Vladimír Pekárek

“That was while I was still in the army, I had some business in London, in the evening I was returning to my unit in Huntington, and air raid came. Fortunately they were bombing another part of the city than the one from which the rain was leaving, so I got on. That day I was really lucky. The train departed at 9,30 or 10 p.m. and we headed towards Huntington. I was sitting in the third wagon behind the engine. What happened was that they began bombing our train and a bomb hit the tracks and a made a huge crater there. And our train, the engine and the trailing tender fell directly into that crater. The train began tossing and swerving. I was alone in the compartment, at that time there were not many passengers, so I was lying on the front seat. One wagon flew to the right, the second to the left, and our wagon remained standing right above that hole where the engine and the trailing tender were. The engine-driver and the fireman were dead instantly and nobody could help them anymore. Other people on the train suffered some bruises, but nothing too serious. I was lucky that I had been lying on the seat, because a whole section of the compartment came off, had I been sitting, it would have severed my legs. So I got off the train and since I was a medic, I began to organize it a bit. Some people were bruised, because luggage fell on their heads or limbs, but nobody was injured seriously. With the exception of the two dead men, of course. They had it well organized, they immediately arrived with buses, which transported the passengers to the next station, so I arrived to Huntington with only a slight delay. I have experienced a number of bombings, about forty or fifty. But I was always lucky, I was never hurt, it never broke a single hair of mine. One time I was at a dance in Birmingham. I just went to get my beer and at that moment an alarm sounded. But the music played on, the English are used to it, it was nothing unusual anymore. And an incendiary bomb fell right next to me, those bombs did not explode but burnt with great intensity, about 2000°C and the fire spread quickly. Other soldiers ran there and threw sandbags on it, that was the only way to put the fire down. So they threw sand on it and that was it. I was in a shelter only once. That time, I was also on my way back from some dance party, and an alarm was sounded, and since I was there with a girl who was terribly afraid, we had to go hide in a shelter. But nothing happened, I was always very lucky. When I was in London, I experienced several bombings there. I was staying with friends who studied there. A bomb fell directly into a house which was facing ours, but nothing happened to us. I have always had more luck than reason. On my way home from India, there was a terrible storm on the sea, and everything on board was covered with vomit. And I was the only one who was eating lunch with the captain. We always sat at a long table for officers, and the two of us were the only people there. I have never had any stomach problems, I got used to Indian cuisine, which uses a lot of spice, and even today, I always need to have my own spices to add flavor to nearly all of my meals here.”

“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.”