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Accidental Army: The Amazing True Story of The Czechoslovak Legion

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Most of the action of this story takes place on a train. Fitting, because with every anecdote, interview and unearthed image, Accidental Army moves like a train. Its fast pace covering a slew of improbable heroes and ruthless villains. Only WWI and the Russian Revolution could have overshadowed the unlikely birth of a great European nation. But the story of the Czechoslovak Legion is simply too compelling to wind up as an unnoticed historical footnote. It's high time that this story had a proper examination. After all, it has so many fascinating elements. Spies. War. Underdogs. Not to mention treasure from the vaults of the Czar himself.

Accidental Army is that rare story that works as both history and entertainment. And it will be enjoyed by anyone who can't help but root for those who overcome long odds with little more than guts and guile.

My great -uncle served as a major in the Czechoslovak Legion,and I have always felt that the Legion's exploits have been politically suppressed and then simply overlooked, for too long.It's an amazing tale of heroism,political machinations and complex personal intrigues on the Trans - Siberian rail line, that invites comparison with Dr Zhivago and other great stories of all time. Hollywood needs to make a Big Screen movie about this! For now, Bruce Bendinger has done a great job of laying out the basic story on a very nice CD.It presents the interesting facts with wonderful photos chosen from the archives, and explains them with intelligently focussed text. I highly recommend it.

This film, footage, and story -- is simply amazing. I'm pleased that more people will be able to learn about this chapter in history -- as the Legion and the lives of these soldiers made a difference.

As is too often true, history is written by the "big-name" victors -- and it takes a few generations to tease out a broader view of reasonable historical accuracy. So many of the victims of conflict are nameless, forgotten and unheralded. But this has always been true -- few will utter our names in three generations.

Thus, this film and it's true-to-life message is inspiring. Inspiring because it's so easy to forget our history. Inspiring because it takes energy, time and resources to accurately remember. Inspiring because sheer survival is often unheralded. Freedom and economic advantage are noble causes -- but so are the simple bonds of family in just making it back home.

The story understands that in the end, many of us are pawns in the "big picture" -- but in our own smaller realm, we must decide whether we are ready to be the "heroes of our own lives". The Legion stepped up to the task -- no matter how confusing or mixed up! The film helps decipher this tension, confusion, and changing rules of war in a way that is understandable and thoughtful.

Most people have never heard of the Czech (or Czechoslovak) Legion. I have written two articles on this early 20th century band of freedom fighters with the help of research from the Czech Legion Project. The Czech Legion Project is a non-profit historical organization that strives to tell the tale of this incredible group. After years of effort they have put together an insightful 47-minute documentary entitled "The Accidental Army: The Amazing True Story of the Czechoslovak Legion."

The 2009 independent production utilizes the vast archives amassed by the Czech Legion Project to tell the `most amazing story you never heard." Commentators included Lt Col Mike Maudlin, USA retired (advisor to the Czech Army 2003-2006), and Professor Malynne Sternstein, PhD. The documentary was also assisted by the Czech consulate and included an introduction by Madeleine Albright.

The film covers in great detail the Russian Army's formation of the Czechoslovak Druzhina (a 12th century word which translates to Legion or "war band") at Kiev on August 14, 1914- only two weeks after the war started. The Legions World War I service and its expansion into a 35,000-man, two-division Corps by October 1917. The Allies convinced the Bolsheviks to withdraw the Czech Legion from their crumbling front and ship them via train 6,000 miles across Russia to Vladivostok where they would be transported to the western front and continue the war there. Some 9300 kilometers (5470 miles) of this trip was across the Trans-Siberian Railway from Moscow to the Pacific Ocean. This final journey was to take nearly three years and toss the luckless Czechs into the middle of the Russian Civil War.

The only issues I had with the documentary were trivial:. There is a gap in coverage from the capture of Yekaterinburg to the Treaty of Versailles. The fall 1918/spring 1919 campaign where the legion assisted in the capture of Perm and Kazan and the advance to the Volga is simply skipped. On July 22, 1918 they captured Simbrisk and the "Lenin"- Bolshevik armored train No. 4, which the Czechs pressed into service as the Orlik (Czech for Eagle). They took Perm in December, followed by Glazov and Kazan just miles from the Volga River and stood within a few hundred miles of Moscow. It was the first army to threaten European Russia from Asia since the tartars in the 12th century. The documentary also further states that the American units that landed in Vladivostok in 1918 were National Guard when in fact the first US troops in town were the 31st Infantry Regiment of regulars from the Philippines.


The most amazing quality of the documentary is the hundreds of amazing photographs from the Russian Civil War in Siberia that make up a priceless collection. I have more than 80 books on the Russian Civil War in three different languages on my bookshelves and I have not seen the majority of these pictures. The secret lies in several Czech family collections that are in private hands that were made available to the project. These coupled with the attention shown this subject that is often relegated to a footnote in history make the documentary worth watching.

Nazadar!

Read more at Suite101: The Accidental Army Documentary: The Amazing True Story of the Czechoslovak Legion | Suite101.com [...]

How many people - outside of longtime Military History readers, of course - are aware that for a goodly portion of the Russian Revolution, the easternmost leg of Russia's Trans-Siberian Railway was controlled by an ad hoc force of Czechoslovak soldiers taking the long way home? The narration in this documentary is somewhat elementary, but considering the difficulty in explaining who was doing what to whom without a scorecard amid Russia's chaotic transition from World War I to Civil War - the environment in which the Czechoslovak Legion was born and fought to survive - for the average viewer that approach might be a good thing. The surviving photos are remarkable, and the complete story itself even more so. This lesser-known facet of World War I and Czech history merits more attention, and any scholar of early 20th century history should find Accidental Army an eyebrow-raiser.

Review by Jon Guttman in Military History Magazine - October 2009

This product is amazing. Czechoslovak legions made the difference. The product itself suprised me with number of photographs on whose the story is based. Number of historical facts backs the contents of authors.