Karel Kuchynka

“Gregor, the politruk, the first thing that happened when he got to Prague when the Army General Konev was there was, well, they came... the Russians there called them “gravediggers” – the group which the Vlasovce (The Russian Liberation Army soldiers) had captured, and the ones who hadn’t followed Stalin’s orders. The first thing that happened was that Gregor reported Vasil to the police. And they let him, they came with him to his parents, I was there and he came to say goodbye. It was obvious that it was over and I didn’t hear anything about for a long time after that. Actually, after the revolution some Russian soldiers came to us. He had come from Siberia with his daughter, Vladimír was his name. Still others came and visited us too. When I asked about Vasil in private, they didn’t say a word. They were afraid to talk about even in private.“

“There was one maybe sixteen-year-old boy who jumped up and, they were in the lines, so he jumped out from the line and in front of the others and started doing the Nazi salute. He raised his arm and yelled: ‘Heil Hitler!’ And Ivan shot him in the head. So he falls over, and he has him taken away, the Germans had to do it. There were clocks at those stadiums: guests – home, where they put the scores, he had them put him under this clock, the corpse, and then the partisans took over two German freight trucks. They were Mercedes, I remember, but like trucks of a couple of tons or more. We watched it all as boys, it happened in front of the Sokolovna, that’s where the whole crowd was. And one of the trucks was full of German soldiers, all dead. And they took the other car. Mr. Vaňkát was driving one and Mr. Bechyně the other, and he had a driver with him, a Mr. Kunc. And this Mr. Kunc, the driver, was hauling partisans, there was a armored train waiting for them at the station. So off they went but the Germans had damaged to brakes on the truck and they had a wreck. There was a bridge by the station, a stone column was there, so when the brakes failed they ran into the column and killed that young Russian, Ivan, who had stayed with us.”

“The German ambulance train ran there, it was marked with crosses, red ones, yeah, and that low-bomber separated from his bunch and flew down above the train. And it started shooting at it from behind, they had anti-aircraft guns and they started shooting at the plane. And then it spun around and started spraying the train with its machine guns. It shot the engine apart. The wounded... I saw everything there was to be seen from where I was standing. A legless soldier drug himself fifty meters to the bushes, with no legs. He drug and called out: ‘Mutti, Mutti!’ And then he died. It was an awful mess. But they brought it upon themselves... because nobody would have noticed them otherwise. It was an experience in those years. It was horrible for me to see. The injured, how they collected them. And not long afterwards I had another similar experience which I can’t forget. I was skiing in a place they used to call Na šibeňáku (The Gallows), where there’s a sort of a highland plateau. And there was another plane, just like the one from before that attacked the wagon, the train, which separated itself from itself group and was flying really low and I told myself that I was already dead, that it was the end.”