When World War I started, Andrew joined the military in the fight against Germany. During this war Andrew was shot in the shoulder and because he was wounded he was captured by the Russians and taken prisoner of war in Siberia. He remained a prisoner of war for quite some time. In fact so long that his wife Mary thougt him for dead. So in that time Mary had taken a hired hand. After the war was over, Andrew was released and walked home crosing several countries.
While walking home he had to be very careful because there was a revolutionary war in process. Andrews survival skills helped him out because not only did he have to hide and be careful not to be killed during this war but he also did not have any money for food. There was a time that Andrew came across a dog chewing on a bone, he took the bone away from the dog and then boiled it and made a soup to eat.
From the time he left to go to war in World War I, till the time Andrew had reached his home, seven years had past.
Back in the early nineteen hundreds when you hired a man to help out on your property, that man hand to eat and sleep in a seperate building from your home. The man that Mary had hired did not do this. In fact he ate with Andrews family at the dinner table. This made Andrews children angry. And later when Andrew had finnaly reached his home he became angry as well. It was very un-clear as to whether Mary had falling in love with this hire hand. Andrew tried to work things out with his wife. But later he had decided to got o America in hopes to start a new life and home.
Andrew went to Hnajne , France and boarded the SS La Savoie and arrived to the port of New York in New York, United States on August 6, 1922. He then traveled to Allegheny County, Pennsylvania where some of his brothers had already made a new home. In 1937 his daughter had joined him in America.
He was employed as a blacksmith by the National Tube Company. His daughter had always wanted to get her parents back together so both Andrew and his daughter worked hard and saved all their money for years, so when Andrew would retire they could buy a house then go back to Czechoslovakia in hopes to getting his wife and son and bring them back to America. But unfortunately it did not work out as they had hoped. On April 23, 1949, Andrew was walking home from work where he had worked a second shift. While walking, Andrew was hit by a motorcycle that was carrying two intoxicated youths. Due to the impact Andrew was pitched into the air and his body fell to the pavement about 60 feet from where he was hit. Andrew was rushed to the local hospital where medical personel attempted to keep him alive but at 11:45 p.m., Andrew succombed to his injuries. He had suffered a fractured skull, brain bruises, a fractured pelvis, fractured right ankle, and internal injuries. He had only about one year left before he was to retire and he and his daughter where to go back to Czechoslovakia to visit his family.
