“Our journey from Beirut to Marseille was distressful. We were sailing in January 1939, stormy ocean, and approximately thirty new men on board accommodated in under deck. We sailed together with foreign legionnaires and with Syrian members of the French Foreign Legion. Everybody in the under deck had been vomiting – horrible conditions. My friend took me up for a while on the upper deck for fresh air when we were passing trough Messina straits. They gave us a bowl of seedless raisins for a diner, e.g., that was bad." "You were not allowed to visit the upper deck?" "We were, but we could not walk. To make a step was pretty exhausting. You have never seen such conditions, it is hard to describe. There was some horrible dust falling from girders, I thought we will never make it to France.”
“We remained, six or seven men, in the ditch waiting for the frontline to move on. We never met the rest of our unit again. I met only few soldiers much later in England, which was another story. Six of us trailing the bloody gun reached Orleans. In Orleans we report ourselves to French army in military quarters. We had no food. They took care about us. Later we were ordered to guard a bridge across the river Loire. After midnight the area was bombed, the bridge was destroyed and we remained helpless. Absolute chaos had ruled on the place. Finally we got an order from our commander: ‘You have to carry on on your own.’ So we left the gun on the spot, we had no other weapons left, and we headed to south. Two days later we came across a lorry operated by a Czech sergeant. When I saw his stripes I dashed to him. This saved us. He picked us and drove back to the southern France were we had come from.”
“We were equipped with boots, trousers, a sweeter, a cap and a helmet. A truck should deliver the rest, but it never arrived." "Did you have any papers?" "No, we didn’t. When we had escaped to Orleans, we were afraid to speak Czech, because many Frenchmen formed a fifth column. They were afraid and disliked foreigners. As I have said: dirty legionnaires. You could speak ‘alllié’ which meant you were an ally, but we had spent only six months in France. We didn’t speak French. What we could have learned, when we used Czech language in the Army? There were not much studious Czechs. We were content with food…”
“I left at home everything except money and clothes. It was autumn. When we left for France we wore civilian clothes. We were not soldiers yet. Our group was lead by Captain Šejbal, later he served at headquarters in London. We really left for France to fight. We were thought that France was a democratic combative power. France had engaged in the war, but the results are known. French army had collapsed completely within weeks.”
“In the afternoon we worked in hangars, in the morning courses for mechanics took place. We had to know terms and operating instructions. I had to know names of every screw, each part of the plane, how to repair it. In short: to manage all the aspects of the plane Wellington. Its iron frame was coated with fabric. We mended the fabric with Irish canvas. When the planes returned from Germany, their fabrics were riddled with bullets. We had to cut out, mend and paint the holes. Another part of our work consisted in maintaining fraps, engines, handle, undercarriage, and so on. We had to know all the terms. Each plane had to pass trough daily inspection. Every pilot had to sign the papers he had taken over the plane in perfect shape. He had to test the engine, air flaps, reverse gear, anything testable.”
Bartoloměj Ranofrej was born in 1914 in the township of Zlin. He became an orphan very early and was raised by his grandmother. After the occupation, he joined the resistance organization Obrana Národa (Defense of the Nation). In 1939 he emigrated during a business trip to Yugoslavia. Via Beirut he sailed to France where he enrolled artillery troops. He experienced the defeat of France and the following retreat to southern France. From Agde he sailed to Great Britain. There he had served in No. 311 Czechoslovak Bomber Squadron of RAF. After the war he worked as mechanic in The Academy of Science. He died on 24th June in 2003. He left the army holding the rank of captain. On the 6th of October in 1990, he was rehabilitated and promoted to major in retirement. He was awarded an honorary badge of military pilot. On the 5th of May, in 2000 he was promoted to lieutenant colonel in retirement. He has been honored with several awards.
