Bedřich Schalek

* 1913

Veteran of WW2, western front, Emigrant, National minorities, Sudeten Germans, A 1938 – 1945 emigrant/refugee
29. 9. 1938 - The Munich Diktat, 21. 8. 1968 - Invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops, 5. 10. 1944 – 9 5 1945 – the siege of Dunkirk
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    Veterans from the Spanish Civil War

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    “After the landing in Liverpool, when the remains of the Czechoslovak army from France arrived to the English soil, a group of some five hundreds people who were dissatisfied with the conditions in the Czechoslovak army separated and they left the army. The English interned them and then used them for the English Pioneer Corps. It was only an unarmed work group. President Beneš then pardoned five hundred people who had left the army. They were mostly communists, volunteers from Spain, who had enormous combat experience under their belts, but they had to join the army in the ranks they had. For instance Oskar Bareš, one of the leaders, was a corporal or a sergeant in the Czechoslovak army, but in Spain he had been a high-ranking officer. Unfortunately for the Czechoslovak army, his rank was not recognized here.”

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    Felling trees

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    “Churchill rose to power and things became entirely different. We got permission to work, to work in the war industries above all. We could choose, there were positions we could choose from. We were told there was an open position for a school caretaker, or for workers in forests. The Englishmen considered it very important, because from Narvik they were cut off from their mining timber supply, which was used as shaft lining in their coal mines. And to import wood from Canada would be way too expensive, because they needed money for other important things, and therefore the last English woods began to be chopped down.”

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    Tank battalion training

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    “There was the tank battalion training, and we as sappers were preparing targets for them. It was in Cumberland, close to the sea. There was a trench we were in; we operated trolleys, little covered wagons. On the one side, tanks were moving, this was the tank fire training. We were riding down with these trolleys, and they were shooting at them. It was said that the Czechoslovaks had the best results of all.”

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    Wounded

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    “Suddenly I felt something like an immense slap on my face. I was lying there, my uniform torn to pieces, and the left side was really torn and strewn all over. They arrived with a jeep and took me to an ambulance station MPO. While there, they automatically gave each wounded soldier a lighted cigarette into his mouth.”

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    Army training

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    “The village on the eastern coast served for military purposes and there we were trained to attack. We were shooting from all kinds of weapons and attacking. Then we were digging trenches and in the morning tanks rolled over us, so that we would get used to it, should something like that happened, but actually such a thing never happened.”

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    Guarding a radar station

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    “We were garrisoned near Dover Court, which is on the coast of England, on the eastern English coast. We guarded a radar station there. Which means that something was moving there, but we did not know what the moving thing was. Meaning that in the evenings we had to go to these fortifications they had, barbed wire and dugouts. It was on an elevated mound, and down there there was a small sandy beach. We were ordered to shoot at everything that moved down there after dark. However, we were naturally shooting in the air, because we knew that no enemy had landed there.”

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    Praha, 27.07.2004

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To tell the truth to everybody, no pretence.

Bedrich with his wife
Bedrich with his wife

  Bedřich Schalek was born on July 22, 1913 in a German family in Litoměřice. His father was a regional high judicial councillor. His mother died in 1918 of the Spanish flu. It was only from his father’s second wife that Bedřich learnt Czech. He studied in a German elementary school and a grammar school. He did not finish his grammar school studies and he undertook training as a tanner instead. In 1935, he joined the communist Youth union. He held anti-Nazi views and after the Munich conference he had to leave Litoměřice. In January 1939, he was granted asylum in England. There he worked as a forest worker and in 1941, he married a Hungarian emigrant of Jewish origin. In 1942 their son was born. In November 1941, he joined the Czechoslovak army in England. He went through infantry training; he was assigned to the sappers. In August 1944, he was reassigned to Normandy and took part in fighting in the Belgian town of Bergues where he was wounded. In May 1945, he arrived with the Czechoslovak units to the already liberated Czechoslovakia. In August of the same year, he was demobilized and settled in Litoměřice with his family. In 1949, he was dismissed from his position as an interpreter at the Ministry of Interior, due to his participation in the English resistance. In 1950, through 1968, he was working as an editor in a German magazine. After voicing his disapproval with the Soviet occupation he was forced to retire.

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