Lieutenant Colonel (ret.) Jan Perl

“We got tanks in England. The training lasted a little over a year. We stayed in England till 1944. Then we participated in the fighting in France. We got there with the second wave when the second front was opened. We were eager to participate in the fighting in France because we thought that we would be able to press on and to take part in the liberation of Czechoslovakia. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen because the Americans and the Brits needed us to take guard a huge garrison force in Dunkirk that was commanded by some Major who didn’t respond to his superior’s orders and did what he wanted. He continued to kill our people even after the war had ended – he didn’t surrender. So we were stuck there till the end of the war. Just a few of us left Dunkirk and made it close to Pilsen. But they had to come back because as everybody knows it had been agreed that the Russians would liberate Czechoslovakia.

“After a while we packed our stuff and went to the front in the desert. Once we arrived, we dug ourselves in, filled the sacks with sand and erected our fortifications. It was on the frontier between Libya and Egypt. I think the name of the place was Marsa Matruh or something like that. The first couple of days we had no water. We were supposed to be supplied by tankers but our tanker hit a landmine and we ended up without water for a few days. Then it got a bit better. The Australians, who were closest to us on the front, found out about it and sent us a truck full of Australian beer. It was called Australian Pils, 18 degrees, or something like that. Of course, the boys from Bohemia and Moravia, were crazy for the beer. I don’t have to tell you how it all ended.”

"It didn’t take long and we left for Tobruk. Tobruk is a port in Libya. The famous port of Tobruk entered the history of the African battles because it changed hands so often – once the Germans held it, then the Italians, then the English, then the South Africans and eventually the Australians. The worst thing was that when the Germans and the Italians - who fought together – were driven out by the English, they poisoned the water in the wells. So when we came to the place, the water from the wells was impotable. It was dangerous. The English sat up some machines to filter the water from the sea. These machines produced enough water but its taste was awful. It took a while before you got used to the taste. You can still taste the salt in it, even though the water itself is clean. After a few weeks, however, we grew completely accustomed to it. When we left the place later on and went for a coffee somewhere, we had to put in salt in order to make it taste good for us.”

“Most importantly, we could work there. We toiled in the forest and on the field. I can still remember work in the forest, felling trees and dragging the lumber back to the camp. In the winter, we were up to our knees in snow. We were very inadequately dressed for that kind of labor. All we had was some trousers and a jacket. The trousers were called bruky and the jacket fufajka. We were supposed to get a pair of rubber boots but nobody gave them to us. Instead we had to go to work in the forest in the midst of the winter in regular low shoes that only covered our feet to the angles. Once they should have picked us up at four a.m. Instead they came at 8 o’clock in the evening. They simply forgot about us! I got severely frost bitten on my unprotected legs. I’m still suffering from it to this day. Luckily we survived it.”