“The dirt… A woman needs to wash. We said – we cannot go on like this any longer, you cannot even imagine that. We had lice, all possible types of lice, on our body, in our hair... A basin of hot water was a luxury we simply did not have. So we said... They were still shooting at the village. They were telling us: ´Girls, don’t be crazy, don’t go there.´ And the three of us - Mánička Kvapilová, Jiřina Kopoldová and me – said: ´Leave us alone, we are going to wash.´ We went to the village, entered one of the houses there, I remember there was even some cabbage in the garden. We picked up the cabbage, dug out some potatoes, opened a tin of pork meat, and we cooked pork, dumplings and cabbage. We brought some hay in, heated water, we scrubbed our bodies thoroughly, then we spread the hay or straw on the floor, and we were sound asleep till the following morning.”
“They brought me there, it was already morning, and they brought me to the surgery, and the first thing they did was that they took a shaver and they shaved my head. I had just my perm done recently, and so I felt so terribly sorry about that… I thought, ´That´s horrible, I will be bald-headed now.´ But they bandaged my head and I remember feeling so miserable, I felt such self-pity, because they tied me to the table so that I would not flinch, and they covered my head and gave me an injection, and I was bleeding profusely. I remember I could not breathe, that it clogged my… I have good blood coagulability, so it was clogging my veins. Then the nurse bandaged my wound, helped me sit down and gave me a clean shirt. And the head doctor who operated me asked me: ´You are a nurse?´ I said: ´Yes.´ - ´You will be helping us then.´”
“I could do nothing else but the nursing work, where I have already had some experience. I was going from one hospital to another, and nobody would hire me because I was Czech. Because when I explained to them why they had sent me back, it was very difficult. Because they turned me down in one hospital, they turned me down in a second hospital... Now, you imagine, bread was rationed. And if you were not employed, you did not receive any food stamps. So we would have died of hunger. Technically speaking, I was still employed in the Red Army, I was going to the district command, and they would always give me the food stamps. Because I did not tell them why they had kicked me out. They were trying to find out, but I did not tell them, I always told them – all right, let them find that out for themselves, but I want to receive the food stamps until I find another job. Then I went to yet another hospital, and was received by the director there, and I began telling him of my situation and I thought: ´Now I have to fight, there is nothing else to do, I simply have to get this job.´”
“The war is terrible. I have seen terrible things, you would have to see it with your own eyes, You cannot even imagine the quantities of cut limbs we have seen. I remember they were burning the stuff in Machnówka. There was a heap of amputated legs. It is horrible. But I tell you, even in peace times there are things that were worse than the war. I mean the 1950s, the time when my friends, alongside whom I had been fighting, were being arrested. One by one. I have heard about it, myself included; for several years I was waiting for them to come for me. We did not knot why, but people were being arrested.”
“We rode on and on and then we saw immense blaze, and that was Kiev, Kiev was burning. And if you spoke to some people about the liberation of Kiev, they have certainly told you about the wonderful welcome in Kiev. We were all sitting in that ambulance car and we were all crying. Including the doctor. Because the people there were kneeling in front of us, embracing us. I will never forget the image of some old men with long beards, who were kneeling and holding holy icons. It was as if they were welcoming heavenly army.”
Věra Tichá was born in 1922 in Prague to a Communist family of Lahůlkas. During the depression era, the family went to the USSR in search of work, in 1937 the father was arrested by the NKVD. Věra Tichá completed secondary school and a course for nurses. In 1941, she worked in the Red Army as a nurse, but as a foreigner she was dismissed after seven months. On August 10th, 1943 she joined the Czechoslovak Army unit in Novochopersk; as a nurse she took part in fighting for Kiev, Ruda and Bílá Cerkev. She was wounded at Dukla. After the war, she worked in the Ministry of National Defence and in the Military History Institute. Her second husband Josef Tichý was a western Army soldier imprisoned in uranium mines during the 1950’s. Věra Tichá is an author of several books and magazine articles about WWII, she was decorated with the Soviet Medal for Combat Merits (1944), Czechoslovak War Cross 1939 (1945), the Czechoslovak Military medal For Merits, and the Medal for the Liberation of Prague. Věra Tichá passed away on February, the 19th, 2012.
