"At that time, my colleague [Karel] Klínovský and I went around the observation posts on a patrol. We drove into the forest, and before we knew it, we were looking down the barrel. They were guerrillas, paramilitary units of these bearded men who didn't differentiated much - it didn't matter who you were. Either you could pay your way out of it, or it was over. So that was one moment. Eventually, Charles saved the day, reached back somewhere and pulled out half a carton of Camel cigarettes. It was his second time and he was quite experienced, and so he began chatting right away and played it kind of safe. But that first moment? That's when I thought that was it. It wasn't, luckily. It fizzled out. There were multiple moments like that in Bosnia, so I can't say which one was the closest [to death]."
"Whether you like it or not, your family is worried about you. It's also gonna come back at you. Your wife is worried and writes you letters saying, 'I haven't slept again.'" - "How did you communicate?" - "Letters only; then, about halfway in, it was improved a bit and we could make phone calls. But it was strange in that you talked like using a radio. It's called 'one-way'. That meant you had to follow the rules for network calls. Only one could talk. If someone talks at the same time, you won't hear them. You have to say 'over', like when using one-way radios."
"Of course, there were things going on - evening the scores and such. Muslims and Serbs were leaving. They would blow up their houses or secure them against anybody coming in. They'd put a grenade on the other side of the door handle; that was common. Then there were also people who entered the houses to see if they could get something, and then they stayed there. There was always something going on, and this was at the time of the NATO bombing. The year 1994 was kind of affected by that."
Dušan Kunčík was born in Prostějov on 24 December 1959. He grew up in Zdětín, from where he moved to his native Prostějov at the age of five with his parents Libuše and Milan. His mother was a nurse and his father worked at Sigma Lutín. Dušan Kunčík graduated from the Jan Žižka z Trocnova Military Boarding School in Opava in the 1970s and continued his studies at the military college in Vyškov (1979-1983). Until the Velvet Revolution, he served with the Czechoslovak Army (ČSLA), stationed in Slovakia in Trebišov, Humenné and Prešov where he witnessed the fall of the communist regime. He was transferred to Litoměřice in 1990 and served as a radio-technical reconnaissance company commander. During his time in the army, he completed three year-long international missions: in Bosnia (1994 to 1995), Georgia (1998 to 1999) and Ethiopia/Eritrea (2001 to 2002). He also experienced the professionalisation and modernisation of the army in connection with NATO accession. He retired in 2004 in the Lieutenant Colonel rank. He was living in Žiželice, Kolín region in 2024.
