Enter the Czech Legion

The Zaamurets’ next owner carried it the furthest. The Czechoslovak Legion reflected the turmoil of the region’s revolutionary turmoil.

During World War I, nationalists in many countries fought to liberate their homelands from great empires. The Legion was one such unit. As the war in Europe erupted, ethnic Czech and Slovak residents of the Russian Empire saw a chance to turn Czechoslovakia — then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire — into a free and independent nation-state.

To prove their loyalty to the Entente cause, the emigres formed a militia and joined the Eastern Front in October 1914. When revolutionary Russia signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and pulled out of the war, the Legion had around 40,000 troops, many of whom had served with both the Russian and Austro-Hungarian armies.

The end of the Tsarist regime stranded the Legion in Ukraine as the Russian Empire collapsed all around them. Still passionate about freeing their homeland, the emigre force planned to travel to France and continue the fight.

Tomás Masaryk, the chairman of the Czechoslovak emigre government, traveled to Russia and secured Bolshevik and Ukrainian nationalist permission for the Legion’s evacuation. This would require an arduous, 6,000-mile journey to Vladivostok, where they would then sail to France.

There was one condition — the Czech troops had to swear to remain neutral. The legionnaires couldn’t fire except in self-defense. Those rules of engagement didn’t last long.

On Feb. 18, 1918, the Germans invaded Ukraine, and the Czech Legion was right in the path of the German advance. During the following weeks, the emigres fought a running battle across the country. They left behind 186 dead and missing. They took 210 wounded with them.

Escaping to Russia in March, the Legion prepared to head toward Siberia. But nothing in Russia would be that simple. The country’s railway network was under incredible strain.

There were more than two million POWs in Russia. So many, in fact, that they accounted for more than 20 percent of the Russia’s workforce. The transfer of the POWs back to their home nations was one of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk’s conditions. But the Russian revolutionaries needed every soldier they could get to fight the German armies breathing down their necks.

These tensions boiled over in May. At Chelyabinsk, the Legion lynched a Hungarian prisoner of war after he struck a legionnaire. The Chelyabinsk Soviets arrested the Czech station guards — who had restored order after the murder. In the legionnaires’ eyes, the guards were innocent.

Three thousand angry legionnaires seized control of the town, seizing 800 weapons from the local military commissariat. Leon Trotsky — who was trying to recruit the Czechs and Slovaks into the Red Army — was incensed. On May 21, he ordered the Legion forcibly disarmed and dissolved.

After months of uncertainty, the legionnaires held congress in Chelyabinsk and decided to take matters into their own hands — they would make their own way to Vladivostok regardless of Bolshevik attempts to stop them.

The well-trained, battle-hardened Legion became a counter-revolutionary force. One-by-one, their scattered forces took control over the region’s stations and rails.

They salvaged metal and guns to arm their trains and set about dispelling the illusion of Bolshevik control along the Trans-Siberian Railway. They hooked up with opposition forces such as the People’s Army of Komuch, and later the White Russian forces of the thoroughly incompetent dictator Alexander Vasilyevich Kolchak.

In response, Trotsky dispatched Zaamurets.

After Zaamurets fought the Whites along the Southern Front, the war train had picked up a second Khunkhuz-class railcar. But despite the communists’ battle experience, they failed to stand their ground against the Legion.

Fighting not only Russian Bolsheviks but foreign volunteers in Simbirsk, the Legion captured Zaamurets and renamed it Orlik, a.k.a. “Young Eagle.” The Czechoslovakians gave the train a refit, replacing the Nordenfelt guns with with three-inch Model 1902 Putilov field guns, for which they had more ammunition.

The Legion used the train to devastating effect, and the soldiers and their White Russian allies ruled the rails with an iron first from 1919 to 1920.

But the legionnaires eventually lost heart. The 1918 Armistice ended the Great War and 1919’s Treaty of Versailles created an independent Czechoslovakia. The Legion had a nation-state — at last — but they were half a world away, fighting a civil war that wasn’t their own.

In early 1919, the Legion’s retreat to Vladivostok picked up pace. The fighters even blocked the movements of their White Russian allies if they interfered with their transit. As the Legion retreated, they left the Trans-Siberian Railway undefended.

The Bolsheviks followed behind the retreating emigres, taking advantage of the opportunity. The Czechoslovakians handed over the White leader Kolchak, and later, several car-loads of Tsarist gold bullion that they had looted from Kazan.

In exchange, the Red Army signed a truce that took the Czechoslovakians out of the war.