“Former soldiers, finance officers and such people were among the first. So I joined the Luftschutz. I was in Prague all the time and they were flying to Pardubice, and I thus experienced the second air-raid already while in Pardubice. We were accommodated for next to nothing. When there were no air-raids, the Luftschutz’s task was building shelters. During air-raids we were to save the people who got buried under the rubble and to clear the ruins. The commanders were builders, and I was in charge of the storage-house. And since I insisted on writing everything in Czech, in spite of the order to carry out all correspondence in German, when the situation calmed down a bit, and Luftschutz was to allocate a certain number of people to the mountains, it was me who got sent, together with one professor, who was also rebellious like me, and twenty people from the Libeň and Žižkov neighbourhoods.”
“In Kubín there were some officers who had already been transferred several times, including those who had been in the occupied territory as well. We knew that it had been already decided. We believed in and counted on France not surrendering so quickly. Obrana národa relied precisely on this. That when an opportune moment came, a revolt would break out here in Bohemia. And an opportune moment for the uprising could come only in the case that it turned out well in the West. But in spite of all expectations, France fell. And that was the end.”
“Yes, many of the officers were in the West. There was a surplus of them, especially of infantrymen. They were therefore sent east, and there was a lack of them. I was fine; we were good friends with lieutenant colonel Hynek, who had been sent from the West to the East. Then he was transferred to Litoměřice. We became friends, but when that military coup was to happen in 1949, it was to be carried out by the garrisons from Litoměřice, Milovice, Žatec and Prague, and he was to lead the Litoměřice garrison and he never told me anything. But from the talks we had I sensed that he was up to something, because he stressed to me that I should find reliable and unreliable soldiers from my unit. He apparently checked up the other ones as well. But it got revealed and he was arrested. He contracted tuberculosis and he died in prison. He was also the first one to tell me this information. He went through the Dukla Pass, and he was telling me about it, and he shattered my illusion about how great Dukla was. He told me how it really was. That the victims who died in Dukla were not needed. That the task would have been accomplished even without them.”
“In summer I went to the all-Sokol rally and I submitted my application to become a member of Sokol, but it was turned down because the positions had already been filled. So I was without employment for a year... And there was great unemployment in the 1930s, as you know, it was the depression era. And unless you had someone who could give you a push, you basically had only three options: go to Slovakia, stay here and take additional study at the teachers’ institute in Chrudim, or to join the army. And since a friend of mine was a staff captain, I began to like the idea. I wanted to go to the army. Even if I had some patronage from somebody, I would have gone for the army anyway. I liked all the bustle of the army.”
“Social education was naturally also included. And there were more things like that. The reason was that the academy was to be at the same level as a university. The officers were supposed to be the nation’s elite. The purpose was not only teaching soldiers to shoot, but also to be able to discuss various topics. Our regiment’s commander in Dolný Kubín always led debates in the officers’ dining hall. And we spoke about everything: theatre and literature, for example. About all kinds of things.”
Oldřich Ulrich was born May 1, 1914 in Sezemice in the Pardubice region. He grew up in a musician’s family, and he had one sister. After graduating from secondary school he hesitated about his future career. He eventually chose the military profession. He studied at a school for reserve officers in Košice and the military academy in Hranice na Moravě. From 1936-1939 he served in the mountain regiment in Dolný Kubín in Slovakia in a lieutenant’s rank. This is where he met Oldřich Pechal, who gained fame as an immensely brave paratrooper in the period following the assassination of R. Heydrich. As an active soldier Ulrich also experienced both mobilizations in 1938. During the war he joined the activities of the resistance group Obrana národa (Defense of Nation). Beside others he also worked in the land office and in the anti-aircraft Luftschutz units. He survived the war and in 1945 he returned to the army in the rank of a staff captain. He did not however agree with the communist coup d’état in 1948 and in 1949 he was therefore dismissed from the army. After leaving the army he first worked in northwestern Bohemia as an accountant and after several years he began working as a bricklayer, which he did until his retirement. At present Mr. Ulrich lives in his native Sezemice and after more than half a century he was finally rehabilitated for his dismissal from the army.
