CZECH FIGHTERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 218, 13 September 1940, Page 5

CZECH FIGHTERS.

SOLDIERS, AIRMEN. ADVENTURES IN THIS WAR. In our times there are every day more and more people who have been through extravagant adventures; but even today you could nowhere meet a body of men whose sum of adventures made such an impressive total, in relation to their numbers, as in the Czechoslovak camp in England. Here is a summarised account of the career of one of them, as given in the London "Daily Telegraph":— When hardly more than a boy he was conscripted into the Austrian Army in 1916. At the front he took the earliest opportunity of going over to the Russians. For distinguished service rendered in the course of Brussiloff's offensive he was given a commission. In 1917 came the Russian collapse and then the amazing trek of the Czeck Legion across Siberia. He reached Vladivostok, embarked for Singapore and thence got to France, where he fought till the end of the war. This year he resumed the life of adventure. In January he and some friends left their native country tc join the Czech Army in France. It took them three montlu to do so, with a dozen narrow - shaves at various frontiers. The way they went at last was by Constantinople and Syria, and they got to France in time for the German offensive. Fought on the Loire. The Czechoslovak troops did not see I the earlier phases of the battle, but had the grim experience of being thrown into the line on the Loire at a moment when France was undermined by despair. Two Czechoslovak regiments were incorporated in twt. different

French divisions in the Gyenne sector; but these melted around them in the face of an attack by German motorised units. They held up the German advance and rejected the orders of the French com- . maud that they should cease fighting and lay down their arms. After Petain's demand for an armistice the survivors began, a trek of more than 200 miles for the Mediterranean. One day they did 50 miles. Meanwhile, in London, Dr. Benes had made an appeal to the British Government. and arrangements were contrived in the face of formidable difficulties to embark the Czechs at Cette, on the Mediterranean. Two shiploads of troops who were already in the south of France were taken away. Then came the Franco-Italian armistice. The infantry from the Loire were still far from the coast and the ships would not wait. Some time all the details of those agitating days will be told in full. In the end, thanks to the British Admiralty and also to a French General—the Czechs' friend to the last— the survivors of the Czech regiments of the Loire Bet sail for England. Airmen's Escape. The history of the Czech airmen in France is a separate chapter. On June 17 (te day of Petain's capitulation) and the following days the Czech airmen did their best to get away, ; despite the hindrance they encountered; and a great many succeeded. Some flew to England in French machines. A British bomber, piloted by an Englishman, brought over no fewer than 35. Some flew to North America, and one landed somewhere in the Balkans. Many others came away by sea. Every town and village in Bohemia knows now of the presence in England of the Czechoslovak soldiers and airmen; and that knowledge, Dr. Benes said recently, is of an importance out of all proportion to the number of the troops. The rank and file of the Czechs are sturdy men. Determination and a great capacity of endurance can lie read in their faces. They command respect these representatives of a race second to none in the world for dogged patriotism. They have no complaints. They find England, an officer said, all it has ever been said to be, and more. "It is a rock among shifting sands," he declared.