Rudolf Němček

“There were three of us. Friends from Šlapany. We packed our bags and went. We had heard there were American camps there; lots of people were fleeing at that time. We only got into German camps. We didn’t get to the American camps; otherwise we could have gone to America. Lots of Czechs and Slovaks went to America. We weren’t given a permit. As soon as we crossed the borders we were free and easy. The customs officers and border guards all knew us because they had Barracks in Nový Kynšperk. That way, we had friends even among the Germans. They spoke German, I spoke Czech. (…)We helped out with farm work. An agent showed up at the camp in Landau. We left the camp, nobody tried to stop us, but we were hungry. We begged for food. The agent came and offered us good food and money. It wasn’t a matter of politics. It was all a game to us because we were young. They took us somewhere by train. I can’t remember exactly. We left the German camp for Marseille.”

“I had a drink, we drank all the time, and I drank until he kicked me to get me to stand up. They were scared because the shooting still going on. So I stood up. I didn’t care about anything anymore, whether I was going to be shot. The Vietnamese with there machetes were supposed to be tough. Well, we had lost the war so we had to obey. They held us in captivity for eighteen months. We had to do roadwork, we lived in a camp, eighteen months went by and then it was over.”

“(Not all the Vietnamese hated legionnaires.) An old Vietnamese man, a Granddad, about sixty he was, they look old. He said to us: “Café, café – me to, Moi aussi soldat francaise”. He had also been in the French Army. He brought me a cup of coffee. I was glad. They’ve got houses on poles and they’ve got everything in there – goats, cows...”

“The food was rice. The only grub we got was rice. Always rice, rice, rice. We’d spill some of it out when we got it but they didn’t know that. When we were hungry they’d give us rice at eight in the morning and then again at five in the evening. Apart from that there was no food in between. No black bread, nothing. Just rice. Wife: “He’s only recently started eating rice again. Didn’t want it for a long time.”- “I’ve got used to it” (laughs).”

“It can’t even begin to be told. The men dropped like flies. There was such an awful lot of them, those Vietnamese. They couldn’t reach us from the other side so they attacked from below. Fortunately, I was on the other side of the bunker and they weren’t being killed in such numbers there. It was terrible, though. I was wounded all the same. I was hit by a mortar splinter. Twelve small splinters and one big one. They took it out later. That happened on the day I was taken prisoner. They tied me up but I could still walk. It was only back here that they found the smaller splinters. Many times. Each time I need an X-ray. Wife: “last time about a year ago he had a check up at the pulmonary ward and right away they exclaimed: “What’s this? You’ve got shadows on your lungs?” But we already knew by then what it was. We even sent the French Embassy the medical reports they wanted but it was no use. They didn’t give us anything because according to their records the soldiers were all killed, every last one of them.”

“When we were in the camp (prisoner of war camp), it was called a camp, the head of the camp and a French translator summoned us and told us we needn’t be afraid. That they’ve got a treaty with Czechoslovakia, that Czechoslovakia is an allied country, and that we won’t come to any harm. So no one escaped. It was in a big court yard and within eighteen months a load of us had fallen ill, so we helped them. Battles were still raging but we weren’t fighting any more. The Vietnamese kept saying something, the head of the camp spoke French it was gibberish and we couldn’t understand him. The translator said that they guaranteed us nothing would happen to us at home.”