“You cannot imagine what we looked like in the French army. First of all, the French in southern France did not communicate with us at all. It was unimaginable that civilians would even talk to us. Our pay was fifty centimes per day, that is three and a half franc per week. When I received this three and a half franc, I had to decide whether I would buy a bar of soap, or a packet of cigarettes for it. That was all. We had uniforms from WWI, I got riding trousers, a coat from Chaisse Ralpen, a cap, a winter coat, which smelt of mothballs. When I looked at the lining, it was brownish, meaning the one who was wearing the coat before me either died or was wounded… and the coat was too long for him, so he cut it shorter – this was the way we looked. Many of us did not even get shoes, and were walking in wooden clogs instead. I was lucky to have had my walking shoes which I had bought in England. I was even better equipped than many others, I even had my own sleeping bag. And in this condition and these uniforms – dirty and with fleas – we boarded that luxury ship bound for England. The English passengers onboard all clad in white, the same for the sailors. When somebody was giving us a cigarette, he would hold it on one end, and you would have to take it from the other – he was afraid he would get lice from us. That was the way we looked.”
(Interviewer) “Could you describe what silent killing looks like?” – “Silent killing? I think I still have some manual about it, somewhere here in my stuff.” – “Was it done with a knife, or with bare hands?” – “Both knife and bare hands. If you do it with your hands, the best way is to strike your opponent in the carotid arteries. Or to grab his head and trip up his legs –breaking his neck. Stunts like this.”
“I was earning my living thanks to my knowledge of English. I was even hired by the field gendarmes as an interpreter. Naturally, there were various problems with the Czech soldiers. First of all, none of these soldiers spoke English. They felt inferior. A Czech soldier had money to go to a pub, but he could not speak to the people there, he was not able to reply, and it was embarrassing. There were fights, in which the gendarmes got involved, and that’s where I served as an interpreter.” – “Do you remember some particular case, which you were involved in because of Czech soldiers?”- “This was typical: the Englishmen would say ´bloody´ almost after every word, it meant something like damned, blasted. Our soldiers quickly learnt that they were calling us ´bloody foreigners.´ And when a Czech soldier was sitting in that pub, and drank a few shots of whiskey, he became bold enough and when he heard the word ´bloody,´ he thought it pertained to him, he turned around and slammed the English guy in his face. The police came and in the morning we would be going with these field gendarmes and getting our guys from behind the bars.”
“The task of a tank was to ride with the infantry unit, to support them. I had a phone line led to the back, and whenever we were approaching the front, I did not stick my head out, for any infantryman could have come and say: ´Over there there is a machine-gun nest.´ I was the one to determine that place on the map, I directed the shooting, or was telling them where the target was. This was my combat duty.”
“In Cholmondeley Park the communists left the army. There were about five hundred of them – they signed off and left the Czechoslovak army. I remember them marching past us, when they were leaving Cholmondeley Park. As far as I know, the Englishmen gave them captives´ uniforms, and used them for various kinds of work. But I was not in touch with them any of them. Russia has not entered the war yet, and thus it was the ´imperialistic´ war. This was incompatible with communism, and that’s why they left – they were mostly the ´Spaniards´ among them.”
“What happened during this attack was that we were in one of the houses, and the Englishmen were in another one. We were more or less encircled. This English unit, or squad, was sitting in a vaulted baker’s oven. They had a seriously wounded soldier there, giving him first aid, he probably did not survive. We then retreated and I came back for these Englishmen, because I knew a safe path. I brought this unit back to our positions. This way their rescue was credited to me, and they have taken note of it.”
“I went through a paratroopers’ training and I expected to be selected and deployed in the Protectorate. They were taking us to various training centres. Above all, we had paratroopers’ training, about six jumps, some of it from a hot-air balloon, some from planes. Then assault courses, with units which taught us real-life combat…Long marches, outdoor survival without food, etc. Very strenuous training. They taught us silent killing and things like that... My worst experience was when they trained us how to enter a guarded house and take something from there, how to overcome the guards, to disarm them, kill them… only in practice, of course. This was the most demanding training, this stealth approach to somebody who was in the dark. The poor guy was standing out there and waiting for somebody to jump at him from the back. It was worse for the guy who was playing the guard than for the one who was being trained. Like in stories about the Indians…”
(Interviewer) “I would like to ask you: What did 1989 mean to you, and whether your expectations were fulfilled?” - “In 1989 there was the restitution when my family property was returned to me. This was a glass-cutting factory in Brodce, in Kněžice, in the Jihlava district. And overall, this turned into a disaster! Because the comrades had already got ready for me beforehand…” – “And did it fulfill your expectations?” – “No way, not at all! On the contrary, lot of malice was sparked here in Brodce because of the restitutions of property.” - “And did you expect that this situation would occur after 1989?” – “I did, I certainly hoped this would happen. I expected there would be democracy, a legal system… I believed it would be so. But I was disappointed. As I told you, I arrived there, and the comrades were already prepared for us in 1989, 1990…”
Jiří Horák was born July 27th 1919 in Poděbrady. He grew up in Brodce near Jihlava. He graduated from grammar school in Jihlava in 1938 and following his father’s orders, traveled to England afterwards. He was expected to learn the language there and gain experience that would enable him to manage the family glass-cutting factory, which his father had purchased in 1930, and which was flourishing during the First Republic era.
Being brought up under the influence of the Sokol movement and legionnaire literature, on March 15th 1939 he applied to the Czechoslovak Embassy in London as a volunteer for the future Czechoslovak army. He did not know, however, that he would have to wait till May 1940 to be drafted to the army. Meanwhile, he lost contact with his family in the Protectorate. Because of that, he stopped receiving the money he needed to live on and pay his tuition for his school in Ambry, Yorkshire. After being rejected by the communist leadership of the British Trust Fund, which had been set up by the British for political refugees from the Protectorate, he turned to another branch of the Fund in Manchester, where they eventually accommodated him in a dormitory. The only people he met there were German communists, who had fled via former Czechoslovakia to Britain, and as he says, he “could not stand it there among them.” Horák therefore went to London again, where he tried to enlist in the British army. There was no Czechoslovak foreign unit yet, and the Czechoslovak exile government at that time was still striving for recognition of its legitimacy in place of the abolished republic’s government. He did not join the British army, eventually he was taken care of by a British glass company, which had had business contacts with his father before the occupation of Czechoslovakia.
Jiří’s wish came true in May 1940 when he was drafted in to the army. He left with a transport of volunteers to Fort Agde in France, where the 1st Czechoslovak division was being established from January 15th 1940. After the rapid advancement of the German army and the fall of France in June 1940 he was evacuated by ferry to England together with the other Czechoslovak soldiers. After a short stay in Cholmondeley and Leamington Spa, Horák began his artillery training in Morton Morell. In 1941 he went through an artillery school for officers, from which he graduated as a military candidate. Then he applied for a paratrooper’s course, was selected, and underwent training in 1942. He was however not directly deployed as a paratrooper. On September 1st 1943, the 1st Czechoslovak independent brigade was reorganized with the Czechoslovak Light Antiaircraft Regiment No. 200 ‑ “East” into the 1st Czechoslovak Independent Armoured Brigade Group, and Horák´s artillery regiment naturally became incorporated in it as well. Horák was trained as an observer in the artillery unit, and he entered the invasion as a commander of an observer tank, in the rank of a sergeant-officer cadet. The tank crew, equipped with a telephone and a radio station, was to monitor the enemy positions, support the infantry units and coordinate the artillery and maneuvering operations of the artillery regiment.
On August 30th 1944, the Czechoslovak armored brigade group boarded transport boats in London and sailed over the Channel to the French shore. Due to disputes between the British command and Czechoslovak authorities, the brigade got to Dunkerque as late as the beginning of October 1944. In Dunkerque, Horák was a commander of a search tank and he distinguished himself when he managed to navigate a unit of English soldiers out of German encirclement.
The German garrison in the Dunkerque port surrendered on May 8th 1945 and four days later, the Czechoslovak armored brigade began its move to Czechoslovakia. The brigade was dislocated in the American occupation zone near Klatovy, and it appeared in a ceremonial parade in Prague on May 30th. In Prague on Vypich, Jiří Horák met his family for the first time in seven years. He received three prestigious military decorations: Czechoslovak War Cross, Czechoslovak Medal For Valour in Face of the Enemy, and the Medal For Merit. After the war he was offered to remain in the army, but he refused. He wanted to return to Brodce and to work on expanding the family glassworks, which his father bought in 1930. He has invested his entire soldier’s pay, which was paid to him subsequently - a total of 80,000 crowns, into this business. In 1948, the glassworks was confiscated by the communists and Horák was forced to earn his living in various ways - he worked as a cleaner of lathe mats, later as a truck driver. His position improved only with the arrival of the Prague Spring in 1968.
After 1990, the state returned his family’ factory to him in a very devastated state. Moreover, a local entrepreneur and inventor (who had been also an employee of the state-confiscated works in the 1980s) seized the key facilities of the glass-cutting factory along with an old water-gang and a turbine, and he intended to rebuild it into a power plant producing cheap energy. After 18 years of lawsuits, Jiří Horák is still not allowed to take over the family heritage with all that belongs to him, and to start operating the old factory again. For several years he has been trying to get the media’s attention to his case and to claim his rights, but to no avail.
He passed away on September. 14th, 2014.
Transport of Czechoslovak soldiers from the French shore to Gibraltar on a cargo vessel carrying coal (summer 1940) - Jiří Horák in the front facing the camera
Transport of Czechoslovak soldiers from the French shore to Gibraltar on a cargo vessel carrying coal (summer 1940) - Jiří Horák in the front facing the camera
