"I have no worst recollection. No memories. I've stopped to recall the war. This is useless. I do well now, I don't need any war, I don't want any war. I never wanted one. Back then it was the duty, we had to. We were something else, we were Masaryk's children. [Such patriotism was it for you?] Yes. I don't like exaggerated patriotism, but a little patriotism is good. We tried to live fairly decently. Of course that we were also young and that we did stupid things too. But no such useless things."
"So acrobatics. So we buckled up and I showed him, he said: 'This is normal acrobatics. Every pupil can do this'. 'Well, if he wants to see what I can do, I'll show him'. So I turned the plane around and I saw that his eyes popped out. And I pushed the joystick properly. Mine popped out too. Suddenly something cracked. His belt snapped - it was being held by a single screw - and he flew out of the plane. I got scared too. So I slowly turned the plane back around and I landed. And he accused me that I wanted to kill him. I had to go to such a quick court."
"In France we had to sign that we would go into the Foreign Legion. Whenever a transport to the Foreign Legion came, there was a bunch of my classmates as we were the most represented there, almost everyone was there, so we occasionally got 'lost'. We got 'lost' in Paris. When this had happened already for several times, we were threatened by being sent back to Bohemia if we 'get lost' another time. So we said, 'There's nothing we can do, we'll probably have to go'. But we were lucky since in the meantime war broke out."
"Nobody can imagine what an amazing target such an airplane is for the barrage of a ship. Only one in four shots can be seen even though the barrage is as thick as a swarm of bees. And you can't see the other three shots. So it is far worse and we know it. [Do you think the shots?] Yes, the shots. So it is annoying. And you have to approach them from the air."
"Then I left the hospital and headed towards Bordeaux. And when I was about half way there, I learned that the Germans are not there anymore. So I went back again. I came to Toulouse. And there I was captured by the Germans. He was an Alsatian or something like that, because back then I couldn’t' speak German and I stammered something in French, but he stammered even more. So they took me to that camp. And they put me in those long wooden little houses, Nissen huts or how they are called, to wait there for them to come and pick me up. I waited ten minutes, twenty minutes, I don't know how long. It had to be nearly half an hour."
The retired Brigadier General Miroslav Štandera was born on October 5, 1918 in Prague. His mother died when he was 10 years old and thus he grew up with only his father and three siblings. They lived in Dobruška nearby Nové Město nad Metují. Miroslav studied typography but has never practiced the education he had acquired at school. In 1936, he joined the military school of air-force cadets and in September 1938, he was mobilized to the 4th Czechoslovak Air Force Regiment, the separate 3rd wing in Pardubice. After the demobilization of the army and the establishment of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia on March 15, 1939, he fled across the border into Poland and together with other soldiers he sailed across the Baltic Sea to France. He joined the Foreign Legion and was sent to the German-French theater of war in May 1940. During his fourth flight, he was shot down near Troyes and ended up in a hospital in Clermont-Ferrand in the south of France. He at first planned to escape to the port of Bordeaux from the advancing German army, but eventually headed south. In the port of Narbonne, he boarded an Egyptian coal ship and crossed the Bay of Biscay to Liverpool. He got to Cholmondeley Park and since 1940 served in the 312th Czechoslovak Fighter Squadron of the Royal Air Force (RAF). His air base became Cosford over Birmingham. In 1943, he was transferred to the 68th RAF Nocturnal Fighter Squadron, with which he participated in the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. After the war, he returned to Czechoslovakia and served in Pilsen and in Trenčín. However, as a “western” aviator he was soon dismissed from the army and had to make a living by collecting secondary raw materials. In 1949, he learned about his impending arrest and thus he decided to leave the country. He crossed the border into West Germany and from there went to England. In the years 1949-1955, he once more served in the RAF. When he left the army, he got trained and then worked as a silversmith and later started his own businesses. In 1983 he retired. In the mid1990s, he permanently returned to the Czech Republic and spent the end of his life in Pilsen, where he died on February 19, 2014. He is the holder of numerous honors and decorations, including the Order of Merit and the Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk. Miroslav Štandera passed away on February, the 19th, 2014.
