“I caught him by the ewes and he was flying like that as he was frozen. It was half past one in the morning. So we took him [to the cemetery]. But at the cemetery. I was above the river Ondava, a little village, I can’t remember its name, all the way beyond Komárnik, Vyšný Komárnik it was, and above the river Ondava. There was full of show and we were ordered to dig. How can you dig if it is not possible to dig in. We asked some civilians to dig him in, when the summer comes, because it was just not possible at the time.”
“Still nothing and nothing and suddenly he was going past [Ludvík] Svoboda in front of us and the Germans began shooting. But from the cannon. So Svoboda turned it round, well his driver did and there was just shouting: ‚Company fanned out!‘ So the companies and their leaders got in charge of them and platoons and we spread out. And we dug ourselves in. I had a tiny little shovel and a head. The Germans, that was terrible. The shells above and we saw them falling down. That was a sheer terror.”
“He fell down as they shot him. I quickly turned around and was aiming at his chest probably holding an automatic gun and it fell down to the ground. I got shot and the gun fell down. Now I was alone. And the dead one. He was shot and dead.”
Vladimír Rampas was born on 2 November, 1924 in a village of Ivanovka in Volyně region in a former Poland. I attended seven classes of elementary school and then worked in a family farm. In Volyně I experienced a Soviet and Nazi occupation and on 21 March, 1944 I joined a newly established 1st Czechoslovak Army Troop. I was placed in the second battalion of the first brigade and served as a field exploration. I participated in the fights of Machnówka, Carpathian-Dukla operation and liberation struggles in Slovakia, yet on 9 January, 1945 was shot in a hand during an exploration. He was treated in a field hospital in Posada Jaśliska, then in Sambira and finally was taken to an occipital hospital in Ural. After treatment he returned to his native village, but practically immediately left for Czechoslovakia to the garrison. He settled down in Žatecko region and worked as a farmer. Vladimír Rampas passed away on January, the 8th, 2016.
