decided – we are marching on Chelyabinsk tomorrow to get our boys out of the jail.

Prepare yourself, but get some sleep.

To be arrested because one of our own was killed? Yet how can we release our brothers without more guns?

This is madness . . . the war is madness . . .

Russia is madness. No one is going to help us.

Better to die here than be hanged.

Three days after the incident, 3,000 legionnaires line up at the station. Leaders hand out an assortment of rifles and pistols, and the men begin marching quickly along the dirt road into town. Arriving by 6:00 p.m., they spread out amidst scuffles and small-arms fire, but quickly take control of key facilities, cut telephone lines, disarm surprised Russian sentries, and break into the town’s armory, taking about 800 rifles and two machine guns.

The Bolsheviks (Communists) kill at least three Czechs and wound two. There are no Bolshevik casualties. At gun point, the Bolshevik authorities release the 12 imprisoned Czechs, but the town’s officials are neither harmed nor detained. The legionnaires leave the city, singing as they march. The next day, they return the rifles and machine guns they seized, despite the fact that 8,000 legionnaires in the vicinity of Chelyabinsk are sharing 1,500 weapons. The Legion also posts flyers in the town that state they are not against the Bolshevik government.

The legionaires march out of town, on May 18th, 1918, thinking they have avoided more violence and bloodshed.

Little did they know it was only the beginning.

Late Fall 1914, Russian Ukraine

In part because they are treated as second-class citizens in Austria-Hungary, tens of thousands of Czechs and Slovaks settle in Tsarist Russia before the war, with a large concentration in Russian-Ukraine, especially Kiev. Like all warring nations, Russia is suspicious of citizens of enemy nations. These “enemy aliens” are subject to internment, deportation, or the loss of property. As a result, Czechs and Slovaks begin to volunteer for the Russian army, and the first 750 volunteers – all Czechs – create the Česka Družina. The Družina gathers intelligence on Austro-Hungarian forces. Its members read captured enemy maps and documents, and they interrogate enemy POWs in their own languages. Soon, they begin to encourage enemy Czechs and Slovaks to defect or surrender to the Tsarist Russian army.

It”s the only way.

If we join the Druzina, the Russians won’t seize our homes and farms.

Of course, Austria-Hungary would be happy to take us back and throw us into battle, but that wouldn’t give us Bohemians, Moravians, and Slovaks our freedom, would it?

I don’t really know where my home is anymore. I like it here in Kiev. and the Russians...they are our real Slavic brothers, not those Austrian bastards

It will be like no Army ever assembled !!!

If we join, I think we would mostly be doing intelligence work, reading maps and documents.

I do know German, Czech and a little Russian. Our Slovak brothers know Hungarian. We could interrogate any member of the Austro-Hungarian Army we capture.

Let’s toast! To the Druzina!!!

Winter, 1914, the Eatstern Winter, 1914, Somewhere somewhere close on to the Eastern Front inFront...

Russia.

I can’t read it either. I am going to get some air...maybe a smoke will clear my head.

It looks like the ink is smeared and my German is pretty basic.

Andl?

Plzen.

I was captured right after the war began. I was in a POW camp. It was horrible! I nearly starved. Then a recruiter for the Ceska Druzina came, and here I am!

You?

So... where are you from?

Kiev, but I was born in Prague. I joined at the start in 1914. I like living here in Russia. I used to work at a bank- can you believe it?

I just want to go home! This war is the worst experience of my life! But what choice do I have?

A philosophy professor who is half-Czech and half-Slovak, Tomáš G. Masaryk, is an out-spoken advocate for Czecho-Slovak equal rights. When he hears that young Czech soldiers in the Austro-Hungarian Army are being killed trying to defect to the Russians, he makea a fateful decision to reach out to Austria-Hungary’s enemies to let them know the Czechs and Slovaks oppose their own government and want to support the Allies. He says goodbye to his American wife, Charlotte, sons Herbert and Jan, and daughter Alice, and leaves Prague with his youngest daughter, Olga, 23, under the pretext that she needs medical attention in Rome.

I’m sorry sir, but your papers are not in order. I must telegraph the authorities.

One moment, please.

But sir... we have tickets to Rome...

Pappa, our train is leaving!

Grab your bags! We are going to run for it!

And the doors of history close quietly behind them. Thus went the first of many close calls for Masaryk.

Be careful!

Watch your step!

Go! Go!

Masaryk and Olga reach Rome on December 22nd. Serbians meet him and agree to coordinate their own effort to carve from Austria-Hungary a new country for Serbians, Croats, and Slovenians (Yugoslavia). Secretly, Masaryk also meets with Russian and British diplomats.

We must convince the Allies that the way to defeat Germany is to destroy Austria-Hungary, and that supporting our independence movements will destroy Austria-Hungary.

Greetings, this is my daughter, Olga.

We must talk as soon as possible.

Indeed, we have much to discuss, and we would appreciate any information you can share on how the war is progressing. What have you heard about how my people are living through this war in Serbia?

No – of course not. We just need time to see them – not just here in Rome – and convince them that we are the answer to their problems. Gentlemen, as much as I detest this war – and as much as I fear for my own two sons who will probably have to fight – we need a long war, long enough to give us the time we all need to achieve our goals.

I know, it will take time, and the efforts of all of us.

We must have a united front The Allies cannot win – not yet.

If they win without us – then what???

We will not have won independence, and a defeated Austria will be in no mood to do us any favors.

The Allies don’t know us.

They think we’re all Austrians. We don’t appear on any maps.

I’ll tell you what I know. But remember, I need to see other Allied diplomats while I am here.

My little Serbia continues to hold off the Austro-Hungarian Army. The Austrian general in charge of the current Serbian campaigns was the same guy who was in charge of security for Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

What a joke!!

So we want the Allies to lose??

January 11th,1915, 1915, a train bound for Geneva, Switzerland January 11th, on on a train bound for Geneva, Switzerland

Thank you for coming with me, Olga. I realize it must have been boring for you.

I have a bit of business, then we will return home

Not boring, Pappa, but I do miss Mamma and home.

Pappa, how long will we stay at this hotel in Geneva?

There is soft a soft knock;aamessegner hotel messenger boy slips a small postcard beneath the door.

There is a knock, boy slips a small postcard beneath the door.

Pappa, what does it say?

Masaryk stares hard at the postcard, unable to hide his shock. His mouth opens, but he is unable to speak.

I am sorry, my dear.

We cannot go home. I have been doing some things against the Austro-Hungarian government, and this coded message means they have found me out. They will hang me if we return.

Oh Pappa, this is horrible!

As a professor, Masaryk treats his students with respect and friendliness, an unusual practice at the time. Two of his former students are so devoted that they join him in exile, a serious and solemn young Czech, Edvard Beneš, and a gregarious and dashing young Slovak, Milan Štefánik, now a French military officer. Beneš joins Masaryk in exile in September 1915, as “Miroslav Sicha,” a traveling salesman whose heavy limp explains why he is not in uniform.

I realize a border crossing is dangerous, but they are coming for me. I have twice been warned that they are watching us. You know they ransacked the professor’s home, and arrested Alice. They even took poor dear Charlotte in for questioning.

She is a wreck

I do have a passport. Here – see? I am Miroslav, a traveling salesman who was already injured in the war

Please, Edvard! You are on the list to be drafted, you are not allowed to leave the country, and you don’t even have a passport.

If they come for you, Hana, be strong – but do not hesitate to denounce me to save yourself.

Days later, Masaryk is waiting for Beneš at a restaurant in Geneva. A heavy downpour outside the restaurant’s windows underlines the sad reality of their meeting. Masaryk worries for his family, but is far more worried about losing his link to the Prague Czechs – Beneš. He broods and scowls at the cold coffee in front of him as Beneš explains himself

Our Czech inside the government warned me the police were waiting for the opportunity to pounce. They arrested Alice; they certainly won’t spare me. Sir, I would be no good to you in prison.

Oh,Alice! My poor daughter... it’s good she is strong... and devoted to our cause

You must return.

The connection to Prague is essential! If our Czechs denouce me, even merely criticize our work, even once – that’s it!

We would have no credibility!

Sir, I would be arrested immediately. Our Czechs are solidly behind you. I’ve warned them again and again not to undermine us. I’ve told them –

everything rides on you!

The next day, the two men agree that Masaryk will return to London, where he is now based. Beneš will go to Paris, and other volunteers will try to reach government officials and journalists in Russia, Italy, and Switzerland, whose neutrality offers some protection.

Masaryk and Beneš travel to Paris in January 1916 and meet with Milan Štefánik, who is recuperating from war injuries as a French pilot. Štefánik quickly secures for Masaryk his first meeting with an Allied head of state, French Prime Minister Aristide Briand. The trio begins to publicize the cause of independence. In time, they create a Czecho-Slovak National Council in Paris.

We are very proud of you, Milan. You are one of my most successful students.

An astronomer and meteorologist, who has traveled the world. A French citizen.

Inducted into the French Legion of Honor.

Now a wounded combat veteran.

What happened?

My plane crashed in Albania. I arrived here last month. I’ve had some operations which saved my life.

Your reputaion as a war hero, your connections, and your Slovak heritage are all essential to our cause!

Professor, Edvard, I know I am recovering but I can help.

I convinced the French to remove Czechs and Slovaks from the “enemy aliens” list back in October 1914. I have powerful friends here. I will do what I can to promote the cause. Our movement needs a full-blooded Slovak, no?

Indeed we do need a Slovak like you!, It is settled. Milan, Once you recover, you will reach out to your friends in the French government.

There is still a chill in the air in May 1917 when a “Thomas George Marsden” opens his forged British passport to Russian authorities at the remote northern town and border checkpoint, Haparanda, Sweden, to continue by rail into Russian Finland. So begins Masaryk’s journey. The Russian Revolution and the toppling of Tsar Nicholas II, whose regime dislikes Masaryk, is in full swing. In spite of this, Masaryk is optimistic. He has a friend in the new Provisional Government who he believes will help him. Russia is the crucible in his ambitious goal of raising his own Czecho-Slovak army to fight on behalf of the Allies

Thomas George Marsden?

From Britain?

Yes, I am visiting our good ally, Russia.

You have heard of the Revolution in Russia???

Yes, we live in exciting times...

This revolution is a stroke of luck! Now that my friend Pavel Milyukov is Russia’s Foreign Minister, perhaps he will allow me to talk to the Czechs and Slovaks in the POW camps myself! It is time to build an army!

Masaryk’s reception in Russia is not what he expected.

The political turmoil in Russia makes his plan to build an army difficult.

What a nightmare! This is so different from what I imagined!

Milyukov is already out of the foreign ministry and the Russian Army is a disaster! Violence everywhere! I must get to the camps and talk to the POWS myself; Stefanik has recovered.

Now, he will go to America to get volunteers.

The Bolsheviks (communists) seize power in October 1917 and withdraw Russia from the war. Moscow opens its POW camps, leaving more than 2.3 million POWs stranded. There are as many as 250,000 Czechs and Slovaks in the camps, most are unhappy with their status as second-class subjects in multi-ethnic Austria-Hungary. Getting home will not be easy for the men, as the war is still raging. Masaryk spends months persuading Russian officials to let him create a new army that will fight Germany and Austria-Hungary. The heroic performance of the Czecho-Slovak unit in the Russian Army, Česká Družina, at the Battle of Zborov, finally persuades the Russians that these men are worthy soldiers. Masaryk secures financial support from the French and begins recruiting tens of thousands of Czechs and Slovaks from the Družina and the Russian POW camps. These men form a new army, the Czecho-Slovak Legion.

Once the new Bolshevik regime allows the legion to leave Russia, Masaryk makes a plan that the men will take the Trans-Siberian Railway across Siberia to Vladivostok on the Pacific Coast, board ships, circle the globe, land in France, and fight for the Allies on the Western Front. In return, the Allies will grant the Czechs and Slovaks independence ;50,000-65,000 men volunteer to join Masaryk’s Czecho-Slovak Legion.

I have been here since 1917. When I first joined the Ceska Druzina, there weren’t many of us. But now…

I was in a POW camp. I was captured by the Russians, but they let me join the Druzina.

Me too! When I was taken captive by the Russians I was stunned to learn that some of the soldiers were actually Czechs and Slovaks!”

My life feels upside down. Here we are in Russia headed to Vladivostok. We have barely enough weapons and who knows if the Allies will actually liberate our people?

I was in a camp for many months. Then a man with a beard –Masaryk?some professor from Prague came to the camps. He said if we joined this army, under the command of the French, we could leave the prisoner camp and He fight for the Allies came to our camp, too. We were suspicious at first, but he explained Russia was weak and we needed to be with the Allies in case things start to go badly.

Masaryk told us not to get involved in Russia’s mess. I don’t know how we are to stay neutral and still escape this country in one piece

I doubt the Allies will liberate us in the middle of this revolutionary chaos.

We are caught between the Germans and the Bolsheviks!

In March 1918, with his army organized and ready to cross Siberia, Masaryk travels on ahead of the men, taking the Trans-Siberian to Vladivostok, where he boards a steamer headed for the United States. He has to win the American president, Woodrow Wilson, to the cause. Upon leaving his men, he warns them – more than once – not to get involved in Russia’s chaos.

Moscow, Russia

I hate to leave the legion in the middle of this Russian mess. But it is for the greater good. I have to talk to Wilson in America. Wilson’s friend and advisor Crane will help me with that.

Thank God the Bolsheviks wanted to rid Russia of my little Allied army. Now Wilson has to see me. He’s a professor, like me.

Perhaps I can reason with him. My legionnaires are proof that we deserve our independence. I certainly hope they do not get drawn into Russia’s many domestic conflicts. On the other hand, I told the boys I really need them. In response to an armed attack, the Legion is to defend itself vigorously.

Vancouver, British Columbia

Masaryk sails from Vladivostok to Japan, where he boards another steamer to Vancouver, British Columbia. During his journey he has no idea that his men will soon enter even greater depths of peril and chaos on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Masaryk reaches his destination on April 29th, 1918.

Only days after Masaryk’s ship departs Vladivostok, the first few of more than 70 separate trains of legionnaires arrive at Vladivostok – but Moscow orders all their trains to halt. The legionnaires and their trains stretch across Siberia’s 5,000 miles, each group is isolated. Meanwhile across the ocean in Vancouver, Charles Pergler meets Masaryk and Olga.

Pergler is a Czech-born Iowa lawyer who generates much of the exile movement’s publicity in America.

On May 5th, 1918, more than 100,000 Czechs and Slovaks greet Masaryk at the Chicago railway station. Later Masaryk would recall, “From the railway station to the hotel, there was a huge procession; the city was beflagged with Czech and Slav colors.”

You have clearly been very busy promoting our cause here, Mr. Pergler. Had I not seen this with my own eyes, I could scarcely believe it.

Well sir, they say Chicago is the world’s second-largest Czech city, after Prague. You have many friends and supporters here and in other places like Pittsburgh. That city is full of Slovaks.

Chicago, Illinois,

Yes, I must visit Pittsburgh, and the other communities of our brethren.

Speaking in Czech, Masaryk addresses the huge crowd assembled in Chicago; he credits the Czech soldiers who first inspired him to leave Austria-Hungary.

After the outbreak of the war, I returned to Prague and the first thing I saw was the opposition of the Czech soldiers to military service. They resented going to war against the Slavs, They protested. They did that of their own will, without leaders, without any agitation. When I saw it I said to myself: you, as a parliamentary representative, cannot do less.

Washington, D.C.

I will never get used to his kind of attention. I started my life as a humble blacksmith’s apprentice and here I am in Washington D.C., a professor and a diplomat! All the while my family suffers at home. I hope I can make the sacrifice count!

On May 9th Masaryk arrives at Union Station in Washington, D.C., where 27 members of Congress greet him.

“It took me a while to get used to my American fame,” he would later confess.

Masaryk eagerly looks forward to a meeting with President Wilson. Little does Masayrk know that great transitions are in store for his Legion.

In five days the Chelyabinsk incident will take place, shortly after that the Legion revolts against the Red Army.

After the incident at the Chelyabinsk station, the legionnaires free their colleagues from the local jail. News of the incident at Chelyabinsk, leads Soviet Red Army leader Leon Trotsky to believe, erroneously, that the Czecho-Slovak Legion plans to attack and occupy Russian cities.

Trotsky’s hysterical, blood-thirsty reaction ends up making his worst fears about the Legion come true.

Every armed Czech-Slovak found on the railway is to be shot, Every troop train in which even one armed man is found shall be unloaded, and its soldiers shall be interned in a prison camp.

Local war commissars must proceed at once to carry out this order.Every delay will be considered treason!

We were able to hide a great many hand grenades in the trains. It’s not much, but if that’s all we have, and if they attack, we must fight back, no matter what Masaryk told us!

We have only one rifle per passenger car, very few pistols, and almost no ammunition.

We have no choice.

Do you think we are ready?

May, 1918 Already feeling imperiled amidst the violence and rising tensions in Russia, encircled by Red Army units that are openly hostile, the 50,000 legionnaires erupt in a revolt acting in self-defense.

The Czecho-Slovaks fight and defeat nearly every Red Army unit they encounter. A series of fire-fights explode along more than 5,000 miles of the Trans-Siberian Railway that summer – from Penza in European Russia, to Vladivostok on the Pacific coast, and then westward to Kazan in European Russia. Eventually, a bright, curving line appears across the continental breadth of Siberia.

The legionnaires posess the entire Tran-Siberian Railway, Russia’s metal spine, a distance equal to that which separates New York and Honolulu, or a territory of five million square miles.Day by day, week by week, in less than four months one city after another falls to the legionnaires.

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Novosibirsk Chelyabinsk Penza Syzran Tomsk Omsk Samara Krasnoyarsk Nizhneudinsk Vladivostok Ufa Ussuriysk Irkutsk Ulyanovsk Yekaterinburg Kazan Ulan-Ude Chita Khabarovsk

As Masaryk awaits a meeting with President Wilson in Washington, D.C., he tours America’s Czech and Slovak communities. The most significant event occurs May 31, 1918, in Pittsburgh, home to many Slovaks, most of whom worry about Czech domination of the independence movement. Given the impossibility of negotiating with the Slovaks isolated inside the Hungarian kingdom, Masaryk relies on American Slovaks for support. The Pittsburgh Agreement, which Masaryk signs twice during his U.S. visit, promises Slovaks strong and specific measures of autonomy in the new republic.

In time, these promises are ignored.

Pittsburgh, PA

This is so hasty!! It’s written in pencil!

What are they worried about? I’m half Slovak myself. What do they care – they’re Americans! Already there are reports of fighting by my boys in Russia. Chaos and failure pursue me constantly. Whatever it takes. As unorthodox as this looks, these substitute Slovaks hold all of the cards. I’ll appease them and sign it.

If 2 million Slovaks are to join with almost 7 million Czechs in this new country, the Slovaks will need assurances of some autonomy.

I must get this professor’s promises in writing for our Slovak kin trapped and isolated by this horrible war.

While Masaryk is traveling around the U.S., President Woodrow Wilson sits in Washington, D.C., making hard decisions about the fate of the Czecho-Slovak Legion. Their exploits have electrified the nation. The situation is further complicated in Russia. The French and British are demanding an Allied intervention, which President Wilson resists. Both countries are also in favor of smashing the Austro-Hungarian Empire into pieces – by granting the empire’s constituent minority peoples their independence.

The Oval Office, Washington, D.C.

Interesting that Masaryk is the leader of this Legion – allied with us and fighting strongly in Siberia. Siberia is where the French and British demand that we intervene, Masaryk is also the chief advocate for his people’s independence, which would destroy Austria-Hungary. I can hardly promise him anything, but Crane speaks highly of him. Hmmmm...

Perhaps, I can learn something.

Yet, how can we negotiate with Austria-Hungary to end the war if we propose to destroy the regime and its entire empire? They would fight us to the bitter end.

Masaryk gains a meeting with Secretary of State Robert Lansing on June 3rd, and finally sees President Wilson on June 19th, but both meetings emphasize disagreements. Wilson and Lansing are under strong pressure from London and Paris – whose armies have been battered for years, without yet much tangible U.S. support – to intervene in Russia and somehow re-open the Eastern Front. Masaryk tells both men he is against intervention in Russia.

Astutely, Masaryk points out that it will take at least 1 million soldiers to resurrect the Eastern Front, a fact overlooked by the Allies. Masaryk tells the leaders that his legionnaires want to fight in France, not Russia.

Lansing warns Masaryk there are no Allied ships available to move his men from Vladivostok to France, a problem that becomes increasingly vexing.

Professor Masaryk, I am sorry, but I feel duty bound to support the Allies on intervention in Russia. I just don’t know how to do that.

In distant Siberia legionnaires are fighting for their lives. President Wilson finally orders U.S. troops into Russia to appease the Allies – but he limits their mission to the rescue of the Legion and its continued evacuation toward Vladivostok. Behind his back, French and British officials pressure the legionnaires to turn around and march on Moscow, sparking a confused and ill-fated Allied Intervention. For the next two years, thousands of legionnaires fight Red Army units deep into Siberia.

We absolutely must re-open the Eastern Front before the Germans crush our armies in the West and occupy Paris – which we’ve already evacuated twice! If that means the Legion topples that radical Soviet regime – then fine!

Our troops will under no circumstances involve themselves in Russia’s revolutionary in-fighting – regardless of what the French and British do!

The Legion’s advance against the Red Army toward the Siberian city of Yekaterinburg in early July 1918 prompts Lenin and his associates to render a verdict on Tsar Nicholas II. The Tsar, his wife, Alexandra; their four daughters, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia; and their only son, the former heir, Alexis, are held in Yekaterinburg in a large home, surrounded by a stockade fence, called, “The House of Special Purpose.” At 1:30 a.m. on July 17, the sound of artillery fire grows louder; soldiers wake the family and four attendants, lead them to the basement, and line them up at one end of a room. Some sit, the rest stand. A moment later, nine Bolshevik guards enter, and their leader reads out a brief death sentence; he cites “the fact that the Czecho-Slovaks are threatening the red capital of the Urals – Yekaterinburg.” The Bolshevik soldiers then pull out an assortment of pistols and rifles and open up a furious round of shooting that fills the room with acrid smoke. The loud gunfire drowns out much of the initial screaming and moaning of their victims.

Meanwhile, the Legion takes Yekaterinburg on the night of July 26. The next day the legionnaires parade along the city’s streets amidst celebrations. The legionnaires are horrified, days later, to discover what happened in the “House of Special Purpose” to Tsar Nicholas II and his family.

I cannot believe the Tsar is dead. The Bolsheviks are animals!

And the Allies are liars! It looks like we aren’t going to France after all. Somehow, we are supposed to re-open the Eastern Front by ourselves. The trains have turned around. Allied troops are supposed to meet us somewhere out there soon, but I don’t see how . . .

None of us want to fight the Russians, but Masaryk says we must stick with the Allies.

This is a colossal mistake. We don’t have enough men, weapons, ammunition, food, not even a good medical corps. Where are the supplies and reinforcements the Allies promised?

I don’t want to fight Russians, I want to fight Austrians and Germans! Why can’t the Bolshevik’s Russian enemies, the White Russians and Cossacks fight them?

I suppose it is a good thing that Wilson is so concerned about my legionnaires that he dispatched U.S. soldiers to help them. Perhaps, something good will come of this, but the British and French are conspiring to keep my boys in Russia, which is lunacy! What will any of the Allies do with my Legion if they negotiate peace with Austria-Hungary and allow our Austrian oppressors to remain in power? Then what – will they send my boys back to face a firing squad? Am I to remain a fugitive on the run, never to see my home or family again???

Fall, 1918, at a restaurant in Washington D.C.

Pappa, are you going to eat those eggs or just play with them?

The gaps between Legion forces across 5,000 miles of the Trans-Siberian Railway finally close on September 1, 1918, when east-bound and west-bound legionnaires meet up outside Chita. The men rejoice that at last they can focus on evacuating toward Vladivostok.

Against all odds, we have conquered Siberia! We are the princes of this penal colony!

Perhaps now we can look forward to France, French women, and fighting the real enemy!

September, 1, 1918 near Chita, Siberia The Red Army continues to grow all around us, and the Allies don’t know what to do next.

But tonight, we are, stuck in the middle of Siberia...

You may be right, brother, but just this one night let’s forget our troubles and dance!

For all of our fallen comrades!

The White Russians won’t fight, the British and French conspire to have us fight the Bolsheviks, the Americans want to keep their hands clean, and the Japanese troops are just waiting for everyone else to leave!!

October 4th, 1918, as growing U.S. military might pushes the Germans and Austro-Hungarians into a final retreat, both Berlin and Vienna appeal to President Wilson for a negotiated peace. Wilson begins exchanging notes with Berlin – but not with Vienna. Meanwhile, Austro-Hungarian Emperor Karl is preparing a desperate “Federalization Manifesto” to transform the Austrian half of his empire into autonomous regions in an effort to ward off the independence movements.

Czech leaders in Prague demand independence, reject “autonomy,” declare recognition of Masaryk’s Czecho-Slovak National Council in Paris as a de facto government, and all 150 Czechs in the Austro-Hungarian parliament resign.

Yet, Masaryk and Beneš remain anxious that the Prague Czechs might create their own new regime – without them.

I have been working on this day and night, but my English is not perfect. I’ve never written such a document before. Please circulate this immediately among our American friends here in Washington.

We have to declare ourselves quickly!

This is the Czecho-Slovak declaration of independence.

The professor wants you to put it into good English.

It’s so good to see you here at the park, but I can’t talk, I’m busy working on a draft of a declaration of independence for the Republic of Czecho-Slovakia.

It will be a new nation in Europe, I need help; I need to re-arrange everything!!!

Come to my office. We can work on it there.

CzechoSlovakia!

Well, that has a nice ring to it!

The professor needs all suggestions today.

Please hurry!

Apologies for all of the changes. We do hope it is clear now

October 16, 1918, Washington, D.C.

Here, this goes before that other section.

I’m so thankful, but let’s move this section up a bit. And this – are you sure that’s right?

Dear President Wilson, We are compelled to make this declaration today because of the Austrian moves for peace and toward a mock-federation calculated to deceive the world. What the Emperor fails to mention is that – no matter what he intends for the Czechs – the Hungarians will never grant their Slovaks independence, yet we are one people, we Czecho-Slovaks.

The Austro-Hungarian Emperor is a drowning man, clutching at a straw.

I can’t make sense of this part.

Here – can you?

After the draft of Masaryk’s Declaration is re-written in English, organized, and revised he circulates it widely among his network of associates and press contacts. It is immediately publicized by newspapers around the globe.

October 18, 1918

On October 28, 1918 Independence from Austria-Hungary is declared. Crowds ďŹ ll the streets and Wenceslas Square in Prague to celebrate the birth of Czechoslovakia.

Czecho-Slovak people! Our ancient dream is realized . .

Meanwhile, despite the celebrations in Prague, the Legion is stuck in Siberia as an awkward component of the ill-advised Allied Intervention in Russia. While the men are happy not to be on the Eastern Front or trying to decipher the motives of the Allies,White Russians, Cossacks and the Japanese, they are still miserable, homesick, hungry and cold.

I thought we would be on a ship headed for home by now, not stuck here. We have finally won the victory, a nation of our own. Why are we still here?

Vladivostok, Russia, December 24, 1918

Did you hear the news? The Slovaks have joined the Bohemians and Moravians in a new republic called Czecho-Slovakia. God, I wish I was home to see it myself.

I don’t know how we can survive another winter.

I am so tired of this war. I would trade all the gold in the world for a soft warm bed, a hearty meal, and some peace and quiet in my life. I wonder what our home looks like now.

Vladivostok, May 25, 1920 The last of the legionnaires finally reach Vladivostok in May of 1920, and the last ship hired to transport them home, The Heffron, departs that September. The journey home is, long, arduous, and filled with hardships.

Brother, it is time to sing our sad song again.

I cannot wait to get home and see my wife and children.

I can’t believe he made it this far only to die of appendicitis.

I just want to be home, and if I never see another train again – fine.

Where is my home?

Where is my home?

Waters murmur across the meadows Pinewoods rustle upon the hills Bloom of spring shines in the orchard Paradise on Earth to see!

And that is the beautiful land The Czech land My home!

The Czech land My home!

Months Later, Josef Disembarks from a train in Bratislava. It has been more than six years since he saw home. While the station is bustling, there is no one to greet him.

I am so glad to be home!

Months later, Josef disembarks from a train in Bratislava. It has been more than six years since he saw

Petr Dusek, a fictional character in this exhibition, is a Czech who migrated to Tsarist Russia before the War. He is one of tens of thousands of Czechs and Slovaks who moved to Russia, a fellow Slavic country, most of them concentrated in Ukraine. Educated in a Prague gymnasium through the 12th grade, and bi-lingual in Czech and Russian, Dusek is employed as a bank clerk in Kiev, when he arrives in 1913. When the War begins, Petr joins the Russian Army, in part due to his feelings of Slavic brotherhood with the Russians, in part to fight the hated Habsburg regime in Vienna, and in part to escape punishments meted out to “enemy aliens” in Russia.

Dusek is one of 800 Czechs and Slovaks enlisted in the Česka Družina, a reconnaissance unit that can read captured Austro-Hungarian maps and interrogate Austro-Hungarian soldiers in the Czech, Slovak, German, and Hungarian languages. By 1917, about 7,000 Czechs and Slovaks serve in the Družina, and its members play a crucial role in persuading the Czechs and Slovaks they face in the Austro-Hungarian Army to defect to the Russians.

Petr fights in the Battle of Zborov, in Yekaterinburg in July 1918, and like the other legionnaires he travels to Vladivostok in April of 1919 to finally join hundreds of his brothers in 1920 on the long journey home across the sea. He ventures home to find grateful family and friends.

Josef Banik, a fictional character in this exhibition, is a Slovak who works as a baker’s apprentice in Pressburg, Hungary – now Bratislava, Slovakia – the largest city in the northwest corner of the Hungarian Kingdom.

With only three years of education, but plenty of “street smarts” from dealing with Hungarian authorities, Banik is a born skeptic. The young Slovak is drafted into the Austro-Hungarian Army in 1914 and serves in an infantry regiment that is, like many Habsburg military units, comprised of ethnic groups that do not always get along. His unit is 20 percent German, 28 percent Hungarian, and 51 percent Slovak. While the men cannot communicate easily with each other, Banik knows a little Hungarian, which was force-fed to young Slovaks, as well as most of the 80 German military commands all Habsburg soldiers are required to memorize.

Later, Banik is among as many as 400,000 AustroHungarian soldiers taken prisoner in Russia’s Brusilov Offensive of June 1916. The offensive decimates the Austro-Hungarian Fourth Army. The battle whittles the army from 117,800 men to just 35,000 soldiers in a mere four days. Grateful to be alive, he is stunned to learn that there are armed Slovaks and Czechs among the Russian soldiers who took him captive. Banik was recruited into the Česká Družina from his POW camp.

Banik volunteers for the freight car that is turned into an ad hoc bakery, and one of his most important tasks is to venture away from the train when it stops to secure flour, water, butter, fresh fruit and other ingredients to make baked goods. Banik is in Chelyabinsk in May of 1918 and he fights up and down the Trans-Siberian Railway with his brothers against Trotsky’s Red Army. He also eventually makes his way to Vladivostok, then across the sea and finally arrives home in Bratislava on a train. After being gone for six years, there is no one at the station to greet him. The rapturous crowds that greeted Masaryk in 1918 have moved on with their lives in their new country of Czechoslovakia.

Tomáš G. Masaryk is a philosophy professor and occasional member of parliament who leaves his family in Prague and goes into exile in December 1914 with his daughter Olga. He trades his polite, domesticated life for the tumult of international intrigue, war, espionage, treason, death threats, and revolution. He and his followers will hatch a global conspiracy, command troops in three nations and on two continents, and orchestrate a worldwide political campaign, all of which will finally destroy the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the ancient Habsburg dynasty.

Masaryk is both Czech and Slovak. His father is an illiterate Slovak peasant who works on a series of estates owned by Emperor Franz Josef I. His mother is Moravian. As a young man, Masaryk devours books, excels at school, and tutors the children of wealthy and powerful patrons. Before entering the University of Vienna, he renounces Catholicism, the faith of the hated Habsburg dynasty. He earns a doctorate in philosophy by age 26. The following year, he meets a young American woman, Charlotte Garrigue, and the couple marries in Charlotte’s native New York City in 1878. Young Masaryk adopts his wife’s last name as his own middle name. The couple has five children, one of whom dies in infancy.

In 1882, he wins appointment to the faculty of Charles University in Prague, a city to which he is a complete stranger until his 32nd year. He emerges as a spokesman for the Czechs and Slovaks during his service in the Austro-Hungarian Reichsrat (parliament) during 1891-1893 and 1907-1914.

He earns a reputation as principled, stubborn, and personally courageous, though he has more admirers than followers.

In spite of this, he cultivates key supporters. Among them are journalists, government officials, scholars, and philanthropists.

He builds connections in France and Great Britain, as well as the two countries with the largest Czecho-Slovak populations outside of Austria-Hungary, the United States and Russia. All four of these countries will eventually come to fight Germany and Austria-Hungary after World War I breaks out.

With World War I underway, Masaryk’s secret meetings with Allied diplomats in Italy are exposed, and by January 1915 he finds himself an international fugitive, leading an anti-government conspiracy, sentenced in absentia to hang. Hiding from spies and assassins in Rome, Geneva, Paris, and London, he keeps a loaded revolver close at hand. Using forged passports and secret messages to operate a worldwide network of couriers, he survives two suspected cases of poisoning.

Both his wife, Charlotte, and oldest child, Alice, are detained and interrogated by police; Alice is thrown into prison, as are a handful of his allies in Prague. His second oldest, Herbert, an aspiring artist, dies of typhus working among war refugees in the spring of 1915. Charlotte, his wife, is grieving, ill, and bereft of family. Their only son Jan, is serving in the Austro-Hungarian Army. He is threatened with execution for his father’s treason. Charlotte’s younger daughter, Olga is traveling with Masaryk. Charlotte, overcome by grief and stress, finally enters a sanitarium in May 1918.

Assisted by Czech Edvard Beneš, and Slovak Milan Štefánik, Masaryk gains the support of Paris, London, and Washington for the liberation of the Czechs and Slovaks. He formally unites the national aspirations of the Czechs and Slovaks by securing the support of American Slovaks in Cleveland and Pittsburgh, and drafts the first constitution of Czechoslovakia on park benches and in hotel rooms in Washington, D.C. His most important achievement, however, is recruiting 50,000-65,000 Czech and Slovak soldiers languishing in Russian POW camps to join what would become the Czecho-Slovak Legion. Masaryk promises the men that if they cross Siberia to Vladivostok, board ships, circle the globe to land in France, and fight for the Allies on the Western Front, then the Allies will liberate the Czechs and Slovaks from their unloved homeland, the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Edvard Beneš, born in 1884 is a devoted student

of Masaryk, a professor, and a statesman. Beneš eventually follows Masaryk into exile during World War I, leaving his beloved wife and partner Hana behind. He works closely with Milan Štefánik during the War. After Czecho-Slovakia is recognized as a new republic he is reunited with Hana. He becomes the foreign minister and represents his country at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. After Masaryk resigns as the President of Czechoslovakia in 1935, Beneš is elected and fills the position faithfully until 1938.

Milan Štefánik is born in 1880 near

Bratislava. He studies under Masaryk and receives a doctorate from the University of Prague. He eventually settles in Paris and works as an astronomer traveling around the world. When World War I breaks out, he joins the French Army and also works side by side with Masaryk and Beneš in order to gain international support for an independent Czecho-Slovak nation. He perishes in a plane crash in 1919.

Acknowledgments A special thanks to the amazing staff at the National Czech and Slovak Museum in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Without their brain child of an exhibition featuring comic panels about the Czecho-Slovak Legion and Masaryk I would never have gotten this amazing opportunity. I especially want to thank Stefanie Kohn and Gail Naughton for being such wonderful intellectual cheerleaders, visionaries, and cracker jack proof readers. I also want to tell everyone to go out and buy Kevin J. McNamara’s book, DREAMS OF A GREAT SMALL NATION: THE MUTINOUS ARMY THAT THREATENED A REVOLUTION, DESTROYED AN EMPIRE, FOUNDED A REPUBLIC, AND REMADE THE MAP OF EUROPE. It is the main source of information for this comic and it is a well written, well-researched historic cliff hanger. Kevin and I spent weeks and weeks working on script for this project.

He is a wonderful, generous, historian and collaborator; every time we spoke, I learned something. As for artistic inspiration to push this project beyond the boundaries thanks to Robyn Hepker, Forrest Meyer, Laura Formanek, Leah Wilson, Kaitlin Scholtfelt, Sara Jane Wick, Bruce Bendinger, and Nic Hartman. I also want to thank Dr. Don Ward, Rylie Kelley, and Jack Kelley for putting up with months of studio work on the kitchen table, too many conversations about World War I to count, and lots and lots of early mornings and late nights. Also a special thanks to my Mom and Dad for making me artistic and curious.Finally, I want to say thank you to my amazing University of Iowa colleagues, and especially Corey Creekmur and Ana Merino for turning me on to comics and Tim Tyson for turning me on to history.