Czech School in Siberia

This volume in the Memoir Edition of the Czechoslovak Legionary Community is somewhat atypical. It is a compilation of various works by the legionary and teacher Václav Valenta, who, in the interwar period, was a well-known author of books and plays for children on legionary themes under the name Valenta-Alfa. The book consists of three parts. Texts about service in the Austro-Hungarian army, captivity, and legionary memoirs from various books and magazines, a never-before-published notebook from the prisoner-of-war camp in Shadrinsk, and the book The Czech School in Siberia. This part captures a little-known chapter of legionary history: the school for underage volunteers of the Czechoslovak army. These were mostly orphans who experienced the wartime anabasis with the legionaries, but after the withdrawal to protect the Trans-Siberian Railway in 1919, they were sent to the classroom! Valenta was its head teacher and, with his unmistakable humour, he chronicles its fate until their arrival in Czechoslovakia. The text is supplemented by many unique photographs.