Vladimír Strmeň

“The Germans were attacking us by Hakel armored vehicles. They attacked us day and night. Always at night, if something banged or rattled, they immediately fired flares and attacked our positions. The number of dead and wounded increased at our front, so only God knows how bad it was. In the morning we didn't know whether we would survive until the evening and in the evening we were unsure of waiting to see the morning. Only at night we could obtain munition, water and food. It was impossible during the day, since we were still being surrounded. I was wounded in the afternoon of October 14, when the Germans started the attack. They began with mortal shell fire towards our trenches. In front of our trench a shell blew up and killed two of our gunmen and four were severely wounded. I was saved by Krnáč brothers, who dragged me under fire through the line to the field dressing. The cabin still stands there, where our field hospital was. We were lucky, because right then there was an ambulance, which took us to Banská Bystrica and head of the dept. Dr. Petelen took out all of the fragments from my body. The operating rooms were run in four shifts; the halls were full of screaming wounded men. Behind the window of operating room there was a pile of hands and legs in blood puddle that they had to amputate to soldiers brought from the trenches.”

“I was drafted on September 12, 1942 and something wonderful had welcomed me. The Radvaň fair took place on that day and an air raid was being announced. Many units went to bomb the eastern front; however, one of the machines was broken. A flare was fired from the parachute, which went down slowly, and the bombs fell on railway behind the Urpín hill. The whole load was reduced by app. thirteen bombs. It was a huge luck that the terrain configuration was like that. You know, that the pressure wave shot out to stratosphere and didn't fly straight, because it would have ended up in a great catastrophe. But you should have seen the panic! Oh boy! The fair in Radvaň was over, the carneys ran away, people were jumping away from the funfair; hands and legs broken… It was terrible screaming and panic everywhere. We were just staring out of our windows, since the twelve of us had just been drafted. We were looking at each other with astonishment, not knowing what was going to happen next, whether also the military barracks would end up under bombing or not. We didn't know any context yet.”