The recruiting commission’s table in Riga on 12 August 1915 was not just wartime paperwork: that day the first volunteers began to be accepted into the Latvian Riflemen battalions. Seventy-one men signed up on the first day; by the end of the year the commission had 6,292 volunteers. The order had initially envisaged two battalions, but the influx soon led to a 3rd Kurzeme Battalion as well—a large national unit bearing a Latvian name appeared at the front.

This happened in the summer of the First World War, when the German offensive had driven streams of refugees from Kurzeme and Zemgale into Riga and onward into Russia. The appeal “Gather under Latvian flags!” turned a military need for defence into a political and public event as well.