Lieutenant Viktor Ráža

“The chief came to me and said: ‘We will be moving on May 9th, get enough of fuel.’ So we went for the petrol and I took a Russian soldier and I asked him if the truck was all right. He said yes and we set out for the trip. We had the barrels in the bucket, we went on for a moment and then the truck stopped. The idiot had some loose screws or something. It all tilted and cut the tubes that went to the breaks, so the car stopped to break. He didn’t seem to mind. They repaired everything. He mended that and we started again. I asked him: ‘How are you going to brake?’ He didn’t know. And when we went back, we went down the hill and I told him to drive at the first or second gear for the engine to slow down the truck. But he was breaking with a cardan break. That was a small break attached to the cardan axis. And then we saw people trying to tell us something, so I looked out and I saw that the back of the truck was on fire. The bucket full of barrels with petrol and the bottom of the truck on fire. I pointed my gun at him and ordered him to put out the fire, ‘Either you put it out or I shoot you!’ He took off his coat, I also gave him my coat and a blanket and he managed to put it out. But any smallest leak could have blasted the whole truck.”

“My granddad was a hero. He was in the first war. I will tell you a story we used to laugh about. He came home after the Bolsheviks had raided our farm. And he had been in the Tsar’s army, so he escaped and then he returned home. And the women were sitting there on the porch and they were sad. My granddad came and they greeted and of course they were happy to see him again and especially my grandma. And they talked and one of the aunts said: ‘Václav, you know what they did to us? They took our horse. Such a beautiful horse it was.’ ’Damned, women, you can’t give horses to the Bolsheviks! If I were at home they wouldn’t get it,’ he started boasting… So they were talking and then a patrol was passing by, two men on horses. They didn’t have any shoes and a rope through the horse’s mouth, a rifle on the rope. And they stopped and, ‘Zdravstvuj, zdravstvuj.’ And my grandpa said: ‘What are you looking at?’ And they said: ‘Your shoes.’ My granddad had fine army boots. They started to argue and the soldier pointed the gun at my granddad and klick, klick, ‘Give me the boots!’ And my granddad had a look as if it was worth to get shot after all that. And he took off the boots and handed them to the soldier.”

“We set out to the town and the fire began and we had to hide. Then we got a bit further and I said: ‘I will have a look.’ And as I came out the fire began again. So we took some grenades and machine guns. And my friend tells me that he has an aunt there. I said: ’Now! This is now the right time to look for your aunt.’ And he said: ‘It is right here.’ So we waited about one hundred meters away and he run there. It wasn’t longer than ten minutes until he came back with a pan full of cakes. They were still hot. And as he came somebody fired a machine gun. From the other house, from the window. It was the Hlinka group or the Germans, I don’t know. So we took the grenades, got under the window and threw them in. And then it was quiet again.”

“I saw a broken shop window of the stationary and I was looking for something and then I heard two shots and I come out and saw two drunk Russian soldiers. They were drunk because there was a large distillery there. They got drunk were lying under the trees and a captain came and ordered them to stand up. The Russians were retreating because the Germans advanced. And the soldiers insulted the captain, they were quite good in insulting. So he got angry, took out a pistol and shot them both. I asked him why did he do that and he said: ’You are just a boy.’ I was eighteen then. ‘If I let them here, they get caught. And the Germans will interrogate them, torture them and shoot them anyway. So it doesn’t really matter. And I’m not going to drag them all.’ And there were plenty of drunken soldiers, and they paid dear for that.”