"We started to argue about what was going to happen to us, who was going to return home. We could see that the front was close. Dukla operation had just ended. Wherever we walked behind Medzilaborce, there would be smoke coming out of some of the villages. Apparently, there used to be wooden houses and they all burned down. Imagine two villages, I don’t know their names, where only chimneys were left. We made a fire in Andrássy palace, we weren’t at the front yet. So we talked through about what was going to happen to us, who was going to return home, who wasn’t going to return, who was going to return healthy, who without a leg, a hand or with other injuries. Since we were young, we naturally talked about girls, who was going to be moaned for and who wasn’t. Some Ivan, the most handsome of us, with curly hair and a Spanish mustache, would say, ´Boys, I need to return because if I don’t, half of the girls in the city of Chust would moan for me, and that mustn’t happen. This Vasil Lojka here, he can die, because none of the girls there would moan for him.´ And at that moment, you should have heard that, he jumped up as an imp. He really was small, something over 150 cm, dark as a gipsy but apart from that a good student, graduated, studied well. He jumped up and said, ´God wouldn’t be a god, if it happened as you said. You aren’t going to return and I am.´ And so that happened."
"We went to see the headmaster as he was the most important person in the village. I said, ´Where are the girls? Now, we marched through the whole of Moravia and everywhere we were welcomed and here we can’t see a single girl, Mr. headmaster!´ He had his daughter there. And he told us, ´Well, the priest locked all the girls in school.´ Because it was said that all the soldiers, Russians or from Svoboda’s army, would simply rape them or I don’t know what. So I said, ´Well that can’t even be possible! Lead me to that school, I am going to liberate them. It is impossible for us to be slandered like that. I marched through whole Moravia, there were many beautiful girls and they couldn’t even get me off the car!´“
"We were going to war, as everyone else, to defeat the enemy as soon as possible and to liberate the Czechoslovak homeland. It was a thousand kilometers then to Berlin from Ruthenia. We wanted to go to the front in the first place but given that episode with the rifle and two shots, it was clear that we couldn’t go to the front just like that. Such soldiers would be of little use because we were educated and there were too few officers, they put us into officer school. I, at least, had such interest to study more. I had just graduated and had a hard time studying – graduated from six subjects. Now it was to be once again and precisely into an artillery school. There was math there – I didn’t fancy math."
"And nonetheless, every day, at that time, there used to be school on Saturdays as well. We had to learn a hundred Hungarian words. If one was caught not knowing, the professor would beat him. The tragedy was that we had a mixed class, girls and boys. And that took as long as until the graduation, him slaping us in front of the girls for not knowing. They (the professors, rem.) truly proved themselves as louts, as meanies. I don’t really know how to express it, a rather vulgar word would be suitable. At the same time, they would put themselves forward, that they are a superior nation. They used to say that they themselves go first and that the rest are mob."
"Wherever we walked, through Vsetín and other villages, the Moravians would stop us. In Bohemia it is a typical characteristic, that there is a square in every village. The girls there would literally pull us down, the Moravians. Since then I say, the Moravian girls are the most beautiful. But I wouldn’t step off the car. It felt uncomfortable, we were all dusty, sitting in a car all the time, cannons behind us. So I said to myself, how could I go and stain such a beautiful dress... So I didn’t get off the car, neither for a beer nor soup."
"Although I was a twenty-year-old graduate, twenty years and three months, we had just begun to know the alphabet of war. Imagine, there were five of us in one room at a military registration office. And they gave us one rifle with rounds, it was loaded. Now we naturally didn’t have any occupation, none from the commanders was looking after us. So we showed ourselves, it was in a school, there was a blackboard and a teacher’s desk. The youngest of us five grabbed the rifle, aimed at us and said, ´I am going to say surrender, German!´. And a first shot came out. We remained silent for a while because of the fear, than we started to swear at him, I mostly. I said, ´Now you fool, you, you are helping us against the fascists at the front. You are going to shoot us all here first!´ And I came to him, grabbed the rifle, said, ´You need to do it like this.´ and I started to teach him. And naturally I said, ´He aimed at us, that should never be done.´ So I aimed up in the ceiling and behind me. Most likely, I didn’t even put my finger on the trigger. But as I put the rifle on my shoulder, it fired off for the second time. We threw the rifle away and once more stayed silent for a minute or two. We waited on who would tell us off. No one came."
"Well and at once we could see – there was a road near us – the Romanians returning home. Going back in the direction to Holešov. There were such among us who knew Romanian. I also know a few words but not enough to communicate. So they jumped on the road and asked what was up, where were they going. And the Romanians said, ´The war is over, we are going home.´ So he came back and said, ´Boys, the Romanians say the war was over, everyone was going home.´ We naturally replied, ´How come we don’t know? Our headqarters are in Holešov – that is ten kilometers from here and they let us know of nothing!´ So we sent a link on a motorcycle – it was just a short distance. And before the link returned nightfall came up and at once we could see shots everywhere, using colored rounds. So we thought that the Romanians were right. We started to shoot too – we had no colored, at least I didn’t, so we would shoot live rounds. But naturally into the air."
Vasil Lukáč was born in Transcarpathian Ruthenia in July, 1924. He graduated from a grammar school in Chust and soon after that he joined Svoboda‘s army as a volunteer in November 1944. At the recruitment office, they were given one rifle for five people and started to learning combat; there was no official training. Only a few days later, he got an assignment to pull out a telephon cable from Chust to barracks in Krivá nad Tisou. Mr. Lukáč succeeded and in Krivá, his training for a signal man began. Soon an order would come and he along with a couple former colleagues moved North-west, to Slovakia. Since they were educated and there were few officers, they got placed into a officers‘ artillery school in the town of Havaj. Mr. Lukáč wanted to go to the front right away, although, he had enough of studying after his graduation. As an observer, he experienced the huge artillery Jasel‘s operation. As he said, „the mountains were on fire“. He finished his six-month studies, during which he would mostly learn how to target mortars and antitank guns in Poprad. He joined the combat only at the beginning of May, 1945 by Holešov. Just a few days later, the war was over. Still, on May 13th, Vasil Lukáč‘s artillery platoon was assaulted by two civilians bearing weapons. Those were arrested and shot off hand. Then he experienced a parade in front of President Beneš. After the war, he could fulfill his life-dream, to study at an university. Originally, he wished to become a teacher but the captain would not let him. In the end, Vasil Lukáč graduated from medicine and later even taught it. He settled down in Bohemia. Until his death in 2002, he was an active member of the orthodox church.
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!
