ABSTRACT
The news of the Armistice was greeted by the recently liberated Czechs fighting in western Siberia with great euphoria. A spontaneous assault by the Omsk Czechs on the meeting of ministers proved an impossibility, protected as they were by the machine-guns of Ward's battalion. The Czechs viewed the replacement of democracy by an autocracy as being but one step away from re-establishing the discredited monarchy. Czech negotiators made immediate contact with the surviving Social Revolutionaries but the prospect of a counter-coup was nipped in the bud by the intervention of two personalities, Generals Gajda and Janin. A counter-coup could in all probability only have been orchestrated by the capable General Gajda. According to General Ironside the worst unit under his command was the American 339th Regiment which hailed from Michigan. The Commanding Officer of a battalion of the Hampshire regiment was relieved of his command for refusing to take his unit on operations.
