"We were marching again for a few days and we came to somewhere we shouldn't have gone at all. We had to run away, and when we came in for the evening, the Russians were not far away and we had to run away again. And so it went on for a whole week. In the last village we knew that we couldn't escape, that the Russians would take us. Our whole division - the whole division! We put our guns in the pyramids in the village. The whole division had only three or four guns. And we expected the Russians to take us. We were surrounded on all sides. I got an order with Haxa: 'Go and set fire to the last house in the village.' We came to the last house and it was a new house, a smaller house, and we opened the door and there was a young woman with a child, I think about two years old, and her old mother. I said, 'Mother dear, we're going to set you on fire.' She got down on her knees and called on all the saints not to do it. So I just went to Hartmann, he was such a scoundrel. I went to him and I said, Mr. Hartmann, there's a woman and a child and an old grandmother in that house. And he yelled at me: An order is an order and it must be obeyed! Oh, my God, we've had it. And the other house was old and empty, there was nobody there! So I said, it's no use, we have to burn it down. And the next day we were picked up. That was on the 16th of October. She had a pile of rye in the shed. Haxa and I took it out so she could eat, we took the rye out and we had to set the house on fire. I still regret it to this day when I remember why I did it. But I was afraid to disobey. But I shouldn't have done it. So I decided that I would leave that Austrian army at any cost, no matter how it turned out, maybe even to my detriment."
František Chytka was born on March 24, 1891 in Ořechov near Velké Meziříčí into poor circumstances. From an early age he helped his parents on the family farm. After graduating from the one-class school in neighbouring Ronov, he served with peasants in various places in Vysočina and South Moravia. In March 1915, as an Austro-Hungarian citizen, he had to enlist in the First World War as part of the general mobilisation. He fought with the 13th Hulan Regiment in the trenches of the eastern front, then fell into Russian captivity. In his memoirs, he describes the experience of a WWI veteran who managed to survive in barely imaginable conditions. After the end of the fighting on the Eastern Front, he witnessed events during the Bolshevik Revolution in what is now Ukraine. In the meantime, his father, grandfather and brother had died at home. On his return, he cared for his sick mother. In May 1919 he married Anastasia Vítešníková and started a family. František Chytka died on June 1, 1980 in Smolná near Jevíčko in the Svitavy region.
