Prague, June 26 (CTK) – A list of fallen Czechoslovak troops, messages from the president and government, and a handful of soil were put into a memory box, which is to be placed in a reconstructed monument to the troops who died in the Zborov Battle 100 years ago, at a ceremonial event in Prague today.
The Battle of Zborov, now Ukraine, was the first major combat action in which the Czechoslovak legions took part during World War One. It played an important role in the developments resulting in the foundation of independent Czechoslovakia in 1918.
The Czechoslovak legionaries’ association organises a national pilgrimage to Zborov. Hundreds of people, including war veterans and leading politicians, will mark the anniversary on the battle scene near Zborov on July 1-2. The reconstructed monument in Kalynivka is to be unveiled within the event. The names of the killed legionaries will be written on the monument.
Dagmar Martinkova, from an association of Czechs from Volhynia, told CTK that an empty cavity was revealed in the monument during its reconstruction.
It turned out that during a pilgrimage held in 1927, on the 10th anniversary of the battle, messages from Czechoslovak authorities, a list of the fallen soldiers and soil from Bila Hora (White Mountain), now part of Prague, were put in the now empty cavity. The organisers of the present pilgrimage decided that similar documents would be placed in the monument.
The soil symbolised that the victory of the Battle of Zborov corrected the defeat of the Battle of White Mountain (1620) that fatally influenced the fate of the Czech lands for 300 years according to historians.
Apart from the Presidential Office and the Government Office, the Defence Ministry, the Czechoslovak Legionaries’ Association and the Military History Institute inserted their letters in the memory box at Prague-Vitkov Memorial today.
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