Jaroslav Kvaček

"The battle of England was horrible. And especially when the fau ains, fau cvaj came. There was a difficult defense against this. It suddenly fell and exploded. They had it focused. Ty fau ains - it mattered when the fuel ran out. It happened, that when it reached England, the pilot, who had certain altitude, because they were faster than English planes, then when he had that altitude, he flew. And when he tilted it a little, it fell into the sea because it was held by a device. Whereas the fau cvaj, they were just bombs. It flew out and fell. "

"Well, we were really afraid of them, because their movement was crazy. They moved ahead by tanks, while the Poles only had horse covers and it meant nothing to them. We did not meet them, only by air. For example, in Velké Brody they did a big raid and we did not know that they were raiding the airport, we thought it was a raid at the station. But we ran, nettles no nettles, and we hid behind the trees ... We were scared. Because there was no defense against that."

"The training was practically twofold. First, it was at the 310 where I was the hangar commander and the biggest problem was English - we couldn't speak a word of English. There was a boss with the same rank as me. And the same group of Englishmen. We learned from them. We watched what they were doing. After a year they left and we were left alone. We had to work on everything. The worst part was that we then had to write down what we did and it was my duty. So the biggest problem was a language, especially in the official connections. In private too. I tried to learn what I could, I got a teacher... We had to deal with the English somehow."

"When we got out, because we hadn't eaten for practically four days, the English women were waiting for these people to arrive and fed us with sandwiches. We were placed in a cinema overnight, and in the morning we went to a place where we pitched tents according to the instructions of the British authorities, because they were expecting a greater inflow of refugees. So we got to England. From there we went to Cosford, where Czechoslovak citizens gathered, and there we joined the RAF, the English Air Force, and there they dressed us in English uniforms the next day."

"When I was already determined to fly, I enrolled in a flight mechanic course, which I completed. Then I had to take a flight shooter course, and when I finished, I was sent to the 311th Squadron, which was a bombing one. Its activity was coastal, thus to watch the submarines to stay under the surface, and of course, if they did appear, to destroy them. So I flew like a flight engineer. I also finished there in 1945, when the war ended."