"A paratrooper must be brave, able-bodied, fearless and he must have a grasp of the thoery. That means to know his parachute, the strings in it and so on. We had Soviet parachutes, they had twenty four strings. The main thing was to learn how to pack the parachute. Our commander told us: 'How you pack your parachute is how you'll be jumping with it. If you do it wrong, you'll fall to the ground like a sack of potatoes.' "
"Although I was wounded four times and my nerves were a wreck, I still had to work hard. I passed my matriculation exam and I studied at the military academy. That means that I went up the ranks pretty quickly. I became a Lieutenant Colonel in no time. It took a bit longer for Colonel, because I had a few scrapes with the Communists. I didn't agree with the entry of the Soviet armies (in 1968 - ed.), I was in the local radio station, the Ústí radio. They wanted to throw me out of the army."
"After the jump, I hid the parachute under some fallen trees in the forest. I found it there after the war. I've still got over my car in the garage, the other half is in the attic."
"And suddenly I see a German come out from the door. He had his gun slung over his shoulder and he was hauling a sack of goods. I f he had had it ready, he could have shot me. He went to the horses, put the sack and the gun down and started to adjust the saddle. 'Hände hoch!' I shouted at him. Trrrrrrrr, I let rip at him, took down two horses and him aswell."
"I signed up for deployment behind enemy lines for a Spec Ops, that means a special operation. They gave us some training in Kiev, there were eighteen of us, and then we were deployed in Slovakia. Our mission wasn't to fight, but to find out where they stored supplies and materials and such. That's a long story."
Nikolaj Kubarič was born on the 2nd of October 1919 in the village of Podpleša, Tačevo district, Subcarpathian Rus. He was one of eight children. In 1939 he was drafted into the Hungarian army, but he soon left for the Soviet Union. He spent three years in a gulag at Vorkuta. He joined the Czechoslovak unit on the 23rd of January 1943. In March 1943 he took part in the fighting at Sokolov, later on in November he fought at Kiev. After further combat experience at Bela Crkva (White Church), in January 1944, he was part of the Borkaňuk group that deployed behind enemy lines in Slovakia. After returning to the battlefront he fought at Dukla, he was heavily wounded in action at Liptovský Mikuláš. The end of the war found him in a hospital in Subcarpathian Rus. After the war, Kubarič finished his grammar school studies and went on to complete studies at a military academy. He retired in 1971, he lives in Ústí-upon-Labe and is an active member of the local Czechoslovak Legionary Community, which he himself founded.
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!
