Czechoslovak Legion evacuation ends

On 2 September 1920 the American transport Heffron sailed from Vladivostok with the last soldiers of the Czechoslovak army in Russia. It was the 36th transport, which, according to Czech studies, officially ended the evacuation of the Czechoslovak Legion from Siberia. According to Czech tallies the ship carried more than 1,100 people, among them some 720 legionaries. Russian studies say that the last soldiers of the corps left Vladivostok on 3 September. On 11 November the Heffron put in at Trieste. More than two years after the legionaries rose in arms against the Bolsheviks on the Trans-Siberian Railway in May 1918, their war in Russia was over.

The order to go home

The Legion, which in 1918 had taken Omsk and dozens of towns along the railway, grew less and less willing to fight for Russia’s causes once the world war was over. The first impulse for the evacuation came on 5 January 1919 from the Minister of War, Milan Rastislav Štefánik, who ordered invalids, the wounded, the sick and soldiers’ wives to be sent home. On 15 January 1919 the first ship, the Italian Roma, left Vladivostok with 139 people. On 12 August 1919 a delegation of the Czechoslovak government under the deputy František Václav Krejčí arrived in Siberia, bringing the order to evacuate the whole army. The government’s plenipotentiary Václav Girsa (PL) and the army commander, General Jan Syrový, drew up a detailed transport plan.

Before the legionaries reached the port, they had to pass through the collapse of White Siberia. In the winter of 1919–1920 they travelled east together with the retreating troops of Admiral Kolchak, and in January 1920 at Irkutsk they handed the admiral over to his enemies. On 7 February, the day Kolchak was shot, they concluded an armistice with the Red Army at the station of Kuytun, which gave them a free road east in return for leaving the Russian gold at Irkutsk. The last Czechoslovak train passed through Irkutsk on 1 March.

Ships from Vladivostok

According to the research of the Czech historian Jaroslav Vaculík, 67,730 people in all came back from Siberia, together with 1,641 wagons of baggage and goods. Soldiers made up 83 per cent, former prisoners of war and colonists 13 per cent and foreigners 3 per cent. According to another Czech tally, the evacuees included more than 1,700 women and more than 700 children. The Allies provided 21 ships, 12 of them American and 9 British. The Centrokomise, the Czechoslovak army’s self-help organisation, chartered another 12 and carried 9,683 people in them. Most of the ships sailed round India and through the Suez Canal to Trieste. Some took the route through the Panama Canal, and some legionaries crossed the United States and Canada by rail and then sailed on to Hamburg.

In May 1920 all the Czechoslovak units were already gathered in Vladivostok. On 25 May the American consul reported that the previous day the transport Sherman had taken almost 2,000 legionaries to Trieste and that about 13,200 men were still waiting to sail. On 24 August the ship Legie left Vladivostok, reaching Trieste on 12 October.

Homecoming

The government in Prague set 30 November 1920 as the day of the return of the legions from Russia. According to Vaculík, the last units of the Siberian army reached the country on 17 November. Some legionaries later felt unappreciated at home, even though a special law of 1919 was meant to reward their service. The graves of thousands of legionaries remained in Russian soil. It is most often said that about 4,100 soldiers were killed in Russia, although estimates range from 4,000 to 5,000. Many legionaries, such as Syrový and Radola Gajda, later rose to high positions in the Czechoslovak army and state.