Colonel (ret.) Gustav Svoboda

“I have a good recollection from my time in Klatovy. Well, I was in charge of the army workshop there and you were only allowed to cross the demarcation line if you had a special permission. Well and a there was a car in our workshop that belonged to the commander of the brigade and there was such a permission in that car – the driver had forgotten to remove it. Well, I took this permission and put it on my army jeep and drove over the demarcation line to Moravia, to Kyjov. When I got there, my friends told me that the Russians would take my car. They told me stories about Russians stealing everything in the region. It was Malinov’s army which consisted mostly of soldiers from the Caucasus. So I went to the local Soviet headquarters and talked to the NKVD Captain. It turned out that he’s the commander of a penal company. It was these convicts that were stealing everything from the local population. When they caught one in the act, however, he was shot. So I told him that I’m afraid that his convicts might steal my army jeep. He gave me one of his soldiers who was armed with a machine gun and this soldier guarded my jeep all the time. He even sat in the jeep in the night and guarded it!”

“At first the French were friendly – it was southern France, the country of vineyards and wine. But when the Germans attacked France they got angry at us. They called us “dirty foreigners”. They said all this war is because of us. They were actually right because it was because of Poland, right? The division was formed in January 1940 but it was poorly organized because there wasn’t enough time to organize it properly. It takes about six months to train the men. But Hitler was faster and only left us some four months. The unit was formed in the south of France – in the port of Agde. It was two infantry regiments, an artillery regiment, a scout unit, an anti-tank battery and a telegraph battery. Furthermore, there was a medical company and a automobile company which in fact was more of a battalion. We needed 600 drivers but only had some 200. Before we could train the additional 400 drivers, the war was over.”

“There’s no point in telling it because the spirit of patriotism has completely waned in our country. Nobody even knows what it means. Nobody cares about history, not even the soldiers. Not even the high command is knowledgeable about military history. I’m a patron of the military students in Vyškov (the School of ground forces in Vyškov) and when I’m telling them my stories they listen with interest. But that’s it. They think it’s some sort of adventure. Today the people tick differently – they think in terms of money.”

“Well, a story from combat. I have a non-combat story for you. Once I had this idea that it would be a good thing to drive a repaired armored car to the tank battalion personally. However, I got lost on my way there and got into a flooded area. When I finally got out of that marshland I rushed straight into a British tank unit. I was looking at a British cannon that was pointing at me. So I got out of the car and that saved me. The British officer later told me that they were about to fire at my car when I jumped out. Because I came in the direction of the German army. Additionally, I learned that I drove through four mine fields. It was incredible luck.”

“I wrote a paper on this called “The little NATO in the great war”. I named it like that because our General Liška commanded about 18 000 soldiers of whom about a third were Czechoslovaks, one third British and one third Frenchmen. So it was indeed a “small NATO”. There were British units, Canadian units, French units and Czechoslovak units. Further, our General Liška was the only general who accepted a capitulation from a German general. It was a navy general in fact. He had the rank of vice-admiral. His name was F. The German front had 20 kilometers, two thirds of it covered by swamps and marches. Ours had 40 kilometers just south of the inundations. At this point I was a captain. I was in command of a field repair-workshop, some thirty mechanics and some storehouse workers and some detachment workforces. We had Czech tractors and transporters and wrecking tanks. My duty was to remove damaged tanks and armored vehicles. I decided which machinery was given priority for reparation. For example on that November the 5th, there were over ten trackless tanks that hit mines. I was giving orders to that wrecking tanks which of the trackless tanks to salvage first. I was organizing their transport to the workshops.”