"In the forty-fourth year, before the invasion - they were waiting for the invasion to happen - we were transported, so again it was different groups. Some groups went by the North Sea. I was in a group that went by air from the Oxford secret airfield, which was where the paratroopers went to Czechoslovakia. The ones that were dropped into Czechoslovakia like Gabčík, what Heydrich did during Heydrich... They all went from that airport and so did we. And it was with just such one group that we flew to Gibraltar and then on to Tehran via Cairo to Damascus. And from Tehran we were transported by Anglo-American planes, those groups. I was in a group of ten officers with the designation that I was already going to the paratroop brigade, that I had already had paratroop training in England, the assault course - the rapid assault commando course, we had already done that. So I got to the paratroop brigade in Rozkurov, so first to Moscow. From Tehran via Baku and from Baku to Moscow. In Moscow I got sick, I was sick, I got dysentery. Later the whole paratroop brigade got it. - And you've already had it, or did you get it again? - I caught it again because I got sick in Tehran and I was already sick on the plane. In Moscow, I was in the International hotel where we were staying, but I had to lie down and the others could go out."
"After training we went to the front, where there was Infantry Regiment 2 and Infantry Regiment 1. The artillerymen did not go, they stayed in training. On the Marne was then the first defensive position. The retreat fighting on the Seine and the third retreat point was on the Loire. The worst on the Loire was the crossing to Gien. We got off at the railway station, just as the railway station was being bombed. Before we got off, they bombed the bridge that we were to cross to a defensive position. It was completely smashed and only debris was left. About three or four miles of march from the station through the burning city, just after the bombardment we were going through. That was... Of all the war memories and war hardships, that was one of the worst moments, Gien. There's a beautiful picture painted somewhere of Gien burning. And fortunately we came out of the station and we were crossing the city - they were bombing the station, we were lucky. We crossed under the alleys of the town on foot. We were still helping the troops. The chief of staff took a mortar barrel on his shoulder and we carried it to get through the burning town as quickly as possible. And across that bridge where there were dead bodies of people and horses and everything. That was after the bombing. So we got to the other side of the Loire where we had already taken up a defensive position. Well, that was effectively our last defensive position in France."
"The thirty-eighth year came, the preliminary mobilisation, the border security and the pre-war period was already beginning. In the army, you already knew what it was going to be like. I got to the 13th Infantry Regiment, where I was the youngest lieutenant in the whole regiment who didn't know how to ride a horse yet, I was still learning. - Where was the 13th Regiment? - In Šumperk. - German environment. - German environment. It was a border area and I got to Zábřeh to the battalion and the rest of the regiment I led to the border to Kralický Sněžník to the source of the Morava River to Slušina, where we had our own section. There were no bunkers built there yet. We built our own trenches, which we dug. Only the cable car was there, which gradually brought the material for the bunkers. But we didn't have bunkers in our section and we had to build them ourselves. And that's where the occupation caught me. There we retreated with the whole regiment. We destroyed all the barracks that were there. We dismantled the cable car and destroyed everything, and we retreated all the way to the line of demarcation as we retreated. All the way to Blansko, that's where the 13th Infantry Regiment was moved because the home town where the 13th Infantry Regiment was was occupied in the Sudetenland."
Ignác Syrovátka was born on 30 July 1914 in Buchlovice, but in 1928 he moved with his family to Ivanovice na Hané. In 1936 he enlisted for basic military service and was assigned to the military academy in Hranice na Moravě. After the German occupation, which he experienced as an active soldier near Kralický Sněžník, he joined the resistance activities in the underground group Obrana národa (Defence of the Nation). After the gradual discovery of the members of the resistance organisation, he decided to join the foreign army and during Christmas 1939 he crossed the border between the Protectorate and Slovakia with several friends, where they were all subsequently arrested. They managed to escape and made it to the French consulate in Budapest. From there, they were transported to the Yugoslav border and then, one by one, via Zagreb, Belgrade, Thessaloniki, Istanbul, Ankara, Damascus and Beirut, to France, where the witness joined the French army as a volunteer. He took part in several battles, but after the surrender of France he managed to get to England, where he underwent severe training. In early 1944, he signed up for a transfer to the Soviet Union to fight on the Eastern Front. Here he was deployed to the 2nd Czechoslovak Independent Paratroopers Brigade and took part in the Carpathian-Dukla Operation. After the outbreak of the Slovak National Uprising, his unit was sent to help the rebels, but after the suppression of the uprising they all retreated to the Low Tatras, where they stayed over the winter. He spent the end of the war in Slovakia. In 1949 he was arrested, demoted to private and sentenced to three and a half years imprisonment in a staged trial. He served his sentence in the prisons at Pankrác, Plzeň and Jáchymov. After his release, he worked as a labourer and moved to Prešov. He studied landscape architecture and obtained a degree in engineering. After the Velvet Revolution he was fully rehabilitated. He died on 23 June 1998 in Prešov.
