A.K.: "Well there was defence, and barbed wire obstacles. Luckily there was no mine field, otherwise we would have died. We crept under the wire barriers, and reached the first trench. The Russians of course, when they saw us, immediately called: 'Halt!' so that we raised our hands. That means, we did so. Two soldiers jumped out, right, with machine guns, they surrounded us, right, and brought us to the command of the unit - a troop perhaps?" Interviewer: “What happened in the first minutes when you were captured?”
A.K.: “Well they started to interrogate us generally, but then they ordered us to a regiment, perhaps - or what kind of unit was it. There were two officers who subjected us to interrogation. They asked what was the number of the unit we came from, which Hungarian town we came from, how were Hungarians treating us – because we said we were Transcarpathian Ruthenians of course. And they said: ‘What kind of Ruthenians? You are Hungarians!’ Well we insisted we were Ruthenians and that we belong to the Czechoslovak Republic. And they replied: ‘ Czechoslovak Republic does not exist!’”
"So I was then severely wounded in the area of Vyšný Komárnik. The soldiers provided help, of course, they called stretcher bearers and brought me to the battalion medical unit. They bandaged the wound, of course, and transported me to the brigade medical unit. There, they only cleaned the wounds. I was wounded on both legs, I absolutely could not walk, well they only provided cleaning the wounds and told me I would be transferred into the rear of the war zone. So they transported me to Sokhumi, into the Caucases, by train. Again, it took the train almost two weeks before we arrived. And when we reached Sokhumi they placed me in a hospital room along with three of our injured officers who had just been ordered there from the west."
"It was practically after the fighting at Sokolovo, it was after the fighting for Kiev, so there (in Buzuluk) was only a liquidation group. They brought us there because they had not known the unit would not be there, so they got an order afterwards that they would transfer us into the reserve regiment into Yefremov. So they started to do so. We only reached Yefremov on 21st March, right, because of those columns which were leaving the front with the wounded, tanks which were going to the front, the units were transferred, and so the train sometimes stood in the station for two or even three days. The train had its own kitchen of course, we had normal catering, right, from that kitchen, so we were practically only standing before we actually reached Yefremov. And in Yefremov they registered me normally on 21st March and they directed me to anti-tank cannons - 45mm."
"(A soldier), when he receives an order, must make himself subordinate to it. Well - that was only a kind of defence... We knew any fighting activity could not possibly take place. We were there for several months and no activity either from the Polish, nor from our side, was actually developed. Well, there were actually brawls between our soldiers and civilians, who... Let us say the civilians who served in the German army returned home after the war, and to that Těšín area, of course... There were a few. Because, according to the Recruitment Act they had to serve in the [Czechoslovak] army, etc. So there were brawls, especially concerning intelligence activity, right, when some of these German soldiers tried, of course, to hide, because they feared that, after it was occupied, something could happen. So they hid there of course. And when our intelligence officers realised that, they interrogated them of course They never arrested anyone, but they developed intelligence activity, interrogations and so on."
"I spent quite a long time there. Until 1943. We worked there until December 1943. We were billeted in wooden barracks. And we went to work... All the units lined up in the morning, under the leadership of those Russian guards of course. They were not soldiers, they were civilians, armed with a gun etc., and there was always one that carried a Soviet flag. At the front. And the unit marched to the workplace in three rows. Every day it was like that. We worked until evening, right... And in the evening we got our meals. We didn’t get anything during the day."
Andrej Koba, Colonel, retired, was born on 16.2.1919 in Velká Turice, Perečín, Transcarpathian Ruthenia. As the oldest of five children he spent his childhood in a family of peasants. In 1941 he was conscripted into the Hungarian Army. Immediately after being posted to the front he crossed over to the Soviet side. Between 1941-1943 he was held in a labour camp in the southern Urals, in 1944 he joined General Svoboda’s Army. He took part in the Dukla operation as a scout, and was badly wounded at Vyšný Komárnik. After the war he stayed in The Czechoslovak Army, graduated from high school and underwent a military education. Shortly after the war he was deployed once again, at the time of the Czechoslovak-Polish tension, on the Silesian border. He lived in Opava, was active in the bodies of ČSOL, passed away on December, 4th, 2014.
