Michal Tilňák

“A double-fuselage airplane flew over us. The sun was shining brightly and it was so high that even our girls with anti-aircraft cannons could not get him. The plane turned and flew away. It did not even take an hour, as a surveyor I was still in the dugout and I kept looking out, in order to be the first at the cannon when an order came. It was up to us, surveyors, to calibrate the cannons quickly, because we were shooting in a distance of about seven kilometers, and over our infantry. Thus I was always the first one there. I counted the planes. At first the girls from the anti-aircraft battery fired at them. But of course, the enemy planes flew directly over the battery and put it down. Now they were heading toward us. Coming from the left, as if not aiming at us. But all of a sudden a plane turned and headed toward us. And I could see bombs dropping from the plane. That’s it, I thought, they are right above us. We had eight cannons, one battery on the right hand side, we were the second battery on the left, and the third one was behind a grove. I counted 48 airplanes; they were like a flock of crows. And they began bombing, one by one. The cannons were stationed about 30 to 50 metres from another, spread diagonally over a greater area in order to have maximum dispersion possible. They began bombing the fourth cannon, I was looking at it, but when they dropped bombs on the third cannon and on mine, I bowed my head. I only looked up once more and saw a bomb falling directly on us. I thought: ´This is the end, the end of fighting for me, I will never again see my home, my family, Czechoslovakia.´ At that moment I thought my heart would burst. I closed my eyes and my last thought was to my mother. Three bombs were falling, the cannon stood three or four metres in front of us, and up front there was our bunker. One bomb fell in front of the cannon and destroyed it completely. Second one scattered the ammunition all over the pace, and the third one was falling directly upon us. Luckily for us it did not explode.”

“My name is Michal Tilňák, I was born on December 23rd 1920 in Malá Čingava, Sevluš district in Carpathian Ruthenia in former Czechoslovakia. As a child, I attended an elementary school, I finished it with straight A´s as the best student. I knew no other grades but A´s. Since I was from a poor family, during the First republic period it was not easy to study. My teachers told me it would be a pity not to continue, they would have let me study further. But my father said: ´I got seven children, he is the eldest one and I don’t have money to pay his clothing, pay his schooling, his books, so that he could study. He will work, like the others do.´ He turned me down this way. My father was a small farmer, we had about four hectares of field and this was earning our living to all of us, a family of nine. When I grew up and finished school, I worked for some time as an assistant to a public notary in Sevluš, where my only wage was food, and where I also took care of a five-year-old boy. And of course, in his offices, I was also in charge of cleaning and heating the rooms, and I had a sofa there on which I slept. When I became an adult, about 17 or 18 years, I went to work as a labourer. At that time there was a demand for workers in Slovakia, so I worked in Harmanec on a construction of a tunnel, it was called tunnel of Dr Edvard Beneš.”

“Her name was Táňa, I don’t even know her surname. She told me: ´Come, it’s the 1st of May, we’ll have a small party.´ I came there, I don’t remember whether it was May 1st or the evening before. She let me in for the first time and introduced me to her father and brother, her mother already knew me. She said that I was a Czechoslovak, a good guy, and that we became friends. I sat down and they brought vodka. I have not had vodka for three years, nothing for three years, not even milk, or apples, there was nothing like that. And now they poured a shot glass of vodka for me. I looked at it and said that I would give it a try, and I downed the glass. They began asking me questions, from where in Czechoslovakia I was, and then there was just fun. They had a piano, my Táňa began to play, they sang. I did not know the songs, so I was only smiling. They were looking at me and when they finished, they said: ´And now you will sing some Czech song for us.´ Of course I did not know many songs, only marching-songs, because we had been taught only marching-songs, in Czech and Slovak. The Czech one sang like this: ´By our barracks stands a guard...´ Marching-songs like this… A second lieutenant who was with us, a squad commander, taught us this song: ´Around Levoča, the water swirls, let the one without a lover, jump into this river.´ When I was getting a bit tipsy, I began: ´By our barracks stands a guard, don’t wait for me, my girl, I can’t come, don’t wait and go to sleep…´ I finished, and they gave me an applause. And then next one, and I remembered: ´Around Levoča, the water swirls, around Levoča, the water swirls, let the one without a lover, without a lover, jump into this river…´ Thus I succeeded as a Czechoslovak with folk songs.”

“This was what I saw... The front advancing on the left, Germans were firing at them from mortars, fifty metres away, in that valley, you saw it clearly. I thought, well, this is like hell. I looked behind me, they were moving a food kitchen away; they disconnected it from the horses and pushed it away by hands. A blast right into the kitchen wagon and the cook. An ammunition depot next to us was also on fire. The Germans left it there and they knew about it, and so they were firing directly into that pile of cartridges. It was true hell; one did not notice anything else. We had no connection, nothing. The Germans were firing at us from the left side, not from the front. You can see smoke, but cannot see the person behind it. We did not even receive a command to shoot at them, since the observation point was on the right and they could not even see who was firing at us. The signaller, sergeant Kohout, got up, it tore his leg off and he died. Another signaller got his arm torn off. It was in the afternoon, I was lying under the gun carriage, but splinters were flying in my direction and at the cannon, and so I thought I would jump into the trench as well. They have already pulled a sergeant from the infantry in there, he was bleeding from his mouth and nose. Only few words: ´Boys, help me…´ But how could you help him? As a soldier, you cannot operate on him, except maybe for lacerated wounds. Of course they threw him out of the trench when he was dead. I thought I would also jump for the trench. I jumped there and there was a guy from the crew, who, while we were in Kiev, was saying: ´I had two children, I will not se them anymore,´ when he saw the combat… I was single - I thought, I will either die or survive, but I don’t want to stay alive without a leg… I was not afraid of death, but of being crippled. I got up and a new round of shots flew over that trench. I got up for a second time, I was already close, and I dived into the trench. But, what not, that guy who had two children at home, he got scared and he pushed me off. I tried to get as low as possible, for when there is a shell flying one metre above you, and you see the fire and everything, you try to save yourself by diving in a trench. And the poor guy stood up, in that instant he got hit in the back and that was it. I was so sorry for him, I still remember him talking about his two kids.”