Cyklistické jednotky československé armády – Pejčoch Ivo (2017)

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the bicycle emerged as one of the products of the technical revolution and quickly improved. In recent decades, some armies began to use it, and during World War I, cycling units became an integral part of several armies. It appeared as a cheap and effective means for reconnaissance, special operations, or rapid penetrations into enemy territory, which also found its use in the interwar period. The Czechoslovak legions in Italy established the first cycling units, and this tradition continued in the interwar republic. Throughout the 1920s, the Czechoslovak army had cycling units within the cavalry and border guard units, and before the mid-1930s, they underwent extensive reorganization. The army then had five cycling battalions, which existed until the Nazi occupation. During World War II, cycling units were formed by the government army of the Protectorate and the army of the Slovak Republic, but the very last unit of this kind appeared within the exiled Czechoslovak army. With the end of World War II, a remarkable history of this type of weapon in Czechoslovak...