Colonel (ret.) Pavel Tauber

“We accompanied British bomber planes. The Germans didn’t have any defense system so the British did the bombing every day. We were protecting them. It wasn’t very dangerous. Of course they sometimes ‘went at us’ but the fighter planes were not in danger because we could go up or down if they hit at our height… the shrapnels were timed to a certain height, which they measured, eight or eight and a half thousand meters. We always had to ‘stretch’ it. But the bombers had to fly in that, they were loaded couldn’t manoeuvre as easily as we could. I also saw the war. As we passed over the front, everything was on fire, villages and cities…”

“I wanted to fly at any cost, then the fear goes away. Apart from the last flight at the flying training – we flew in a formation, twelve planes, we already had Spitfires at the time. We were joining the leading formation and I felt that the plane began to jiggle. Maybe I reacted wrong, maybe I cut the throttle pedal too much. I fell out of the formation and I called the others that I had to jump. There was an alarm. The commander wanted to know why I was jumping. The Australian pilot that hit me reported that he had cut half of my tail wing. So I thought that I could try to fly the plane because I didn’t want to jump. We were just above the shore, there were only the cliffs and the sea. I tried to balance the plane and made it to the airport. Of course they told me off for pulling down the throttle. Finally I paid only a fine of five pounds, which were eventually drunk at a farewell party.”

“They put us to wagons again. There were two wagons for about 750 people. We were packed in the wagons so that we were on the steps and buffers and we went somewhere. The train stopped, there was a lot of mud… I remember that I came there, I lost my boots and I was barefoot in the mud. It was already cold, the mud was already freezing. We were there for the whole winter, bad food so that there were riots. The plank beds were just sheds, they were not made of planks but just from the edges with knots and bark and large gaps between them. We were stuffed there like sardines. When somebody wanted to turn around, the whole bed had to turn around. Then we were moved again, it was into some monastery or something like that.”

“I saw some smoke coming out of his engine. I told him: ‘Get ready that you may have to land.” I was near him, I got close behind him and told him: ‘Throw out the cockpit, keep constant speed, the engine is not running.’ I followed him close to the ground. Then he hit a tree, the plane turned over and landed on its back. I flew over him and I saw the plane on fire, flames were coming out of the engine. I flew over a farm which was nearby and I saw four men running out, they lifted up the wing and pulled him out. His arm was burnt. Later on I spoke to him and he told me: ‘I was conscious but as the plane was on its back, I was bended, I couldn’t do anything, I couldn’t get out, so I screamed.’ He screamed until he lost consciousness. They pulled him out and he spent several months in hospital.”