"They saw us as liberators. On the third day or so, someone was banging on our door, so we opened it and there was a Kuwaiti man who said in nice Czech: 'You are Czechs, welcome here, I want a stamp in my passport, I want to go to the Czech Republic.' And we told him, ‘That’s not possible yet, the embassy isn’t operating yet.’ Then another one of those people came, introduced himself to us, and acted as our guide around Kuwait City. We saw things that probably nobody else would have seen, and unfortunately we also got to the cemetery where we were taken through the local torture chamber that the Iraqi troops had set up there to torture the locals. It's not a pleasant experience, I'm just saying that, because we filmed there, we saw it -- we saw with our own eyes the atrocities that they were doing there, those Iraqi troops. And then we waited at the embassy until the war was over."
"Were you afraid?" - "Well, of course, everyone has to be a little afraid. Anyone who is not afraid in a situation like that is a fool in a way, because you are not only afraid that someone will shoot at you, but we didn't know if there were mines, minefields, traps. Sure, we had the advantage of being in the rear, in the rear of the attacking brigade. But you never - as they say - know, so there was certainly some fear and some apprehension, I'm not going to say there wasn't. And also, and I always say this, I had it coded in me, you have your soldiers. You've got basic duty soldiers, young guys that you're responsible for, you're in charge of them, and they follow you without question. So you have an obligation to do everything you can to make sure they all come home."
"I remember that we were attached to the 20th Brigade and there was a huge artillery training beforehand. The big howitzers, self-propelled, were a short distance behind us. We were in VAZs and Vettes and we followed that attacking 20th Brigade into Kuwaiti territory. It was going like a rally, it wasn't a slow advance. The Iraqi army had already been devastated by air strikes. The A-10 Thunderbolts were doing their job very quickly. But what I'm saying - that first feeling, that's where you realize you're really going to war. It was still, in a way, a walk in the park. And suddenly you get to the brigade and the self-propelled howitzers start firing behind you and your VAZ is bouncing 50 centimeters over the desert because the shock wave is so huge. All of a sudden you realise, 'Oh, look out, it's probably going to get tough.'"
Ondřej Páleník was born on 21 February 1965 in Zlaté Moravce, near Nitra. After primary school, from 1979 to 1983, he graduated from the military boarding school of the Slovak National Uprising in Banská Bystrica, followed by studies at the military college in Vyškov (1983 to 1987), during which he joined the Communist Party (KSČ) for career reasons. After his studies he worked as a platoon commander in the 22nd Airborne Brigade in Prostějov. Between 1990 and 1991 he participated in the military mission in the Persian Gulf, in 2004 and 2006 he completed military missions in Afghanistan. Between 1999 and 2002 he served at NATO military headquarters in Mons, Belgium. From 2007 to 2012 he served as Director of Military Intelligence. He then retired from the Reserves and served as Chairman of the State Material Reserves Administration from 2012 to 2014. In 2009, he was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant General, becoming the youngest Lieutenant General in the history of the Czech Republic. He has received numerous decorations and awards for his work in the army. In 2024 Ondrej Páleník lived in Prostějov.
