Colonel (ret.) Josef Macků

“We were five children and there was only one of us who could go to study, I didn’t have any other choice than to go to Baťa where most of the people went. It wasn’t very far, just sixty kilometers from home. In 1938 I was sent to Netherlands for a short trip and after a trial period as an accountant I was supposed to study at the business school and later at the academy. In 1939 I was sent to Borov in Yugoslavia where they should have decided where to place me.”

“What did those missions look like?” “After dark we set out. We were armed and went up the hills to the Italian frontline. If it was dangerous? We couldn’t get caught. Captivity didn’t exist for us, we knew that we had to end differently than to get captured. Our responsibility was to have a clear view of the Tobruk perimeter because it was the only place that the Germans didn’t siege because they thought that there were strong forces there. So when it was dark we went to the frontline, but then you had to be careful at the daybreak not to be seen in the light. So this is how it was. And that we would fight with a bayonet… it didn’t happen, there wouldn’t be anything left from us.”

“As far as I remember, by the time I decided to join the armed forces, I already had my documents ready to be transferred to the Dominican Republic as an accountant. Naturally, I left that aside and I joined the army. In May 1940, we were enrolled at the French consulate in Belgrade, because the Czechoslovak forces were forming in France in Agde. We were warned that after the enrollment to the army we should not walk in the streets too much because there already were German parachute units in Syria and we could be in danger. So we had to escape to Palestine where the English treated us as unknown refugees because the Czechoslovak Republic was not acknowledged. It was called the Assumery, the place where they kept us. They took us to the sea only to have a bath. We didn’t have any right to lead a private life, we were simply refugees. We were supposed to be sailed to France via Greece and Turkey, but Italy had declared war to France and we were stuck in Syria, so out of the thirty men we made a basis of the later Czechoslovak unit, first the 11th Infantry Battalion, then the 200th Anti-aircraft Artillery. That was our rank. We were transferred from the Assumery to an army camp in Gedera, we passed through a heavy training and we were placed into the desert.”

“There were ten of us going there and they are all dead now. Only me… The rest was people from Baťa who traveled through Turkey… But we were leaving for working positions, I didn’t want to enter the army at first, I was in Holland for a short period of time. I somehow escaped from the country, I thought that Baťa would send me as an accountant to South Africa. All these ten men are dead now, only one that I know, his name is Sejček, he lives in Kadaň. I wanted to go to the air force, where Valčík was, but they found out that my sight was not perfect and they didn’t enroll me. So I stayed an infantry soldier. But I wanted to go to England.”