“People from the village were coming to us, assuring us that there was no counter-revolution, that they had no bad intentions. We started talking, an older man sent a little boy for a jug of beer, and a completely different discussion began. We talked about a lot of different things and eventually I had to go back to the unit. There were three nice young men around me. I told them: 'This stupid war will end one day and we Czechs and Poles will live together in peace as neighbours. Give me your addresses, I'll write to you, we'll meet, we'll talk, and it'll be fine.' But no one had a piece of paper to write it down, so the boys wrote their addresses on a lottery ticket that I kept for many years.”
“My wife was very happy to see me, but she was also a little frightened when she saw me in uniform with a gun, such a terrifying man. We decided to go to the cinema, I still remember the movie was called Red Desert. During the screening, a man shouted angrily behind me: 'Occupier! Occupier!' And he called me other terrible names. I couldn't react during the screening. When it was over, I wanted to see who was shouting at me. And it turned out to be a young man. When he realized that I wanted to talk to him, he jumped over the seats of several rows and ran out of the hall. But I felt that the atmosphere in the cinema was not very pleasant, so my wife and I left quickly.”
“My unit stopped on the Czech side of the border, I don't remember the name, in the village of Bernartice. There was a small village shop right next to the road. We needed to buy a pair of scissors and a glue. One of our colleagues was once on a trip on the Czech side of the Giant Mountains, and we thought he was multilingual. He said: 'I speak good Czech and I still have some Czech money, it will be enough to buy what we need.' Three of us entered the store, the tankers looked like pirates: black skin, black berets, pistols on the side, bayonets, faces all black with smoke, only their eyes and teeth were shining. We entered and greeted the girls, and our colleague said, 'Miss, show me your legs!' The girl blushed, then turned pale, not knowing what to do. But since such terrible occupiers ordered her to show her legs, she rolled up her dress with two fingers and showed her legs. We burst out laughing, we realized that it was a language misunderstanding (t/n: nožičky is Czech for legs, whereas nůžky is Czech for scissors). Our colleague showed with his fingers that we were talking about scissors. The girls laughed, they gave us what we needed, we paid for it and went out to glue the maps together. We laughed a lot, but it was the only funny moment on our route, because later it wasn't cheerful at all.”
Narodil se 17. května 1943 v Lublinu. Otec pracoval jako truhlář, matka byla v domácnosti a starala o čtyři děti. Dětství prožil na Starém Městě v Lublinu, kde v roce 1957 absolvoval základní školu. Poté studoval střední stavební školu a zapojil se do činnosti skautského oddílu „Černá třináctka“. V roce 1964 dosáhl hodnosti skautského instruktora a rozhodl se věnovat kariéře v armádě. V roce 1967 absolvoval Důstojnickou školu obrněných a mechanizovaných sil v Poznani a nastoupil ke 4. mechanizované divizi v Krosnu Odrzańském, kde se stal velitelem čety tanků v 11. mechanizovaném pluku. V srpnu 1968 se účastnil se svou jednotkou invaze vojsk pěti armád zemí Varšavské smlouvy do Československa. Do začátku listopadu 1968 hlídal vojenské letiště v Milovicích. V následujících letech pracoval na velitelství stejného pluku jako operační důstojník a studoval na Akademii generálního štábu. V letech 1978–1988 pracoval na generálním štábu v oddělení pro mobilizaci, v letech 1988–1994 pracoval ve štábu národní civilní obrany a poté až do svého odchodu do důchodu v roce 1997 na odboru kontroly ministerstva obrany. Své vzpomínky na účast v okupaci Československa vydal v knize „1968. Tankem do Československa“.
