Our village had built a small school. They taught us in Polish language, not in Czech, because we did not have a Czech teacher. It was a small village, only 46 houses. We were taught in Polish only, then, after the Russians came, in Ukrainian, then the Germans came, so we were taught in German. I was taught in German for not even a year. Then I did not attend school any more, I was fifteen years old.
There is nothing left after our house. We had a bigger farm there, but a co-op farm had been built, so they built sort of calf shed there and the house had been destroyed. My wife had been twice on a tour there. I had been there only once. We had been to Luck by car, we tried to get home from Luck, no way, they did not let us. It was in year seventy-some or sixty-some, I cannot remember, but it does not matter, there was no way to let us drive to the village. So we went by bus, a Russian one. We had to go about two or three kilometers to the village, there lived my cousin’s daughter. He is dead, but his daughter got married there, so she stayed there. We went to visit them. We got at least into that village by that bus, we even had to bribe the driver to drive us to that village. It was such a rule there; one got everything by bribery.
Near Olomouc, tank commander Pluhař was injured. I got into Pluhař’s tank and we headed for Olomouc, it was such a… At eight o’clock the Germans capitulated, but they still fired, so that we could not go through, such a fear they had. We crawled across the open terrain along a trench and the men with tanks hurried through the open terrain at full speed. There we got in the tanks and headed for Olomouc. I said, at last let’s not get killed. So we made it, that they hurried at high speed. The open terrain was, say, 50-60 meters long, where the Germans aimed. So we got to Olomouc and the morning after we set up for Prague.
We went through the town, all night we went, two German tanks we – did not destroy! But as we saw something humming in the darkness, we served them some grenades. After the sunrise we came to them, the tanks were empty and intact. One of them crashed into a tree and the second crashed into the first one – as we fired, they tried to escape. But there was nobody, nobody was killed, but we caught the tanks.
Especially our history shall not be faked. Especially people shall believe in that. We went bodily to fight for our country. Life was worth nothing for us but to make Czechoslovakia free. Nowadays even senators are against that – they help them Nazi Germans that murdered nations. They chatter that Hitler did everything. Well, the soldiers fired, not Hitler, damn it! Hitler was guilty of course, but the soldiers didn’t need to do that that way that they did it. We never fired at regular people. Although I have heard many times that Czech soldiers shot in western Bohemia – I don’t know that someone would have shot regular German civilians. I cannot understand it and I don’t know, well, I don’t believe in it. If somewhere something – what the guardsman did, they did. But that were such times. Someone must know what the people experienced. Someone who experienced something didn’t do that – but mostly someone who didn’t experience much, they only revenged upon German people.
(Would you fight again?) Well, I’m old and deaf, but if need were, I would.
We were much welcome, people threw sausages for us, they brought us beer, that was the first beer we drank there. Suddenly someone rushed in: the Germans mess up at the railway station. So we rolled to the station. As the Germans said the tanks arriving, they ran away. Imagine, all along the road, thousands of German soldiers, tanks, cars, foot-soldiers. We stopped the convoy, because we needed to go through. It was impossible because the road was full of that people. We had to go aside, maybe seven of us set up for Prague from Olomouc; Prague called for help. We set up in the morning, but it wasn’t that simple. It was on the eighth or ninth in the morning, Prague had called for help even sooner, as we were still there. In Litomyšl we took over the Germans. That wasn’t simple as well, two of us made it to Prague, the others got left behind. On the ninth we went all day till 4 a.m. It seemed that we could rest for a while, but there were German tanks behind us. So we went non-stop – three of us now, and the German tanks behind us and nobody else around, no foot-soldiers nor something. Only three bare tanks, we had not even a machine-gunner. We rolled three bare tanks to Prague, one after another. We refueled at night, enough for the way to Prague. We slept a little as well and arrived at Prague on the tenth at eight o’clock.
In Štěpánkovice, I found my brother. He was injured, he served at the machine gun, he his arm was shot through. When at hospital, the Russians mobilized him, so he got to the Russian IS, them heavy Stalin-tanks. There he served for half a year. Then, after we met, he sought after us, but we did not serve together, I was always somewhere else and he was somewhere else. I had never seen him all that time, but in Štěpánkovice.
My brother lived here in Suchdol, we had a farm down there. It was a bigger farm, for us two together, so I came to him. He was in Žatec region and they sent him here to Moravia. We were the fifth holders of that farm, there were three pigeons and one cow, that was all we got with that farm. So we farmed. In 1950 my brother joined the collective farm, but I didn’t want to join and I argued. The foreman said, that they stand me against the wall like the Russians did. I said: So I would die at once, I’m not going to die slowly. Because we knew how was the kolkhoz, we were born near one of them. And then I was neighbour of that foreman that quarreled with me. He is dead now, poor him. God let him rest in peace.
We arrived at Prague Castle gate. Me and another one, it was Šerák from neighbour village. There was still gunfire in Prague. The Germans did not fire at us soldiers that much, but they fired at the guardsmen with red bands on their arms, somewhere from above stocks. When we got into the castle, it was quite quiet, everything there was messed up, drawers were pulled out, documents were scattered all over the offices. Somebody was afraid of something. Interestingly, we said to us, there was nobody in there, but all the drawers, all the shelves, those documents, that all was messed up, somebody must have searched for something. We stood at the castle till evening, then we moved – more tanks arrived – to Měcholupy. We stood on the football field in Měcholupy, then we went to Prague for the parade.
We followed a trace of German tanks. Suddenly we saw them tanks, so we started to fire at them. One shouted that it’s burning, men jumped out of another tank, we got the third shot. The commander got shot into his head and fell on me. (There the driver sat, the gun layer sat above him, above you the commander sat, there was the loader and the mechanic was at the front machine gun.) Commander Mrázek was dead instantly … as it blew up, the splinters wounded my whole back. The driver released the brake, as we were on a hill, we went down the hill and there they took me out of the tank. They tried to undress me, because I was bleeding, but they ripped off a sleeve of my coat. I came to the hospital without the sleeve, there was our clothing depot – I was glad that I had my pistol with me, that I didn’t give it away at the hospital but hid it – there was our clothing depot – Jews did such things – he didn’t want to serve me, because I didn’t have that sleeve of the coat. We had yet a quarrel, I drew my pistol, say, if he said something, I would have dusted him off. So he gave me an English jacket.
We made it to city of Wodzisław, or Loslau was it called. There was a railway station near the city. We stood on the road, the railway was over there – suddenly I see at the guardhouse – a panzerfaust aiming at us! I had no time to wait, else I could not hit him, I turned the machine gun and the cannon, the whole turret. It just blew up and the road was clear. He fired as well, but we were far enough, so the panzerfaust did not hit our tank. Then a German train arrived at the station, everything started to run. That was a war, you know, words are not enough to explain it now. Suddenly we saw an armoured train approaching the station through a valley from Loslau. There were seven of us at the road. We started firing, whoever saw it first. As they heard the fire, it went back. As it went through the valley, we hit its back a couple of times, but eventually we found it in the city of Loslau. There we captured it.
We headed for Stará Bělá, from Ostrava to Bělá Forest, there were Germans running back, so we fired on them a little. We got into a street – there was a road, one tank was over there, I was probably the second one. There was a tree, and there was a house, close to the house, I got off and said, let’s go into there to not be seen. We hardly stopped, suddenly we got three shots on the side. They were not inflammable, they only got through, but it started to smoke, I saw the men jumping off. Nothing happened to me, I was only deafened, but it cut off the commander’s turret. Say, if the gun layer was there, he would have had lost his head.
It went slowly in the mountains, only scarcely there was shooting, we stood in defence. When the front got broken through eventually, I mostly delivered food in a light tank at night for the tanks at the border. I was told that the road was clear and that we could go as far as the church in Barvínek, where four our tanks stood. So we went – quite fast we went – suddenly somebody waved a red light – what’s the matter? – I stopped the tank. About 2-3 meters further we would have fallen off a bridge. The road was clear and we could go? There was a Russky who said: no way, be quiet, stop, you must go back slowly and then that way around, else you cannot make it at all. Because after the bridge, about 50 or 100 meters, Germans had their trenches; we did not know about them. But I made it to the tanks, to the men, I delivered everything for them.
Valerian Klaban was born on 29 March 1926 in Volhynia, then Polish lands. As a child he, as well as his two brothers and one sister, were brought up to Czech patriotism. Their father was a legionary. In 1939 the territory had been captured by the Soviet Union, then by the German army. When the Red Army arrived again, he voluntarily joined the Czechoslovakian army. For one month he did his training as a wireless operator, then he did a tank training for two or three months. After the training he went to the front. He mostly served with tank commander Janek. From Polish Krosno he advanced to Dukla, then to the Slovakian border. He stayed at Stropkov for a long time. He started the Ostrava ops from Kežmarok and proceeded via Poland. At Raciborz he was injured and stayed in a hospital for two or three weeks. In Štěpánkovice he met his brother, then he found his unit on 29 April 1945. He survived well the Ostrava ops. On 8 May 1945 (the day the Germans capitulated) he went through Olomouc, heading for Prague. He reached retreating German troops near Litomyšl on the following day. Seven tanks left for Prague from Olomouc, but on 10 May only two reached Prague. After Prague was liberated, he returned to Ostrava region to defend Bohumín against the Polish. After the war he served at Hranečník in Ostrava. He left the army in January 1946 after the tanks moved from Hranečník to Milovice. His brother and he were given a farm in Suchdol nad Odrou, but in 1950 he was forced to join the collective farm. He lives in Suchdol to this day.
