In Diaz’s Victory bulletin the epic of the Czechoslovaks in Italian uniform

In the Victory Bulletin of 1918 which recorded the story of the «gigantic battle waged on the 24th of last October» which culminated in the decisive success of Vittorio Veneto which put an end to «41 months» of war against Austria-Hungary, supreme commander Armando Diaz records that 51 Italian, 3 British, 2 French, an American regiment, and even a “Czecho-Slovak” division participated.

Few in Italy retain the memory of this unity which today, also due to the spelling, seems like an exotic touch in that gigantic clash of powers which led to an epochal upheaval and that of the European map without solving many of the problems that had generated it. On 28 October 1918, the independence of Czechoslovakia was proclaimed, from the ashes of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, by Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk: a state that had never existed, which brought together the Kingdom of Bohemia, with finished Moravia and Silesia under the Habsburgs three centuries earlier, and Slovakia part of the Kingdom of Hungary. But the Czechs and Slovaks, enrolled in the imperial armies, had been fighting for years on the other side of the barricade in the name of Slavic irredentism.

Alongside the Entente to conquer the right to a homeland

Thousands had lined up for the Entente and against the central empires, forming what would become the Czechoslovak Legions: over 42,000 emigrants in the American army, 71,000 deserters and prisoners on the side of the Tsar’s armies and just over a thousand in the ranks of Serbia due to Slavic affinity, a thousand in the English army, almost ten thousand with France, and almost eighteen thousand with the uniform of the Italian Royal Army but with national insignia.

The initial distrust of the Italian military authorities in making use of the Czechoslovaks was overcome in the spring of 1916 thanks to the ability of the Slovak general Milan Rastislav Štefánik, one of the fathers of the homeland, and so the following year an organic unit took shape which in 1918 it becomes an authentic army made up of six regiments and divided into two divisions (6th and 7th).

On 21 April 1918, Prime Minister Vittorio Emanuele Orlando signed a “Convention between the Italian Government and the National Council of Czechoslovakian countries” recognizing the legionaries as a military corps of the Czechoslovak State and placing them in the Royal Army in two divisions entrusted to the command of the Italian general Andrea Graziani, previously known for his brutality in imposing discipline, who did not fail to prove it again by shooting 12 deserters on 16 June 1918 and arousing strong protests from Štefánik.

If taken prisoner by the Austro-Hungarians they were hanged as traitors

The legionaries’ baptism of fire took place in Losson in the Lower Piave with the Battle of the Solstice, on 19-20 June 1918, alongside the Italians. The volunteers fight with recognized valor and are those who risk the most: in the event of capture, despite being regularly trained fighters in uniform, there will be no mercy for them, as they are considered traitors. The Austro-Hungarian authorities will apply to them the same treatment reserved for the unredeemed Cesare Battisti and Nazario Sauro: the gallows.

And in June sixteen prisoners of war were tried and executed for high treason. Those captured in Fossalta di Piave are taken to Calvecchia di San Donà where they are hanged from horse chestnut and poplar trees. Bedrich Havlena is executed in Calvecchia on a scaffold made from a telegraph pole. The arm pole had given way, but contrary to all customs that called for a pardon, the Austrian Military Tribunal had the procedure repeated shortly afterwards.

The body had been left hanging as a warning for nearly five hours. Same fate for four of the five legionaries taken prisoner on 21 September in Doss Alto, on the slopes of Monte Baldo: tried in Ceniga for desertion from the Austro-Hungarian army and high treason, they were hanged in Prabi. They are remembered by a monument, and others have been created in Arco, Riva del Garda and Pieve di Bono.

Monuments and gravestones in Italy, an architectural masterpiece in Prague

The names of the places where the Czechoslovaks fought in the First World War are carved in stone on the superb façade of the Legionnaires’ Bank of Prague, a monumental Cubist building designed by Josef Gočár and whose richly decorated interiors represent an admirable example of twentieth-century architecture. It should not be overlooked that during the communist period in Czechoslovakia the legionnaires were opposed and looked at with suspicion, especially those who had fought against the Bolsheviks in Russia.

On the anniversary of the victory and the Armed Forces, November 4th, we must also remember the courageous Czechoslovakian soldiers who gave their contribution to Italy to complete the Risorgimento process of national unity and who opened in Vittorio Veneto what they called «the off to Prague” and conquer a homeland. With the uniforms of the Alpine troops they paraded proudly in Wenceslas Square, flags in the wind, to the right of the car with the first president Masaryk. General Štefánik, a Slovakian diplomat, astronomer and humanist, died in a plane crash on 4 May 1919 near Bratislava.

The Minister of War flew from Campo Formio to Prague on a Caproni with an Italian crew: the pilot second lieutenant Giotto Mancinelli Scotti, the pilot sergeant Umberto Merlino and the engineer Gabriele Addinti. They are buried together in Štefánik’s hometown.