The Czech-Italian WWI Friendship Trail in Chyňava village (and an excellent minizoo): 2 km

• Chyňava is a village on the edge of the Křivoklátsko protected landscape area, just a few kilometers drive from Beroun. Most visitors will probably be coming to see the (excellent) minizoo, but it is worth taking the time to walk around the village to read about its intriguing history, particularly during the First World War.
• Scattered around the village are 11 multilingual information boards (Cz/En/It) which focus on the period from 1915 to 1919, when Chyňava and nearby villages were host to several hundred civilians who were forcibly evacuated from the Trentino area in (today’s) northern Italy. At that time, the Italian speaking parts of South Tirol belonged to Austro-Hungarian Empire (as, of course, did Bohemia).
• In total, some 75000 people were forced from their homes in Trentino in anticipation of fighting between Austria-Hungary and the Italy. Nearly half of these came to Bohemia and Moravia, creating a lasting impact on local communities. The Czech-Italian friendship trail in Chyňava explores this impact on one small Central Bohemian village. The following notes expand on a little of the related history involving one Chyňava family. For those not that excited by 20th century Czech history – scroll to the bottom of the section in itallics– it is quite a long section!
• There are several interesting local stories outlined on the trail, which also cast a spotlight on this remarkable period of geo-political history. The story of Štěpán Kšír (born in 1884) and his younger brother František (born in 1893), is particularly illuminating. Both brothers were required to enlist in the Austro-Hungarian army. The elder was sent to fight on Italian front and the younger brother sent to fight the Russians on the Eastern front.
• It seems likely that Štěpán was involved in the many Battles of Isonzo, fought between 1915 and 1917. These resulted in over a million casualties from both sides, with little territorial gain for either the Italians or the Austrians. On 5 September 1917, in the middle of the eleventh (and penultimate) Battle of Isonzo, Štěpán Kšír was wounded and lost contact with his group. He became one of millions of WWI soldiers whose bodies were never recovered. It took until 1936 for Štěpán to be officially declared dead.
• Meanwhile, by the time of Štěpán’s probable death in 1917, his younger brother found himself fighting on the opposite side of the conflict. At the start of the war, František Kšír was enlisted as a private in an Austrian regiment charged with defeating Russian forces on the Eastern Front. By the late autumn of 1915, the Austrian/German advance had successfully pushed the front line deep into Ukraine. Private Kšír’s regiment was entrenched, some 100 km to the east of Lviv.
• In September 1915, needing a change in strategy, overall command of the Russian army was assumed by Tsar Nicholas II. The Tsar was persuaded by his top general, Aleksei Brusilov, to launch a massive offensive against the Austro-Hungarian forces in Galicia (today’s northwest Ukraine). Whilst preparations were underway to launch the biggest offensive of World War I, skirmishes continued along the front line. On 10 December 1915, during one of those skirmishes, František Kšír was captured. He became a Russian prisoner of war.
• The subsequent conflict, sometimes called the Brusilov offensive, involved over four million soldiers. Half of these were killed, captured or wounded during a period of just four months in 1916. It was the single bloodiest operation of World War I, eclipsing the losses of both the Somme and Verdun. Although considered a Russian military success, the dramatically high casualties contributed towards increasing war weariness in the capital, Petrograd, where food shortages were also causing serious discontent. In February 1917, revolution broke out in the capital, which led a month later to the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II.
• František Kšír was probably fortunate to be languishing in a POW camp throughout 1916, thus avoiding the huge losses of the Brusilov offensive. But his war was far from over. From the very beginning of WWI, small numbers of Czech and Slovak emigres, seeking independence for their country from Austria-Hungary, had been permitted to join the Russian army. After the abdication of the Tsar, the Russian Government finally gave permission for Czech and Slovak prisoners of war to be recruited into the newly created Czechoslovak Rifle Brigade. This force subsequently became known as the ‘Czechoslovak Legion’. On 18 April 1917, František Kšír took up the offer of release from his POW camp and was duly enlisted as a Czechoslovak Legionary.
• On 2 July 1917, the Czechoslovak Legion fought its first major engagement, overcoming a numerically superior, entrenched Austrian force in the Battle of Zborov. The battle took place just a few kilometers from the spot where František Kšír was captured, 18 months previously. The was the first significant public success for the Legion and it gave a huge public relations coup to the exiled leader of the campaign for Czechoslovak independence, Professor Tomáš Masaryk, .
• By the summer of 1917, the Russian army had begun to lose cohesion and discipline, due primarily to the loss of belief in the command structures and the growing influence of the anti-war Bolshevik faction. Despite isolated successes such as at Zborov, a planned summer offensive fizzled out. The October 1917 revolution (which brought the Bolshevik faction into power) effectively spelt the end of the Eastern Front. Under pressure from advancing German forces, Russia finally withdrew from the war on 3 March 1918, conceding control of the whole of Ukraine, Poland, and all the Baltic States to Germany.
• However, for František Kšír (who was now a Corporal) and his fellow soldiers in the Czechoslovak Legion, the war was still not over. The Legion, which now numbered over 40,000 troops, was stuck in northern Ukraine and at risk of being encircled by the rapidly advancing German army. Their only realistic escape was eastwards, into the heart of Russia. However, they first had to avoid the Germans.
• On the 8th of March 1918, the Legion was forced to defend the critical rail junction of Bakhmach from the onslaught of the German 224th and 91st Infantry Divisions. Motivated by the knowledge that, as traitors to Austria-Hungary, they would be immediately executed upon capture, the defenders held their ground. After six days of fighting the legionaries prevailed. The Germans agreed to a truce, allowing the Czechoslovak forces access to the rail network heading east.  
• František Kšír and the rest of the Legion boarded their armored trains and began a 6,000 mile journey along the Trans-Siberian railway. They were heading for the only available Russian port, Vladivostok, on the Pacific coast. The plan, devised by Tomáš Masaryk, was for the now famous Legionnaires to rejoin the war effort as part of a Czechoslovak army in France. It was a journey that was to take František Kšír over two years to complete. By the time he returned to Europe, World War I had been over for a year. Nevertheless, the Legionaries’ epic journey across Russia became a major source of national pride.
• The evacuation was delayed by the poor condition of the railways, insufficient trains and numerous disputes with local soviet authorities. By May 1918, trains carrying the Czechoslovak soldiers were strung out across the whole length of Siberia. In one spot, a violent dispute broke out between legionaries heading east and Hungarian prisoners of war heading west. The Russian Commissar for War, Leon Trotsky, gave the order for the Legionaries to be disarmed and arrested. This triggered an armed conflict with the Bolshevik regime which in turn resulted in a fragile alliance between the Czechoslovak Legion and the White Russian forces still fighting in the south of the country.
• Over the following months the Legion defeated the sparse Bolshevik forces and gained control of the entire length of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Remarkably, they also captured all the major cities in Siberia. One of those cities was Ekaterinburg, where Tsar Nicholas II and his family were kept prisoner. The Legion was just days away when the order came to execute the Tsar and his entire family on the night of 16 July 1918.
• The Bolshevik Red Army gained strength towards the end of 1918 and began to recapture lost territory. The 28 October 1918 declaration of the independent state of Czechoslovakia only increased the determination of the Legionaries to return home. However, it took a further year before the first boat carrying Czechoslovak soldiers was able to leave Vladivostok.
• Throughout 1919, the Legion was required to protect the Trans-Siberian railway, the sole remaining supply route for the White Army. The dynamics of the conflict during 1919, involving two rival White Army factions and several Allied expeditionary forces (including a large Japanese contingent), each with differing strategic objectives, was extremely complex and no doubt frustrating for the majority of the Czechoslovak Legion, who just wanted to get home.
• Finally, the commanders of the Legion signed an armistice with the Red Army on 7 February 1920 and were obliged to abandon the leader of one White Army faction – Kolchak – to the Bolsheviks. This was against the wishes of Allied forces and resulted in accusations (by the White forces) of betrayal, as Kolchak was immediately executed. However, the armistice did enable the remaining Legions’ trains finally to reach Vladivostok. Ships from the port carried the soldiers (whose numbers had now swelled to over 60,000) home on a variety of ocean routes, including through the Panama and Suez canals.
• It is not exactly clear which route František Kšír (who was now a corporal in the Legion) took home. What is clear is that he arrived back to his newly created country, Czechoslovakia, by the early summer of 1920. Corporal Kšír was demobilized on 10 June 1920, returning to his original farming profession in Chyňava. František Kšír died thirty years later, in June 1950.
• This could have been the end of the story, but there is a remarkable postscript to František Kšír’s journey. On 9 May 1945, some twenty five years after František Kšír’s return home, the village of Chyňava was the setting for some of the last fighting seen in Bohemia during WWII. The skirmish involved motorized units of the German army who were trying to avoid capture by the Red Army by retreating towards the American forces stationed at the demarcation line, near Plzen. The fight was triggered by local Czech partisans who attempted to disarm the German soldiers. The partisans were aided by a group of Russian solders belonging to the Russian Liberation Army (the so-called ‘Vlasovites’). These were mostly Russian prisoners of war captured on the Eastern Front, who subsequently joined the Nazi ranks to fight for a ‘free Russia’. So, not dissimilar to the Czechoslovak legionaries 25 years previously.
• In the Spring of 1945, when it was clear Germany would lose the war, the Vlasovites – in a desperate bid to avoid retribution by the Red Army – switched sides again and began to fight against the German occupiers of Bohemia and Moravia. A section of Vlasovite soldiers arrived in Chyňava at the end of April 1945. At least one of them stayed in the house of František Kšír.
• Six of those Russian soldiers died that May morning in the Chyňava firefight. It must have have been a déja vu moment for František Kšír. Did he wonder then about the remarkable journey he had been on? An Austro-Hungarian soldier fighting Russians in 1915, internment in a Russian Prisoner of war camp throughout 1916, a Czechoslovak legionary fighting Germans alongside Russian forces in 1917, and then fighting those same Russian comrades in the Civil War of 1918 and 1919. He spends two years crossing Siberia on an armored train, traverses the globe in an ocean liner, and then, some 25 years later (in a remarkable case of history repeating itself), Corporal Kšír finds himself fighting Germans once again, alongside Russian soldiers who, like him, had switched allegiance at least twice! Yes, quite a journey.
• If you have read this far, well done! All that remains to be said is that the walk around the village is quite short – not much more than a kilometer. The Friendship trail is unmarked but there are minimaps on each board. Do not miss the minizoo, which has a surprising variety of animals, some of which can be fed. It is open year round (at least at weekends). For refreshments, there is a pub near the village pond and there is usually a snack bar open inside the zoo.

Note: click ‘Show on map’ above to go to a full screen version directly on the mapy.cz site. This can be used for online navigation, saved or exported as a GPX file

Directions

• Chyňava can be reached by frequent buses from Beroun. There are various parking spots along the Malá strana street, including next to the church
• The start of the Friendship trail is on the far side of the pond, and is best followed simply by using the minimaps on the info boards