The Czechoslovak Review/Volume 3/How Many of Us Are There?

How Many of Us Are There?

From the Československý Denník.

 

How many are there? That is one of the riddles which interested the world a great deal when the Bolshevik wireless sent out the first news of our appearance. At the beginning of June comrade Podvojsky wired to the Soviet of the Peoples Commissaries in Moscow: “Tomorrow I will smash the Czechoslovak hands, but within a few days later Podvojsky was removed, cities occupied by Czechoslovaks grew in numbers, thousands of miles of railroad came into Czechoslovak hands and Czechoslovaks increased in Russia far more rapidly than mushrooms after rain.

Everyone, friends and enemies, asked: “How many of them are there?” It was impossible to answer the question. I knew how many of us there were, when we left the Ukraine, I knew that a number of trains were filled at Penza with new volunteers, I knew that others waited to join us in Omsk, that another concentration point was at Novonikolajevsk, but I did not know how many there were of us all together. When people asked me I had to shrug my shoulders and look wise.

Of course the newspapers had to give some figures to their readers. One of the first papers which made a stab at it was Novaja Zizn which always wrote well of us and for that reason was later suppressed by the Bolsheviki. The editor knew positively that there were 201,007 Czechoslovak soldiers. I did not know the true number within thousands or perhaps tens of thousands, but the Novaja Zizn knew it exactly to the last man. Then other newspapers, burgeois and so cialist, made their guesses, and tens or hundreds of thousands more or less seemed to make no difference.

That was in Russia. Nor was it better in Western Europe. Of course the West took it in a systematic way; Austria-Hungary has so many inhabitants, there is such and such a percentage of the Czechoslovaks, Austrian prisoners in Russia were so many, therefore at least so many prisoners were Czechoslovaks, of those so many prisoners entered the Army, and therefore there are tens or hundreds of thousands, divisions or army corps of Czechoslovaks, or whatever the particular result of the calculation was. In truth nobody knew how many of us there were, and Paris estimated our numbers at 20 regiments.

When I returned to Russia I was ashamed of my ignorance on such an important matter and hurried to the particular office where one could find the true figures.

The brother to whom I put the question looked at me, half closed his eyes, smiled, then looked at the ceiling, nodded his head, scratched him self behind the ear and finally said briefly: “That’s a military secret.”

“At least approximately, quite confidentially”, I pressed him. “I cannot tell you to save my life. Na zdar.” I saluted and marched out.

But finally I got it. A short time ago I was on the Samara front and got a ride to Ufa in the car with Uncle from America, Miller.^[1] He was taking cigarettes and other trifles to the boys at the front. The news of his coming spread more rapidly than if it had been sent by wireless. At every station the boys turned up to ask for cigarettes.

“Where is your requisition?” asked uncle of the boys. “I can hand out cigarettes only on proper requisition, 60 to a man, not a single one more.”

“We haven’t got a requisition, but we will bring it right away”, was the answer returned by every applicant, and in a minute they were back in the car with a document. Uncle Miller examined it seriously, shook his head at it and sighed, but in the end went with the boys to the freight car and in a moment our ruffians with a smile as big as a plate dragged out from the car boxes of cigarettes, biscuits, etc.

This accidental experience suggested the thought that Uncles from America are not officials and that they have no secrets before the boys. So I tackled him directly. “Listen here, uncle, how many of us are there, according to your requisitions?”

Uncle Miller turned slowly to me; he is never in a hurry,—puffed at his pipe at least three times and then said in all apparent sincerity: “I don’t want to swear to it, but according to requisitions the first division alone has 110,000 men.”

So I got my figures and the military secret was now in my keeping. But on second thought the figures did not look good to me. Either Uncle Miller fooled me, or the boys got the best of him.

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1. The man referred to is the Rev. Kenneth D. Miller, formerly in charge of the John Hus Presbyterian Settlement House in New York; he has been working for more than a year with the Czechoslovak forces in Russia as Y. M.C.A. secretary.