“I had my quarters in Tomčišák´s place, he was an NCO, an old soldier, who was in charge of fuelling. But he was not much literate, so usually I was the one taking care of all documents and papers. And we had our bunk beds, one on top of the other, and unfortunately they agreed they would play cards that day. And suddenly a bunch of soldiers came in and started playing cards in the room. And I was all ready to go, in full clothing, I had put everything on, I was lying under a blanket, sweating terribly and waiting for them to leave. And nothing happened. And then I could not stand it anymore and I thought what if they suddenly left, I would be in a very complicated situation. So I just simply told them everything: ´Look here, boys, I’m going to the partisans at this very moment. If somebody tries to prevent me from going, I will kill everybody, every one of you.´ I had hand grenades around my belt, two guns, a rifle, and they were afraid they would get into trouble. So I said they had not known about anything. And they simply left the room and want away.... So in my case the escape.... was quite easy...”
“I can also tell you one little story which touched me profoundly. Mečík with his wife asked me if I could bring them their daughter Sonička, a girl about five years old, from the German partisan department. So I agreed and I took a horse and a sleigh and rode there, I wore a German uniform to appear less conspicuous. And I came there, they already knew about the matter, so they gave me Sonička, I lifted her onto the sleigh and all the way back she was prattling and singing, calling me uncle, uncle... And suddenly she says: ´Uncle! There is a well! I want water.´ So I said: ´I will bring you some water, Sonička.´ And I rode to the well, there was a wooden bucket placed next to the winch. So I drew water, gave her something to drink, mounted the horse again and we continued. And she sang me a song, in Russian; I still remember it as if it were yesterday. (Sings) And I also know one partisan song. (Sings)”
“The Germans were terribly cruel. If you had seen it...around those swamps, behind every shrub, there were murdered civilians. Women, children, even the youngest ones, infants, they were all murdered. When it was in Ukraine, the civilians feared them so much, they would always say: ´A master came, and we tell him, master, do not take it from us, we only have little. Please go to a kolkhoz, there is everything there, potatoes, watermelons, everything. But the master does not understand anything, he just loots and loots.´ For instance, we caught Germans in henhouses, heads in the coop, the eggs... Those people had only one little hen left, and the eggs for the children, and they took everything, they robbed them of everything. They had no heart. And besides that, there were seventeen Germans with us in Polik as partisans. But when it came to a situation when we had nothing to eat, they would simply run over to their fellows again.”
“The boys who had slept in the farm that belonged to the people who later betrayed them.... So this farmer with his wife ran away. But our patrols stayed there and observed the terrain and after five days they saw the farmer coming back to his house. He came to the yard, there was a fence-like row of small spruce trees around this yard, all cut to the same height. And the farmer climbed inside through a window, and was looking for something and then he climbed out and was facing the other way. And they ordered: ´Hands up!´ And he did not listen, he kept running towards that fence. So they shot him from the back and his entrails spilled out, onto those spruce trees. And he was screaming: ´Finish me off ! For God’s sake, finish me off!´ But they said: ´You lived as a dog, you will die as a dog.´ I came to the place about a week later. I was going the same direction, so I stopped in front of that house. And there was his skeleton....a perfectly bare skeleton...wolves! Wolves tore many of our comrades to pieces. Sixty, seventy wolves, you cannot imagine what it is if there are six, seven people in one place. I did not have the ´pleasure,´ but there were some boys from our unit who were killed by wolves.”
“So we came to a hillock and we saw two hills and the partisans getting ready there. And under them there was a dale, and a unit of Germans was slowly drawing in there. And when they got to the very bottom of that dale, down below us, the fire started. We joined them in fire and I acted...well...in a strange way, because....I had no idea that the partisans had been already gone. They were shooting at them, then everything was on fire, and suddenly they were gone. And I was till sitting there and shooting and shooting! And all of a sudden two armoured vehicles appeared, light panzers, coming there. And I saw them and started to run, and as I was running, one of the hand grenades I had affixed to my belt fell off as I was jumping over a stream, and fell right into the water. So I jumped in, too, and was looking for that grenade till I found it. And shortly after two agents from the Lunin recon unit came to me and said: ´What were you looking for in that stream? We were talking about it and could not figure it out.´ I replied: ´My hand-grenade fell there.´ And then I started to explain that the commander had told us that the weapon and the ammunition is the most precious thing we have, for it has a greater value than one's life.”
Bohuslav Směšný´s father was a soldier in the Austria-Hungarian army, where he served for 14 years. After the establishment of independent Czechoslovakia he went to Slovakia as a small trader. He met his future wife there, married, and their son Bohuslav, one of more siblings, was born to them on February 21st 1921 in Kňažia (Dolný Kubín district).
Bohuslav Směšný grew up in Slovakia and in 1942 he was made to join the fascist Slovak army. He was assigned to the assault vehicles unit, went through an infantry training and received a multi-type driving licence. As a Czech he experienced discrimination in the army. In autumn 1942 his unit set out for the eastern front where they were to support military actions of the German army. Already during the transport, Směšný came to a decision to leave the army, but his attempts at escape were not successful. In Minsk he contacted the family of a director of Minsk’s 26th grammar school, who had contacts with the resistance movement. She served as an intermediary in arranging a meeting with a partisan member, and in September 1943 Směšný arrived to the commander Tětěrevov of the partisan unit in Vozkrisheno.
The partisan unit which Směšný joined operated in the German-occupied Belarusian territory in the area of Vozkrisheno, Polik and the Berezina River, a region swamps, forests and lakes. He cooperated with the Red Army. After the liberation of Belarus in summer 1944 he asked to be transferred to the Czechoslovak troops in Sagadura, but instead he was sent with the Red Army as an interpreter to the military command in Brno. This is where the end of the war found him.
After the war he became a member of the Communist party. Since 1952 he has been living in Miroslav. He was a member of the Union of Anti-Fascist Fighters, but later became expelled from it. He was the chairman of the Czechslovak association of Legionaries in Znojmo. Bohuslav Směšný passed away on March, the 24th, 2016.
