Thanks to the contributions of Karin Bohnenschuh and Norbert Bambach we how have an outline of Jakob Wirth's POW experiences. His account can be found, especially, in the 1 April 1927 issue of the Banater Deutsche Zeitung.
A summary of the article follows with a bit of commentary on my part, where applicable.
[By the way as background, Jakob Wirth, from Neu St Anna, was a member of the 61st Infantry Regiment, The 61st was the Temeswar house regiment. Wirth was taken prisoner on the Eastern Front by the Russians.
Upon capture he was shipped to a prison camp in Siberia where he was employed in forestry work. This extended for two years and three months. At this point the Imperial Tsarist government had collapsed. Eastern Siberia was in total chaos with various armed forces vying for control. Among these were the Czechs-Slovaks of the Czech Legion which the Allies had been trying to evacuate and bring around to serve on the Western Front, German, Austrian Hungarian POWs who were trying to get back to their homes, varius Red and White Russian units, troops of an American Expeditionary force and Japanese units. The AEF had been despatched to the area in order to guard military supplies which had been sent to the Russia as aid during the war. Most of these supplies were sitting in box cars parked in sidings strung out along the right of way of the trans Siberian railroad as well as sitting in warehouses in Vladivostok. In so doing American troops penetrated into the interior almost as far as Irkutsk by Lake Baikal before finally withdrawing for debarkation. Nevertheless, they maintained a an extended presence to prevent the Japanese who followed from being able to establish a permanent presence in the Russian Far East. The Japanese tended to be mainly responsible for guarding the central powers POWs.]
Wirth continues :
In Oct 1918 the Japanese moved the Wirth group to Manchuria.where they remained for 3 months--------to January 1919. At this point the Japanese loaded about 12000 POWs onto two steamers which took them to Borneo The largest fraction were men from the Romanian areas. In Borneo they were employed in forest work and working in the harbor. In the course of the last year a group of 24 POWS, including Jakob Wirth were detailed to the island of "Zezille" to load coal On the return to Borneo they managed to escape and reach the asian mainland. This group included;
Szilagui, Alexander Klausenburg:
Kovaes Johann Klausenburg
Gelezan Nikoalus Kronstadt
They all set out together on foot to walk home. They were underway for six months and Wirth eventually reached Hatzfeld. From Hatzfeld to Arad where he was released from the army and left to Neu St Anna. He remarks that they were treated like slaves but I don't know if this is a general observation or if it just pertains to the Japanese. If the latter, it is a condition that American(Allied) POWs in Japanese hands during WWII can relate to.
More commentary on my part.
Having to walk back home from Eastern Siberia was likely much more common than we realize. Judging from the experiences of the Czech Legion. it occurred all too frequently even though the Allies had chartered ships to evacuate Legionnaires back to Europe.
An incident noted in a publication on the Czech Legion supports this view. There are many Czech descendents in the US states of Illinois and Iowa, A lady who grew up hearing her father tell stories of the old country, was especially taken by her father's accounts of serving with the Czech Legion and having to walk back from Siberia. She was, in later years at a genealogical conference in Chicago. There she attended a lecture by an expert from the Kriegsarchiv in Wien She was holding a picture of her father on her lap dressed in the Legion uniform She met three others with similar photos and stories of their relatives who also had walked home from Siberia.
One might conclude that walking back was not that unusual and likely extended to Germans,Hungarians, Romanians and others who found themselves similarly stranded.
Dave Dreyer