Vladimír Pekárek

“I took the first train to Agde, which was a tiny town in southern France. It was rather an assembly camp for the Spanish, who fled to France after Franco’s victory. I went through a regular infantry training, then I was with a machine-gunners´ column. Nothing much was happening; it looked as if the war had stopped. There was no shooting or anything like that. Our training was quite tough, to prepare us for the worst. Also the winter was harsh, for them it was something extraordinary, because normally they had almost no freezing weather there. But in 1939-1940 the winter was really harsh, for instance in the washing rooms we had such troughs with running water, and at that time the water froze there, But somehow we survived. I was not there in the position of a doctor or an orderly, with the exception of my assisting in a dentist’s office. We, as privates, were doing really bad money-wise. The officers´ salaries were gorgeous, but for privates and NCOs it was pitiful. Our daily pay was 50 santims, the frank basically equaled the Czech crown, or even a bit less, so it meant only 50 hallers per day. But the French who lived and worked there supported us financially. We were going to pubs, and to drink wine, and a liter of regular wine cost 3 franks. The food was very good, and I liked it, as for food I could not complain. We went to the front in May, when the Germans attacked France, and the front was beginning to collapse. The French army was quite demoralized, because its capital forces, which were supposed to protect France, were stuck on the Maginot line all the winter. The first and the second regiment were sent to the front. I was assigned to the first battalion of the second regiment as a médecin auxiliaire – assistant medic. The French were annoyed by the procrastinated winter, when they were guarding the borders all the time, and nothing was happening, till the Germans attacked in spring. The French were no soldiers, when it began to collapse, they were only retreating. We went to the river Marne, where the fighting had been horrible in World War I, but this time we were only withholding the Germans from crossing the river. When we arrived to the front, we immediately had two casualties. During an afternoon rest two guys were handling or cleaning a firearm, it fired and both were dead on the spot. The bullet passed through the head of the first one and the neck of the other guy, and I was standing only a couple of metres away from them.”

“After the war I began working for professor Teisinger; his was a new medical specialization, so-called work medicine. I would have stayed in Prague in the clinic, but one day the professor came to me and told me that the State Police is after me and that it would be the best for me to leave Prague. I was a ´westerner,´ I had been abroad, and this was not a class which would be looked upon favorably. So the professor advised me to leave Prague. Work medicine was also practiced in Ústí nad Labem, we had a related clinic there and we were going there every week and taking turns in shifts. Later, I was going there more frequently than others, and so I eventually settled there. There was a lack of doctors in that region, and thus they held us in high esteem. But it was lot of work, too. We worked regular shifts plus emergency hours, when there was one doctor, one nurse and an ambulance driver, and we were serving the whole district. I lived quite well. I did not care about politics, I did not mess with that, I only cared about medicine. Were it not for the war, I would have probably been doing something else. In Vienna at that time they had a plastic surgery department, which almost nobody practiced then, and my father also advised me to concentrate on plastic surgery. But it did not happen, Hitler came to power, and that was it. Otherwise I would have been doing plastic surgery, in which I had been very interested, but the time was not right for it. In Ústí nad Labem I was teaching at a school for nurses, at pedagogical school, also served as a medical examiner and I was always busy. But I have to say I have never been sick or injured. I was simply always lucky, as if I had been from another world.”

“One of our soldiers, who were down at the river Marne, was wounded and I was sent to help him. As a médecin auxiliaire I had a bicycle, which saved me a lot of trouble. So I got on the bike and went to help him. Nearby there was a small town or village, and the Germans were already bombing it, there were grenades falling one after another. I was awfully lucky. To avoid the shooting, I walked directly to the river and pushed the bike with my hands. Some ten or six metres in front of me a grenade was dropped and it left a large crater there. So I threw away the bike and jumped into that hole because a grenade never falls to the same place twice. After a while the bombing stopped, and I set out to treat the injured soldier. But before I got to him, the Germans opened fire from a machine gun and the bullets were whistling past my head. I helped the wounded soldier, fortunately his injury was not serious, and we returned to our unit. In the evening, an order to retreat was issued, because the Germans have already crossed the river Marne. So we were retreating. My great advantage was that I had this bicycle, that was the best means of transport. The French were running away from places which were now within the reach of Germans, and all the roads were full of refugees. The French left everything and they were only retreating. All were heading south, the roads were crowded with people. The luckiest were those who had some wheel-barrows or wagons, but the majority had to walk. And when somebody ran out of petrol, the car became useless, and they left the car in a ditch and continued on foot. The road was getting more and more crowded with the refuges, because the French have given up and they were now only retreating southward. We came to some town and got some supplies of food. The soldiers who came there were looting mainly grocery shops. They did not care for anything else, only for groceries. Wine was also everywhere, the French had their stock of wine in their homes, but that was dangerous, because those who got drunk too much could not go on and they usually fell into captivity. But we could by no means afford to become captured, for this would have meant our death. The Germans had declared all of us deserters who had fled from the German Reich, and the only penalty for this was being shot. On the way we have seen many dead people, because the Germans were sometimes bombing us. One time German bomber planes attacked us. But the refugees dispersed in the fields, so that they would not be all concentrated on the road. In the last moment, French fighter planes appeared and chased the German bombers away, so the Germans then stopped this attack on civilians.”

“During the invasion, we were in the south of England where we treated the soldiers. We trained to be able to deal with all types of injuries, some minor surgery, and especially internal medicine and contagious diseases. There were many cases of gonorrhoea among the soldiers, but the treatment was quite effective. When the invasion began, our unit was close to a place, from where the Allied boats bound for the Continent were departing. our unit was not assigned to the disembarkation, we were only to treat the wounded and sick of those who took part in the invasion. Close to our camp there was a training camp where the soldiers practiced leaving the invasion boats. They were jumping into water, it reached to about half of their thighs, and they had to walk and fight their way to the shore. We did not have many wounded, there were fewer of them than we anticipated. The Germans could have sent an armored division which would have wiped out all of them, but they did not believe it to be the true invasion, but only a cover-up. Therefore they did not even call their armored divisions which were already prepared. But it was a huge error. Thus the losses were much smaller than originally expected. About a week before the invasion, a training camp was organized in the south of England, for the soldiers who were to participate I n the invasion. The entire invasion operation was top secret. I was a doctor in a field hospital there; we had about a hundred beds ready for the soldiers from the invasion. I assisted at a treatment of one officer, who knew where the invasion was to take place, and he was so guarded that I did not even learn his name. They assigned a soldier from the military police to him, and he guarded him, even when the officer went to the toilet, so that he would not be able to meet anyone or to speak to anyone. It was all absolutely confidential. The Germans thought the invasion would start in some town, or a port would be attacked, in order to secure access to roads. They even had a panzer division ready there, which was not sent to combat, because the Germans thought the landing in Normandy was just a cover-up. The English and Americans who took part in the invasion were very well trained, and they dominated those who guarded the coast. There were many casualties, they were left lying there, and the wounded were being transported to us, but there were not so many of them, so we managed.”