"These women had quite a difficult time when we came here because we looked different, we were dressed differently, we couldn't speak Czech. We really had difficult time without my going into details. But anyway the situation got so bad that the Czech radio had to broadcast several times that there were wives of Czech soldiers living here who had somewhat different clothes, different brands and look sometimes as if they might be Germans and to be very careful not injure them or insult them and so on."
"When we were radiotelephoning we had direct contact with the pilots or radio operators. The Czechs and the Poles communicated among themselves even when they were supposed to remain in silence. This was very interesting because they were extremely vulgar. They had been told a lot of really vulgar, horrible expressions by the English air crews and they used them. The situation got so bad that the head officer of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force had to apply to the government, to intern the commanding officers of the Polish and Czech air squadrons to remember that women were operating all of the communications and to remember that fact and behave accordingly. Well I must say it didn't help very much, but it was an amusing interlude during the war."
"I was working voluntarily as an Air Raid Precaution Member. That meant running around with messages during air raids or when air raids were expected at the moment. I had been asked to take a message to a gentleman who happened to be at dance at the local Town hall. I went to the Town hall, stood in the doorway, watched the people dancing and looked for this gentleman or young man. They didn't take my coat off because I hadn't come to dance, I had come to do my duty. Suddenly, somebody touched me on the shoulder and said: 'Will you please take off your dress and dance?' I said, 'Oh, my goodness, will I took off my dress??' I turned around saw this wonderful Czech pilot. What he meant was will I take off my "coat" and dance. Well I did take off my coat and I did dance. What happened to the message, I don't know. I've never found out, I didn't deliver it, but I think it wasn't responsible for us loosing the war, we won it anyway, message or no message. But that was how my life with the Czech pilots started..."
Joy Kadečková, née Turner, was born in 1921 in Suffolk, Great Britain. In December 1940 she interrupted her studies at secondary school to serve as a volunteer at WAAF (Women‘s Auxiliary Air Force - a female section of the Royal Air Force). Her job was to register coordinates. After she completed the training she was assigned to the joint command of the British Air Force, Navy and Ground Troops in Scotland to serve at a radar station and a radio-operating facility. In 1942 she married the pilot Alois Mžourek who served in the Czechoslovak bomber squadron and who heroically died two years later. Between 1944 and 1945 she worked as a secretary at the Ministry of the Interior in London and in July 1945 she was repatriated to the Czechoslovak Republic together with her one-year old son.
After 1948, she was persecuted for her strongly anti-communist opinions. The Czech pilot Slavoš Hudeček became her second husband. Her British nationality caused her many problems. During the 1960s and 1970s she taught English, translated various articles or externally edited a magazine called „Czechoslovak Life“. She was also a member of the Union of the Freedom Fighters and the Pilots‘ Committee of the Czech Republic. She received several awards and medals. For example the Medal for Merit in the Czechoslovak People Army, the Badge of Honor of the Czechoslovak military pilot, the Medal of the Czechoslovak Air Squadrons in Great Britain (310th, 311th, 312th, 313th) and the British Commemorative Medal of Merit for struggle for victory in World War II. Her last job was a voluntary assistant at the Salvation Army. She died on April 20, 2006.
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
