Imrich Lom

“We had had a wonderful life, until the 1950s came, unfortunately, and with it the communists. The communists came and sadly they had nothing better to do than to kick us out of the army. Even this general Malec, who was head of the placement committee, well I couldn’t get a job without his permission, so I went to him and he sent me to break rocks. And I told him: ‘Mr. general...’ – ‘Don’t mister me, comrade!’ [he snapped at me] – ‘Mr. general,’ I told him, ‘I have no qualification.’ – ‘You’re not qualified? And what did you do in England? After all, they trained you to be dissidents, apart from that you did nothing!’ And I said: ‘And the dead ones, what about them?’ – ‘Out!’ And he kicked me out. I was told that he had so much hate because he had his sins and he might have collaborated during the war but that he was untouchable because he was such a great communist.”

“As we came to Tobruk, there were only old machines available there, and they told us: ‘Put a sandbag under your bottom because there are mines everywhere here.’ I was allotted a car and they said: ‘If you drive onto a mine, you’re dead.’ So we had to be very careful and had to carefully follow the track. I was assigned to the third company and was responsible for this section, I won’t even tell you what crazy stuff I did when I was getting mortared – stopping, driving on a bit, stopping, driving on a bit, and they thought I was continuing on and they threw grenades in front of me and it was okay. Until one time they probably saw through it; I was taking mortar fire and was supposed to make a turn but I missed it, so I hit the brakes. And I saw I was outside the track and I figured I had to get out of there the same way I had gotten in. I didn’t move the steering wheel, I put the car in reverse and then, boom…! And I was sitting next to the car.”