The story of the Czechoslovak Legion was one of amazing heroism and almost unbelievable feats. I had always heard that my father’s father was a member of this fighting force and was captured and served time in Siberia. Today, going through some old papers, I received confirmation from his obituary in a Cleveland newspaper.

In World War I, the Czechoslovak Legion fought on the side of the forces arrayed against Germany, in hopes that after the war, their efforts would result in a free Czechoslovakia. The unit to which Emil Paris Sr belonged did its fighting in Russia. When the Bolshevik Revolution occurred late in 1917, they fought for the Whites against the Red Army. As the Germans invaded the Ukraine, they found escape through Europe blocked and elected to fight their way across Siberia along the line of the Trans-Siberian Railroad to Vladivostok, from where they would find ships back to Europe.

Emil didn’t quite make it. He was captured by the Red Army and interned in Siberia for seven years, before he was released. During that time, my father Alex, my Uncle Emil Jr, and my Aunt Margit were on their own in the Tatra Mountains of Slovakia in the middle of the postwar famine, just trying to survive.

I have a few memories of my grandfather and his wife before he died some time before my brother’s birth in 1951. I remember his funeral, and I remember visiting him before Irma died in 1947. During that visit, I was given a toy boat. It must have been one of my earliest memories. I was two years old at the time.

My grandfather might have been heroic, but he was famed for being a mean man who once sued his son, my father, over a five dollar debt.

I am one of the three grandchildren referred to in the obituary, the others being Emil Jr’s children Emil and Peggy. My brother was to join that company in April 1951.