“Whenever we came to an Indian city, like Dhaka for example, whenever I walked from the hospital I had to be armed with a revolver. That was because at that time there was unrest between Muslims and Hindus all over India. Some blamex the English that they were stirring up these communal fights on purpose, but actually the enmity between these two religions was so great that there was no need for the English to intervene. Often military units in towns had to step in, otherwise they would have murdered each other. At times like this, often the best soldiers were called in, and the best ones in India were either the Gurkhs from Nepal and Bhutan or the Sikhs from Punjab. The Gurkhs were short, they had only one metre sixty, but they could use their machetes like a cook uses his knife. Whenever a front was broken through at some place, or where there were communal fights between the Indian and the Muslims, a unit of Gurkhs was called in, they slit open few people’s belies with their knives, and the situation settled within an hour.” – (Interviewer) “Have you personally witnessed some unrest?” – “Of course! I often had to transport the sick - to a train station, or to move them from this negro hospital to another one, and the ambulance car always had to be armed. Two soldiers with loaded firearms sat in the front. They usually left us alone. Nothing ever happened to me, I even walked through Dhaka without a revolver, till the Military Police caught me, and I got terribly yelled at by the hospital commander for it… I was not afraid to walk among them. The Indians were very friendly toward other nations, they were mainly against the English. In this relation you could feel their struggle for the liberation of India.”
“My father and uncle were members of Obrana národa. They found a way by which Obrana národa was sending abroad soldiers, students, and civilians whose lives were in danger because of Hitler or who were active in the underground movement. I came into Café Avia on Česká street in Brno, as the members of Obrana národa had directed me, certain Mr. Bubeníček worked there as a waiter. I gave a password, this man told me where to sit, and at that table an intermediary was waiting for me, and he gave me instructions where to go. I was leaving my homeland on January 3rd 1940. My instructions were to go in a skier’s outfit, with skis, and without any documents – ID card, passport, nothing at all, because my family could have gotten into danger had the Germans stopped me at the border. The Czech-Slovak border was already occupied by German guards. So me and two friends went to Hranice, and to Karlovice, we came to a pub, and again I said a password and a Slovak guy then sat down next to me, he had a cottage in on the Slovak border. And he then led us over the Moravian-Slovak border. We went on our skis, in deep snow reaching up to our waists. The worst thing was that for one of us it was the first going on skis. We had to wait for him all the time. And as our intermediary ordered us, we had to pass the custom officers´ posts by foot, without the skis, because skis make a rustling sound.”
“During our preparations for the invasion to southern Burma, where we practiced attacking the Japanese from the rear and breaking their supply lines, two atomic bombs were dropped – on August 6th and 9th 1945. Thus the invasion was no loner necessary and we all rejoiced and we were drunk for several days, for we believed, and we still believe it, that those bombs have saved our lives... The Japanese had five million soldiers in their army, and when you imagine, that nearly every one of them was a kamikaze, and the number of ships and aircraft they destroyed... So a potential invasion to Japan would have cost many lives. There are estimates saying that about one and a half million of Americans would have been killed there in that case. And now if you consider that one (or was it both of them?) atomic bombs killed hundred and eighty thousand people... Plus a hundred thousand affected by cancer. From this perspective, an atomic bomb must be considered a humane device. For if the war had not ended, it would have cost one and a half million casualties should the Americans go invade Japan. Conquering individual Japanese cities, can you imagine....”
“On July 7th 1940 we arrived to Liverpool and the Englishmen gave us a heartfelt welcome. So this was a big difference between France and England. In France we thought that the war was already lost; the French did not want to fight, and they blamed us that we were the ones who had caused the war. But the English welcomed us with applause, they were giving us chocolates and cigarettes. When we disembarked the ship, a luxury train arrived and we were taken to Cholmondeley Park, where we then regrouped, we put out our tents and we did other things.” (Interviewer) “How did you get to a British university?” - “In the Czechoslovak army there were about thirty-nine students of medicine, and one of them, doctor Macháček form Brno, during President Beneš´s visit in Cholmondeley Park in 1940 mentioned to the President that there were thirty-nine of us medical students in the third stage of studies. There were more students, some in the first stage, some in the second. President Beneš promised to look into that matter, and after some time, contrary to the wish of the army which needed soldiers, the minister of education proposed that the thirty-nine of us would be able to complete our studies, explaining that the Czechoslovak army has concluded that we would help the Allies´s cause better as doctors than as ordinary soldiers.”
“I became interested in venereal diseases already when I was a medical intern with professor Trýb in 1935 and then also in 1946 in a hospital near Dhaka I worked in all wards, including the venereal one. That hospital had three sections, a surgery department, then the largest one was internal medicine, and then a special department for venereal diseases. Especially gonorrhea was widespread there. Those black soldiers loved life, food and women, very often even the patients made trips to Indian villages, where everybody was infected with gonorrhea. With the low standards of their life then, Indian women were glad to earn some money aside, and we had great troubles with treating of these venereal diseases. Already in 1943 the English were using penicillin in India. It had to be kept in a frozen form, which meant that nurses were carrying test tubes with penicillin in bowls filled with ice and carrying them from one tent to another. But with penicillin we were then treating not only gonorrhea, but also pneumonia, infectious diseases, and infectious wounds, etc., as early as 1943, which was great advancement.”
Colonel MUDr. Velimír Macharáček was born on April 29th, 1915 in Brno. He was unable to complete his studies at the Medical faculty in Brno due to the closing down of Czech universities by the Nazis in 1939. After a meeting with his family, he decided to go into exile. With the help of the resistance group Obrana národa (Defense of Nation) he illegally crossed the border to Slovakia, and in spite of some difficulties (arrested twice in Hungary) he managed to get to Beirut via the Balkan way and from there to France to the Czechoslovak units which were being formed in Agde. After France’s capitulation, he along with other soldiers were transported to Great Britain and sent to Cholmondeley Park. He finished his medical studies in Birmingham. After graduation in Oxford, he joined the British army, after training and a short service in England the doctor was sent to India to the west-African troops, who were to face the Japanese offense at the Indian-Burmese border. As a doctor, in this exotic and unstable environment he often had to treat tropical and venereal diseases. After Japan’s capitulation following the dropping of atomic bombs in August 1945, he returned to England. He was demobilized in the summer of 1946 and returned to Czechoslovakia, where he began a successful medical career. First in Brno and then in Zlín, specializing in dermatologic and venereal diseases. In 2002, he became an honorary citizen of Zlín.
