Lumír Němec

"The fundamental problem was that while the British were conducting combat operations and the Taliban were being pushed further up the Helmand River, the Danes took over in the autumn of 2007. The Danes completely abandoned offensive operations and switched (to the tactic of) - it's called 'brain and heart' - that we're going to be friends with them and everybody is going to like us. And while if you push them, they don't quite have the time to come up with suicide bombings, to put in IEDs, if you want to be friends with them, they just have the space to do it. And that was the basic problem: that there were no direct combat operations, but there was a lot of patrolling and going to these villages and demonstrating and playing how we're all buddies. And in fact, one of those patrols - it was a Czech-British patrol - was just attacked by a suicide bomber who blew himself up on the spot. And Milan Štěrba caught it on the spot and Jiří Schams was seriously injured. Plus there were some British people injured."

"Then the British started to respect us. Then they started sending us to more and more actions. We were conquering the city together with the British. The British went on one side and we went on the other side. We were attacking the former Russian trenches where the Taliban were buried. We were doing hit and run operations where we would drive out, attack the Taliban and run away. The British knew that they could send us into risky areas and that we would not get away with it. So for that time we were in Afghanistan in 2007, the British started calling us 'ZZ Top on steroids' because a lot of the guys had beards but they were very scruffy, so they really looked like ZZ Top. And it got to the point where they started learning Czech. I was sitting in the Bastion at the airport and a British soldier came up to me and said, 'Hi, how are you?' which I take as a huge accolade."

"The British then got the impression that we were suitably mad. So they invented a task for us, which made a huge name for us there. I called it 'duck on the pond' at the time. Because at that time there were three mortar teams (Taliban) operating there that were very accurate, as I said - they were made up of professionals. The problem with mortar teams is that they can locate them, but by the time they send in Air Strike, the mortar teams disappear. Because they just fire a couple of shots... Our job was to ride that edge for about two kilometres and we were supposed to lure that mortar fire at us, thinking that the British will just... They (Taliban) will fire it at us, they see the soldiers - so they (British) will have more time and they will manage to eliminate those mortar teams. So we nodded to that and we were riding that edge and attracting that mortar fire. After a while, it started coming down on us, but the British had helicopters ready, so they eliminated them. However, after it was over, they called us from HQ and said, 'Look, there's still one mortar team left, ride up that hill again, and when they fire at you, we'll locate them again. So we took the Tatras, because the two Tatras were armoured, and we went up the hill, and now we were sitting there with our heads down, waiting for them to shoot at us. It was kind of very tense, because you know, if that mortar mine lands next to you, that Tatra was armoured, so the shrapnel won't do anything to you. But if, God forbid, they hit that Tatra directly, it would wipe us out. Anyway, after a while they fired and managed to eliminate the third mortar team, so we were successful. And we made a huge name for ourselves."

"The worst experience in my professional career, it was never from war or anything like that, but it was when a friend of mine died in 2008 as a result of that particular suicide bombing and I, because I was his commanding officer, had to tell his wife that her husband was never coming home. And when I saw the pain that it was actually causing these people, I saw a boy who wasn't even a year old at the time, and I knew that he was never going to see his dad again, it struck me as very shocking. That's when I realized what those loved ones of ours here are going through at the moment that we're out there, and I consider them much bigger heroes than us out there."

"Probably the worst, as far as the mission is concerned, was in Afghanistan, when we were coming back from one mission and we were stopped by a vehicle, and a native came out and stopped us and kept asking us like, 'Why? Why? Why?' And I didn't know what he meant, and then he led me to the car and there was his wife and two dead kids lying in the back. I think that's when I realized the horror that civilians face, that's probably what had the biggest impact on me. I should add that these civilian casualties were not caused by our unit, but were caused by someone else's, but either way, when you see a dead soldier or you see a dead enemy combatant, it's something you kind of count on, but to see dead children, that's a picture you can't get used to and you can never be prepared for."

"When I actually joined in 1991, I joined the Federal Protective Service, I came, they were based just down the road from the Castle at the time, I went there and they gave me a police badge, they gave me a gun. I'd never held a gun in my life, and they gave me two magazines, and they said, 'Don't take this to the disco, and be at the Prime Minister's Office tomorrow.' Anyway, the next day I went to the Prime Minister's Office and they showed me the four stations where they serve. Basically, you sit there in a hut and your only concern is that you have two buttons in front of you. One red barrier down, one green barrier up. And I, sitting there, I was like, 'Oh my God, on the track you were Mr. Engineer and here you were the gatekeeper.' So the beginning was pretty rough, I didn't enjoy it, I didn't like it, but given that I had some motivation of my own, what I wanted to achieve, I bit it. I did what I didn't enjoy at first and then I got to where I wanted to go."