Private First Class (ret.) Leo Novák

* 1924

Veteran of WW2, western front, Wehrmacht soldier
5. 10. 1944 – 9 5 1945 – the siege of Dunkirk
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    Phone Line Break

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    "One morning the commander, a major, said: 'Mr. Novák, we have a line break. Go find where it is and fix it.' So in the morning we headed towards the dunes. It was on the shore, below a German position. So we climbed out onto the shore and straight off they started blasting at us. My collegue, he was from the army like me, Eduard Honkyš, from Hodonín, he was heavily wounded. I had time to jump into this small concrete bunker, but it was upheaved. And he was bleeding a lot, so I pulled him into a ditch and waited for the shooters to calm down. Luckily there was the Croix Rouge, the French Red Cross, just opposite us. So I dragged him there as fast as I could, and they took care of the wounds, stopped the bleeding with rubber bandages. I had to return to my unit. I told them what had happened. My collegue didn't get back from hospital until sometime in July, after the war.

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    ČR, 18.07.2004

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    duration: 44:33
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A 60-kilometre long convoy blown up in half a day

Leo Novák was born on the 7th of December 1924 in Ostrava-Poruba. He grew up in the Hlučín district. He studied at a grammar school, but it was closed down before he could graduate. He drafted into the Wehrmacht in 1943. He went through basic training in Königsberg. He served as an anti-air gunner, later using V1 rockets. On the night from the 5th to the 6th of June 1944 he was in Normandy, in a support base 60 km away from the bombing and landing areas. He decided to desert the German army and join the Czechoslovak one. He was captured in Alanson and interrogated. Later as a member of the Czechoslovak army, he was taken to England, and then took part in the Dunkirk operations as a radio operator. After the war he returned to Czechoslovakia.

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