Colonel (ret.) Hugo Mellion

“We were given the flat that my parents used to live in. And that’s another story because there was someone already living there, a captain of some sort who had fought on the baricades. He was from Moravia and had a wife and child. The flat had eight rooms, so I had to prove to some institution or other that my parents had actualy lived there. It wasn’t their property, it belonged to an insurance company, and they only paid monthly rent. The insurance company had this in their files and said: ‘Yes, a Mr. Arnošt Mellion used to live there, so we’ll give you four rooms.’ So then we had to work out who was going to do the cooking, so I said: ‘My wife still isn’t here, the children are coming...’ So I got the flat and then I somehow had to get rid of that captain. Well, I hired this company. Although there were no bedbugs and it was not insect infested they sealed off my four rooms and put sulphur everywhere and that stank from the fifth floor all the way down to the entrance of the house. So he knew life was not going to be easy with me and he went home. He just packed and left! Of his own accord. I didn’t even have to chase him out.”

“I was on my way to a wedding that was supposed to have been on 9/9/1939. War didn’t break out until I reached England, London. War broke out on 3rd September; I turned 21 on the 8th. That was how it all started for me. And since Czechoslovakia was occupied by the Germans the British regarded me as an ‘enemy alien’ because I was from an enemy country. I wanted to join the Air Force, there was nothing going for me, no young lady... so we eventually got to the subject of what I should do. So first of all I had to go down to the Police Station and find out what status I was going to get, whether I was going to be allowed to stay in England. That was in the town I live in today (Warrington), it was the town my sister lived in and that was where the wedding was being held. So I went to the Police Station and by chance found out that they were looking for an ambulance driver.”

“It wasn’t easy because sometimes, when you took one route there, you couldn’t always take the same route back to the hospital because of a demolished building or a huge crater in the ground. The headlights were minimal, of course, a slit five to six centimetres long and and one and a half centimetres wide. All at night and into that the bombing and the anti-aircraft fire. As the English saying goes, it was no picnic. It wasn’t exactly fun.”

“Probably the most enjoyable work we did was dividing boxes of chocolates and cigarettes that our fellow countrymen in America and Canada sometimes used to send us. We had to add up all we had and it made no difference whether someone was and officer or an ordinary private. Each got either two packets or three. Whole cartons they were and some of the Canadian ones (cigarettes – ed.) had 25 to a box. That sometimes lasted a whole week and then the following week there was more, enormous boxes, wonderful. It was unique what those countrymen did for us. That was the good work. The sadder part of our work was having a crew go missing, or finding out that where they crashed. Of course, that was what the clergymen did, according to what religion they were. They had to put it together somehow and then tell us. We then had to report what had happened to Headquarters in London. It was necessary but sad work....One wanted a holiday, the other wanted to get married, others still needed leave because their girlfriends were pregnant and they had to visit them in a hurry. They could chose to either marry or make other arrangements. There’s a whole list of who got married and when, it takes up at least three pages in Přislušníci československého letectva RAF, I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, it’s a blue book and it’s all there in alphabetical order or according to wedding dates. That was one thing. And then of course there were other things. The boys took a plane, for example, and wanted to go to London for a medal or award, put two pigs on board and the plane crashed because they didn’t tie the pigs down. You can imagine what that meant. Of course the case was investigated immediately, they wanted to know what happened and who put the pigs on board... and the Commander in Chief had to deal with all that. It wasn’t easy for them, it was hard work. I think it was harder for them than flying.”

As for the War, the beginning was terrible. That's why I always say that young people today should know as much about it as possible in order to prevent such horrors from happening again. Of course we were all frightened. The doctors, the pilots up there, and the soldiers on the ground. Whoever says they weren’t frightened is lying.