Publication details
Česká stopa na soluňské frontě
| Title in English | Czech Tracks on the Salonica Front |
|---|---|
| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2024 |
| Type | Chapter of a book |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | In the last volume of the publication Od Moravy k Moravě III [From Moravia to Moravia III], published in 2017, the authors recalled Czech-Serbian cooperation during the Great War and its reverberations in the interwar period. It also published two studies that dealt with the Czechs’ military cooperation with the Serbian army. Nevertheless, the topic of Serbian-Czech military cooperation has not been completely exhausted. Czech volunteer participation in the Serbian army was crowned by the exploits of several hundred Czech officers and soldiers on the Salonica or Macedonian Front in the Great War, where Czech volunteers took part in the famous, indeed by Serbian historiography mythicised, conquest of the Kaimakchalan hill in the Nidža mountains, and the battle at the Black River bend in present-day North Macedonia, and, albeit to a lesser extent, in the definitive breakthrough on the Salonica front in September 1918, which contributed significantly to the defeat of the Central Powers in the war. In 1918, a substantial number of Czech volunteers from the Salonica front also formed a pillar of the emerging Czechoslovak army in France, to which Czech fighters from the Balkans were transferred. One chapter 127 in this collective monograph presents the ways in which the Czech volunteers reached the Salonica front, their work in the Serbian army and their lesser-known representatives; in some cases I describe their later fates after leaving the Serbian army. It also deals with commemorative literature written after the war by some Czech officers who served in the Serbian army. On the Salonica front, however, Czechs did not fight only as part of the Serbian army: several dozen men – their number is not known exactly – also served in the French Foreign Legion, which was part of the French Eastern Army, and of course, most of them fought on the opposite side, in the armed forces of the Habsburg Monarchy. The latter are also covered in the chapter. |