English Translation

49a -09 - VI. Our soldiers. Already in the first years of the war it was clear to our ordinary people that we would win the war not only through sympathies and dollar contributions. They felt the human duty to go with the weapon in hand against the enemy, very deep, the enemy who had brutally slapped all humanity in the face. At that time, these events in America, as long as they did not enter the war themselves, were dependent only on Canada, and so three hundred Czech and Slovak boys crossed the Canadian border at the call of their friends and joined the Canadian Czechoslovaks to form the 223rd battalion together with them in Portage la prairic, Manitoba. They were members of the small branch of the Czech National Association" in the Canadian settlement Michel-Natal, far away from the icy north-west of British Columbia, simple miners somewhere from Dux, who were the first to report to the battle. They then rushed to the help of Cisař's call for volunteers from the United States. They were mainly members of the Sokol from Chicago. On 1 April 1917, with the rest of the army leaving their military camps in Canada, the "Czech National Union" from Chicago bids farewell to them and Josef Tvrzický hands over a flag with a memorial letter in which it says: "The Czech National Union sends you the flag of the country in which you were born, fight like men, be the bravest between the braves, so that you will be worthy of your brothers, who fight for humanity and civilization in the other armies of the Allies, for the liberation of Bohemia. Fight a good fight and return as a victor." Our boys then fought in Flanders and the first wounded was brother Olic from Albert in Canada, the first Gefallene was brother Nedělka from Houston in Texas. Among these lavish boys belong also the brave volunteers of the Canadian army, Fráña Klepal and Adalbert Linhart, who somewhere on the - 61 -