Oldřich Ulrich

“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.”

“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.”