Lubor Šušlík

“There is another cheerful story from the times of my service with the battalion. Two cars driving Cpt. Zajíc and my commander went to arrest Mr. Reicing. True, I haven’t personally driven him in my car – he was transported in the other one. But they put his uniform, his shoes and all that he was issued by the army to my car in order to transport it to the storeroom. But I saw him downhearted.” – “Were his riding breeches also there?” – “I am sure they were. They brought all of it and stacked it in my car. But I saw him downhearted entering the other car and I also know that later he was executed.”

“I was nearby the barracks and saw the bomb falling from the airplane. I thought: ‘It’s falling straight on me. I wonder to what pieces it will break me into.’ This was just a flash thought. Then came the explosion. I found myself in the funnel where there was neither pressure nor vacuum so I only got showered by a pile of dirt and then it dispersed. Around me there were many dead, a policeman whose leg was cut off by a shrapnel… This was really the first more serious moment in which I realized that war can take other shapes than a hand-to-hand combat and that people can also be killed by bombs.”

“Should you want a nice apartment, a carefree life, not to toil away at work… your choice would be Pankrác prison. How to get there, ’tis easy, go for treason. Espionage or a joke, just say that times were better, that the regime will bust, to say it aloud is a must. That’s how it began and the final verses were: If you want this, my dear boy, do not tarry, don’t be slow, let treason be your goal.”

“During the war by coincidence I met one German, a soldier from Chemnitz, which then became Karl-Marx-Stadt. I had a scarf around my neck, a blue shirt, but we might have looked like soldiers. I was walking along the street and suddenly a German soldier greeted me with a scout greeting. I thought: ´What the hell is this? Must be some provocation.´ He smiled at me and asked: ´Du bist Pfadfinder?´ I said: ´Yeah.´ He told me he was a scout as well and started telling me some jokes about Hitler. I was careful at first, but then I saw that he was a regular bloke who had been drafted and had to go. I even wrote him a letter right after the war; he had returned from captivity, he had been a prisoner. When I went to do my military service, this relationship somehow tailed off and we haven’t exchanged any letters anymore.”

“I can’t say that my interrogations were brutal; that wouldn’t be true. There was psychological pressure, they were alternating curses with insinuation like: ´Look, you’re young and stupid, do you really wanna rot away in a prison? You’d better collaborate with us, what's the problem with that? You’re ruining your future, when you’ve fought for this country and its people.´ Then they switched: ´You bastard, you won’t tell us? We know everything! You want the Lipany battle and Munich to happen again?! You want us to fight each other?´ And again: ´Hey, are you hungry? Bring him a slice of bread. Do you smoke? Never mind. Would you like some coffee?´ And then again: ´We will teach you to speak!´ And he opened the drawer to show me that he had a gun there. But there was no physical violence like they did to other people, breaking their fingers and knocking their teeth out.”

“Two other guys and I found a place to sleep on the doorsteps. We slept well, but only for about an hour. Then we were woken up by a patrol. There was martial law, and we so had to go to sleep in the overcrowded inn. There we slept sitting on the threshold of a room where the woman innkeeper lived. She was probably disturbed by our moving and shuffling, and she was cursing at us all night long, in Czech, German and Polish. Hlučín is less than twenty kilometres from the front line, and it looks accordingly. Military vehicles, many soldiers and refugees, the wounded coming covered with blood and mud straight from combat, from the main combat line. The following day we were told that we could find private accommodation because there was not enough space for us there and half of the Hlučín population had been moved out. In the evening this recommendation turned into an order and we were placed into a former Czech school, altogether twenty-three people in one classroom. There are Russians, Polish, French and Italian captives in the school as well. The Russians and Polish are the most numerous. We can communicate with them very well; we understand Polish as well as Russian. We use a mixture of all world languages to communicate with the Italians, gesticulating with our hands as we try to express ourselves. They are all good people, young and old. They are looking forward to returning to their Russian motherland. They are sorry that they are so close to their brothers, yet they can not reach them. They all speak well of bolshevism and they are fully content with it. We enjoy very much the food there. They feed us well and we enjoy all the privileges of Reich Germans. We have enough bread, and we go to the barracks for lunch. Besides that we also receive some extras every day, like salami, margarine, marmalade, pork lard, cheese, sauerkraut, carrots. We are under the NSDAP command, which takes care of the food and accommodation, and Todt’s organization takes us over for work. There is capital punishment for attempts to escape, for pretending sickness three times, and for unexcused absence in work, because as members of OT we are subject to military laws on the front. We walk daily at least ten kilometres to work, to a place three kilometres behind the combat line. Hlučín is surrounded by the front from three sides, only the southern side is free.”

“Then there was an announcement that a normal army was being formed in the Jiří of Poděbrady barracks, and all who had proper equipment headed there. There we were issued helmets in order to at least look uniform, as well as white overalls just like bricklayers wear, all with the same tricolor symbol, and Czechoslovak helmets. I was assigned to the assault group, which was helping to suppress various centres of resistance. They provided us with an assault vehicle. We fought on Jindřišská Street, at the corner of Žitná and in other places, mainly in the centre of Prague.”