“Most importantly, we could work there. We toiled in the forest and on the field. I can still remember work in the forest, felling trees and dragging the lumber back to the camp. In the winter, we were up to our knees in snow. We were very inadequately dressed for that kind of labor. All we had was some trousers and a jacket. The trousers were called bruky and the jacket fufajka. We were supposed to get a pair of rubber boots but nobody gave them to us. Instead we had to go to work in the forest in the midst of the winter in regular low shoes that only covered our feet to the angles. Once they should have picked us up at four a.m. Instead they came at 8 o’clock in the evening. They simply forgot about us! I got severely frost bitten on my unprotected legs. I’m still suffering from it to this day. Luckily we survived it.”
“As far as I can remember, we went by train and then on foot. We marched eastwards through mud and rain patrolled by the Russians. The weather was terrible - it was late fall and it was already getting cold. The march took us about nine days. We were staying at the peasant’s homes for the nights. One morning I woke up in a dung pit. But I was glad because at least it was warm whereas everywhere else was cold. We were terribly hungry, we ate whatever we could get our hands on. We traded food from the peasants for our belongings and clothes. Once I traded my sole warm blanket for half a loaf of bread. We traded our shirts for a few potatoes. We also boiled potato skins. Some of the boys even boiled the rubber soles of their boots. It was terrible, we were starving and we were cold. Eventually, we arrived in a town by the name of Jarmolince.”
“We got tanks in England. The training lasted a little over a year. We stayed in England till 1944. Then we participated in the fighting in France. We got there with the second wave when the second front was opened. We were eager to participate in the fighting in France because we thought that we would be able to press on and to take part in the liberation of Czechoslovakia. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen because the Americans and the Brits needed us to take guard a huge garrison force in Dunkirk that was commanded by some Major who didn’t respond to his superior’s orders and did what he wanted. He continued to kill our people even after the war had ended – he didn’t surrender. So we were stuck there till the end of the war. Just a few of us left Dunkirk and made it close to Pilsen. But they had to come back because as everybody knows it had been agreed that the Russians would liberate Czechoslovakia.
“After a while we packed our stuff and went to the front in the desert. Once we arrived, we dug ourselves in, filled the sacks with sand and erected our fortifications. It was on the frontier between Libya and Egypt. I think the name of the place was Marsa Matruh or something like that. The first couple of days we had no water. We were supposed to be supplied by tankers but our tanker hit a landmine and we ended up without water for a few days. Then it got a bit better. The Australians, who were closest to us on the front, found out about it and sent us a truck full of Australian beer. It was called Australian Pils, 18 degrees, or something like that. Of course, the boys from Bohemia and Moravia, were crazy for the beer. I don’t have to tell you how it all ended.”
"It didn’t take long and we left for Tobruk. Tobruk is a port in Libya. The famous port of Tobruk entered the history of the African battles because it changed hands so often – once the Germans held it, then the Italians, then the English, then the South Africans and eventually the Australians. The worst thing was that when the Germans and the Italians - who fought together – were driven out by the English, they poisoned the water in the wells. So when we came to the place, the water from the wells was impotable. It was dangerous. The English sat up some machines to filter the water from the sea. These machines produced enough water but its taste was awful. It took a while before you got used to the taste. You can still taste the salt in it, even though the water itself is clean. After a few weeks, however, we grew completely accustomed to it. When we left the place later on and went for a coffee somewhere, we had to put in salt in order to make it taste good for us.”
My dad always used to say that one day, I’d be thankful that he hadn’t changed our family’s Czechoslovak citizenship to Austrian citizenship. I’m still waiting for that day
Jan Perl was born in 1922 in a Czechoslovak family living in Vienna. He went to German schools in Vienna but after Germany annexed Austria in 1938 they went to Czechoslovakia. In 1939 he and a few of his friends fled from the Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia to the Polish city of Krakow where they joined the Czechoslovak expatriate army under the command of Colonel Ludvík Svoboda. After the surrender of Poland in September 1939, the entire Polish Legion of the Czechoslovak expat army went into Soviet captivity. Jan Perl was held captive in the camps Jarmolince and Suzdal. In April 1941, he departed to Palestine where he joined the British army. He was subsequently incorporated into the battalion of general Klapálek in the Egyptian city of Alexandria. He took part in battles in the Libyan Desert, in battles on the frontier of Syria and Turkey and in the siege of Tobruk in the fall of 1941. After he was retrained as an anti-aircraft artilleryman, he served in Haifa, Beirut and Tobruk again. In 1943 he sailed on board of the Mauretania to England where he was trained as a tank crew and fought in the battle for Dunkirk in 1944 - 1945. On May 17 he participated in the parade march in liberated Prague. After the war, he worked for the ČSA for a while, but was fired in 1951 and thereafter could only perform manual labor. After a serious work-related injury, he was eventually able to work again for ČSA. At the end of the war, Jan Perl was in the rank of a second lieutenant. After 1989, he has been promoted several times reaching the rank of a lieutenant colonel in retirement. He also obtained several decorations, among others the Africa Star Medal. Jan Perl passed away on February, the 9th, 2012.
