“I hadn’t slept for several days. So I dug out a kind of hole, which I covered with boards, shrubs, dirt, and leaves. And I lay down in the hole, thinking I’d get some rest. I lay there for perhaps five minutes, when a piece of shrapnel zipped up, tore through my shelter, and hit me in the back. I hadn’t been there for more than five minutes, and there I was on the way to the hospital. So I spent eight weeks in Paris, right opposite the Eiffel Tower. I could go for walks, so I was there almost every day. I knew Paris as well as I did Opava.”
“One woman drove the commanders. When she had a red flag on the car, she was taking the commander somewhere and had no care for us. But when she drove the car without the red flag, she paid us attention. She greeted us and waved at us. One time she drove by, and something fell out of the car. It was a package with chocolate. chewing gum, and four cigarettes as well. And a note: ‘For my black darling.’ The only black-haired man there was me.”
František Josefus was born on 3 October 1925, and he grew up in Strahovice near Hlučín, where he lives even today. When Hlučín became part of the Third Reich on 8 October 1938, František Josefus was made a German citizen, and in February 1943 he was conscripted into the Wehrmacht. He served as a telephone operator and saw combat in southern France; he was wounded and was treated in an infirmary in Paris. In February 1945 he was captured by American soldiers and deported via England to the USA, where he worked in POW camps for a year. In summer 1946 he returned home to Strahovice, and in October 1947 he was drafted into compulsory military service in the Czechoslovak army. In February 1948 he was relegated to the Auxiliary Engineering Corps (AEC) and toiled away in the mines of Ostrava for 18 months.
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