“On May 16, 1941, we were supposed to be deported from the Soviet Union as the last group. However, on May 13th, lieutenant colonel Hieke-Stoj, a special emissary from London, arrived at the NKVD internment camp in Suzdale to deliver a special dispatch from the Minister. It was an order to stay on Soviet territory with the mission to form the nucleus of the future Czechoslovak army corps in the USSR. I have to stress that this was on May 13th, 1941, six weeks before the outbreak of the war between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.”
“I have to say that our troops stood the test of battle with honor. They knew what they were fighting for and they hated their enemy. Our fighting morale was high. Right after the first battle we learned how the Germans treated our wounded comrades which made us hate them even more. We did very well even though we weren’t properly supplied with material for the first five days of the fighting. This was due to the failure of the deputy chief, who left our depots too far behind in the rear, and the German air raids that prevented effective supplies. We were left without supplies in those hard days of tough fighting. But we made it.”
“I was born in Rovensko pod Troskami in Český ráj in 1918. I’m fifteen days younger than the Czechoslovak Republic, I was born on November 12, 1918. I went to school there and unfortunately I lost my parents at the age of fifteen. I completed my apprenticeship as a waiter as this was one of the few jobs at that time where you could make a decent living. However, I didn’t get a job and stayed with my grandfather who lived in a German environment. My aunt was with a German and they lived in Rychnov nearby Jablonec which used to be a pretty much German region. I worked at the post office for a while there and in 1937, I joined the army and was accepted.”
“Ignoring the rank, everybody grabbed a gun because all we wanted to do was to shoot. That’s what we crossed the border for, to fight. On the night of the 13th we were transferred. There were 27 of us. We had four heavy and four light machine guns. I was in charge of one of the light machine guns. The garrison commander of Ternopil welcomed us and we were sent to the anti-aircraft defense. We shot down two German Dorniers right the next day, on the 14th. Ternopil was a huge army base and stockpile. There were several thousand Polish reserve officers there and the Germans bombed the place every day. As the Poles had no anti-aircraft defense they were left completely defenseless against the German air attacks. The most that they would do is shooting from a pistol at the German bombers. The Polish soldiers that were stationed there had very poor anti-aircraft training. We were much better trained than them.”
“There was not a single Communist among the members of the Oran group. We all hated ultra-leftist Communists. They all left the army corps before the war between Germany and Russia broke out in 1941 and then joined the unit again. When they came back they started to spread subversive ideas and views in the unit that didn’t help to bolster the unity of our unit. They had various demands. They demanded, for instance, that the commanding officers were elected by the rank and file. They also wanted the introduction of political deputies. We strongly disagreed with their ideas and were constantly in a serious fight with them.”
We were the only group in the whole Soviet Union that knew when the war was going to break out
Oldřich Kvapil internated in USSR
photo: Internace v SSSR, z knihy Miroslava Brože: Hrdinové od Sokolova
photo: Internace v SSSR, z knihy Miroslava Brože: Hrdinové od Sokolova
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Doc. Ing. Oldřich Kvapil, CSc., a major general in retirement, was born on November 12, 1918, in Rovensko pod Troskami in the region of Český ráj (Bohemian Paradise). He joined the army as soon as 1937, but he was forced to leave the country because of the occupation of Czechoslovakia by German forces in March 1939. He fled to Poland on the eve of war on August 12, 1939. After Poland was attacked by Nazi Germany he was retreating together with other Czechoslovaks to the east but still managed to take part in the defense of the city of Ternopil against a German air raid. After the Czechoslovak soldiers fled to the USSR, they were held in an internment camp. According to the words of Oldřich Kvapil, the Soviets chose groups of Czechoslovaks and helped them to escape from the camp. However, Mr. Kvapil wasn’t among those who were able to escape. He stayed and was one of the soldiers who formed the so-called Oran group that was meant to become the core of the newly formed Czechoslovak army corps in the Soviet Union. Mr. Kvapil was interned from 1939 - 194. In September 1941 he joined the Oran group and began to drill Czechoslovak soldiers in Buzuluk. He attended a training course for reserve officers there himself and attained the rank of a company sergeant. A year later, he led a platoon into the battle for Sokolovo and Kiev. In the battle for Rudá, he suffered his only war-time wound when he turned partly deaf from a grenade blast. The battles continued at Bila Cerekev and Buzovka and after the Czechoslovaks from Volhynia joined the army corps, he temporarily became the commanding officer of the second battalion of the first brigade. He participated in the battle for the Dukla pass as the chief of staff of the second battalion of the first brigade and the deputy commander of the second battalion of the first brigade. Since February 1945, he was the deputy of the chief of the division of operations of the fourth brigade and in this rank he entered Czechoslovak territory in the spring of 1945. After the war, he studied at the War College and afterwards remained in the army. In the years 1967 - 1969, he was the dean of the 1. Faculty of the Military Academy in Vyškov. He was dismissed from the army on May 1, 1975, and since then he worked as a worker. In 1967 he was promoted to the rank of a general and he retired in 1984. He died in January 2011 in Prague.
