Antonín Šulák

“This happened when our tank got a blast. It was a full front blast. The tank burnt down and using one arm, I climbed out of it. The Germans were still shooting at me from that house on the side. I was lucky they did not hit me, and I ran behind the house. And I started thinking - I was bleeding, blood was flowing from my head and arm. I was terribly afraid because of my belly. I felt horrible pain in my stomach. But I was still lucky, there was one splinter which did hit me, and it severed the skin and diaphragm, but did not go any further. Perhaps it was blocked by my sweater. So on my way to the hospital I was carrying a splinter in my English sweater.”

“So I spent a certain period of time there. Then they charged me with sabotage, alleging that we, the Moravians, were doing things which might even be punishable by death penalty. For instance we would remove the little bombs from the large bomb-shells. The Germans had them ready for the following days to be dropped by bomber airplanes, which flew on bombing missions in Ukraine and on the front. So we would dismantle those little bomb parts, but they found out about it, and it was blamed on the Polish workers who worked there and it put them into trouble. Most of us somehow managed to get away with it, but not everybody, like me and one of my coworkers. We were trialed for this, and sentenced to two months. So we spent those two months in a prison in Kharkov. It looked like a concentration camp – no food, heavy work. It was in winter, in January. They worked us hard, but did not give us food – just water, bread and little of clear soup. So during these two months we lost one third of our body weight there. (Interviewer: What year was it?) Winter of 1942.”

During all that time not a single tank managed to get to the border, but I can testify that the tank Captain Jaroš (the name of the tank A.Š. drove) did arrive to the border. On the Slovakian side. When my soldiers say this to other people, they are told this could not have been possible. But I can claim with 100% certainly that we were there. It was the tank Cpt. Jaroš. We rode on, arrived there without any problems. The other tanks got stuck, we saw them, but we pressed on, we were in the last position, and the other T-34s, there were more of them, and the T-42s in front of us were getting stuck. We were lucky to get through, because we chose a slightly different path and did not stop there and we managed to bring our tank to the very borderline with Slovakia. By coincidence, there was the tank commander, some Špilko, a lance corporal or corporal, another Slovak served as a loader, his name was Rak, and the third one was a Volhynian Bačovský. The fourth one in the tank was me, Antonín Šulák from Moravia. We discussed it on the Slovakian side of the border, and the corporal or lance corpora Špilka says. ´Guys, we are in Slovakia, I can guarantee this, we really are in Slovakia.´ And I said: ´All right, but where is our infantry then?´ So we argued about it. We looked out, but could not see anybody. But I have to say that while we were trying to get there, we chased out a platoon of Germans, a whole platoon. Or perhaps it was just a squad. There were trenches that we stormed, and fired at them, and the Germans ran away. And now we discovered we could not see our troops or the German ones. We really stood there alone, without the infantry. And this corporal Špilko insisted that we really must be on the Slovakian side of the border. Afterwards, I verified it, I got it confirmed where exactly we had been. I went there shortly after the war, to get some supplies, while still in the army. And again, that time already as a civilian. So I checked it. And we really did get to Slovakia. Our tank was the only one which conquered the border, I can swear on it, but nobody knows about it. So much has been written about Dukla. And in all those books, about all the soldiers it says that they were killed shortly before they reached the border. So we really – and I want to emphasize this again – were there. When we found out we did not have a single infantryman with us, we needed to talk it over and we had to head back. On the way back, as we rode from the hill, about two or three hundred meters, we met a squad of our soldiers. Like ten or twelve of them. So we stopped and talked about what to do. The boys said: ´Turn around and let’s go to the border.´ And as I say, not a single shot was fired, not a single grenade. The infantry boys walked behind our tank to get some cover from the German side of the line, but nobody fired at us. So we discussed what to do, then decided we would go back to the border with that squad, with those infantrymen and machine-gunners. (Interviewer: On what day was this?) This was the first day. The first day of our fighting for the border. Not from the very beginning, I mean the fighting for our borders. This was September, October. So we still stood there and talked it over with the squad, and meanwhile our staff had probably noticed us from down below and they sent a T-20 for us. This was the light tank. While we were still talking, they came to us and ordered us to follow them down, to return to the staff.

“He was a great guy. He had his brother there, and his dad was also in the army. There were two brothers with their father, they were also Volhynians. He was a great chap, and his misfortune was in his complying precisely with all the military and combat orders. He carried them out as he had been told …I was riding behind him, he was in the first squad. We rode on the left wing, heading toward the town of Zory. And his rookie driver bemired the tank in mud. In other words, they got stuck in a muddy part of a meadow. The driver should have ridden sideways, but he made a mistake and got stuck. He (Tůma – auth.) jumped out and said that he would guide us. I told him: ´That’s nonsense, if you go, they kill you, you cannot walk. You cannot go there on foot.´ And he found the courage to walk. He had to, for the military orders were telling him so. So he led us, and we got to the left side of the town. There was a road in front of us, some farm on the left-hand side, and there was a small pond. And I saw that I would have to ride that way. Unfortunately, I did not consider the terrain properly, the ground was soft, and I got stuck. And in this combat, mortar shells were flying all around us, and one of them hit our wood. We carried this wood with us, thick wooden desks, about twelve to fourteen centimeters, which we used for pulling the tanks out if they got stuck. So I sent my radio operator and a loader to go and bring the missing piece of wood back. They really did and we began preparations for pulling the tank out of mud. You placed the wooden planks under the track, tied it firmly, there were loops in the tank tracks for attaching the strings. So I switched to reverse gear, moved 2,5 meters back twice, and we were out of it. At that moment the squad commander Tůma was with us. He stepped away from the tank…maybe 5 meters, certainly not more. And the whistle of mortar shells started again. The Germans had seen us struggling with the mud, so they sent some greetings our way. Tůma stepped a bit further….Instant death. A splinter in his head. Happy death, you could say…”

“I was wounded on the Polish side of the border during a combat action for which I volunteered. It was a call from the commander of our brigade, the staff captain Janek, who asked for volunteers. He wanted three tanks of volunteers for a combat action with the aim to break the front and get to the rear of the Germans and seize some crossroad there to prevent the German army vehicles from riding further on the roads. And during this action my tank got a blast. It was a full blast to the front section, fired from an anti-tank cannon. I was heavily wounded, and my loader as well. I jumped out. Only the radio operator, a young Slovak guy, Cvitkovský was his name, remained alive. I met him after the war, he was just leaving the army and had plans to continue his studies, so he told me a bit more about it. The tank burnt down completely, killing the commander who stayed inside, he was probably killed instantly. That commander’s name was second lieutenant Rubinstein. He was originally from Uzhhorod, or Mukachevo, I think from Uzhhorod, actually. And as I remember, by his original profession he was a theatre actor, as he had told us. It was very unfortunate. So only myself and the young radio operator Cvitkovský have survived.”

That was interesting. I was in Kharkov as a worker. We worked there for one company and lived near an airfield there. Our neighbours were German recon pilots. They flew on missions to the rear of the enemy and on the front to take reconnaissance photographs. They even brought back a little bear from some place in the Caucasus mountains. They kept it in the garden. We looked at them from the other side, and I have to say, we cooked our meals ourselves, the food we received was not bad, sometimes they even gave us meat. The company was taking care of us. From this point of view, it was great in Kharkov. But the beginnings were awfully difficult and hungry…in winter. This was the time of Stalingrad, freezing terribly…it was horrible. I had a dog there. I found some stray dog, which probably got lost on the front. Somehow I lured him to me, and took him home and gave him food. He began to like me, and got better. Then a certain captain pilot took the dog away from me, claiming that this was an army dog and did not belong to me. He took the dog away, but one day the dog came back, he escaped and so the captain did not want him anymore. The dog stayed with me in my room, and there were only two of us, me and a guy named Straka, he was also from Lanžhot. And suddenly we hear some knocking on the door. The dog began to bark furiously, and Straka called out: ´OK, come in.´ But he probably could not hear it, so I ordered the dog - I called him Lux – to sit down and be quiet, and I went to open the door. There was a German corporal from the anti-aircraft team. He was not a pilot, but the German anti-aircraft guys wore the same uniforms. They served at airports and did the servicing of cannons, ground equipment, and so on. I thought, what the hell he wants. And Straka said out loud in Czech: ´What does that idiot want?´ He was a corporal. And when he heard what Straka just said, he exclaimed: ´Blast it, guys, you are Czechs?´ – ´Sure we are. We are from Moravia, we are Moravians.´ ´Well, I’m not a Moravian, but I know Moravia pretty well. And do you know where I come from? You guys know where Jindřichův Hradec is?´- ´Hell, we sure know Jindřichův Hradec. Southern Bohemia, right?´ - ´Yeah, so I come from a place down there, just next to the borderline.´ His name was Vaněk. And this is where the borderline between us was…We always called him Good Soldier Schweik. Naturally, he spoke German, he came from a mixed marriage. Meaning his dad was a Czech and his mother was German. So they probably lived near the border, and stayed there after the border regions became occupied. Must have been somewhere near Bystřice, or so…So we became friends. There was a young woman who worked there as a servant, and he was flirting with her. He came to us because of her. (Interviewer: ´Was she a Russian?´) A. Š: She was Ukrainian. He made some plans with her, he wanted to run away, to defect. He did not tell us, we did not know. This Vaněk, whom I met as he came to our room as a corporal anti-aircraft gunner. He worked a light quick-firing anti-aircraft cannon, and he served on the same airfield where we worked. So this was how we met. And he kept coming to our place because of that Ukrainian girl. We knew him simply as Vaněk, but we did not know what a soldier he was. But the Germans demoted him. And then I met him in our army! He was a sergeant and I met him in the tank brigade. When I joined the tank brigade, he was in our army, and had the sergeant’s rank. There were many guys like that. In the so-called Sudetenland, the region which was taken over by the Germans, there lived many Czechs from mixed marriages, and those who did not relocate inland had to join the army, depending on their age, health, and so on. So we became friends with Vaněk, he was a god guy. He was a Good Soldier Schweik. He knew how to work, how to get intelligence, two times he went for a meeting with Germans. He would say: ´I got a talk with them.´ He donned his German uniform and went for a chat with them. And he always came back and as a bonus he would often bring something back with him, a chicken for example, or something like that. And the reports he was bringing back, in the army it was unimaginable that someone would be able to bring such reports from the German army as he did. And the staff greatly commended him on that. Janko and Tesařík had only good words for him. But Vaněk had the nature of soldier Schweik. While I was there, they demoted him two times or so, and they were awarding him his rank back again.”