This independent volunteer unit was primarily made up of South Slav Habsburg prisoners of war, detained in Russia, who had requested to fight alongside the Serbian Army.

The force holds a particularly significant place in World War I history due both to its intermingling of different Slavic ethnic groups as well as its role in the final military operations of the Salonika front.

[1] The unit was overwhelmingly Serbian, with estimates indicating that between 96% and 98% of its ranks consisted of Serbs, primarily from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Vojvodina, with a smaller contingent from Croatia.

[1] While Serbian soldiers formed the bulk of the enlisted ranks, the officer corps had a more diverse composition, with Croats and Slovenes holding a significant number of positions.

[5] However, seventy-five Czech officers chose to remain in Odessa alongside the Serbian volunteers, a decision that earned them the deep respect of their men.

[1] As part of the Russian 47th Corps under the command of General Zayonchkovsky, the First Serb Division, 23,500 men strong, was sent to the Dobruja front in Romania to assist the Romanian army fighting Bulgarian forces reinforced by Turkish and German units.

In the meantime, the Bolsheviks had seized power in Russia and decided to put every possible obstacle in the journey of the remaining 6,000 men, denying them the route to the West, forcing them to go via the Trans-Siberian to China to Japanese held Port Arthur.

In retrospect, tensions both on and off the battlefield that existed not just in terms of ethnic heritage but also related to economic class and political ideology, even while fighters faced a common enemy in the Central Powers, foreshadowed conflicts in the future nation of Yugoslavia.