Miloslav Šatava

"I was sitting on a box full of grenades, artillery shells were flying all over the place, and I was writing a letter home. I had grown so numb. If I had used my common sense I would never have been able to do something like that."

"It was not usual for the draft committee to accept children of my age. I know that there were boys of the same age before me and after me who wanted to join the army, and who didn’t get accepted. It was perhaps because I came there at the time when the 3rd independent Czechoslovak brigade was being formed and they were probably accepting any able-bodied person. I was strong and square-built, and so they drafted me."

"Talking about the events from the war? I was refusing to talk about these things. The warfront, where I had been during my adolescence, was a very traumatizing experience for me which took me a long time to cope with. I tried to put these experiences away from my mind as much as I could and it took me years. I was refusing interviews with journalists who wanted to talk to me about the life on the front. I don’t want to talk too much about these individual combat situations. Firstly, mine is a very subjective view, and secondly, it is not essential for a comprehensive picture of the events."

"The person who appeared there was probably my guardian angel. She was a Georgian doctor and her kids might have been of my age. She probably realized what it meant for me. She persuaded her colleagues that they ought to try one more surgery, and that she would take it as her 'socialist commitment.' (laughing). As long as I am alive, I will never cease being grateful to her because I am able to walk almost normally."