The majority of the soldiers in the 812th Battalion legion were drawn from the ranks of the Red Army, prisoners of war who had opted to fight for the German Army rather than face the brutal conditions of the Nazi POW camps,[5] though a number of Armenian veterans who had escaped to the United States after World War I also came back to Europe to join it.[6]Command of the unit was given to a former Defense Minister of Armenia, General Drastamat Kanayan (Dro).