“And the conditions were very hard in the Carpathians. The fact was that the trees were great enemies of soldiers. Every flying bullet or shell shoved and exploded in the air in contrast with field where it exploded in the ground and the losses weren't so heavy. And you heard it there as if you hit a tree with a hammer. Before a bullet even exploded, it flew into a green little branch as if you broke it. Then you looked. Old soldiers knew right away what it was, that it was a danger. Bullets fly. And there were huge ancient beeches and a forest there. Drinking water was taken from puddles. There wasn't such a thing, the cooks brought water and also coffee and food at night. But there was lack of water, the cooks had to use some water to cook. Well, they simply cooked soup from water just from the puddles in the trenches.”
“My name is Josef Vedral, I was born on Volyně, in a little village Ostrov. My father was a poor peasant, he had only two hectares of land there and he was interested in cabinetmaking and bricklayer's work. I attended a seven-year Polish school. Having finished the school I went to pork butcher's apprenticeship by Matouš in Horochov for four years. After the training I worked as a journeyman in a butcher shop in Lucko, it is Belorussia nowadays. Our little village Ostrov is far away from Lucko. It used to be a regional town. That's about all one can remember.”
“Suddenly soil started darting into my face, I heard such sharp firing by my left ear and I was down with my bike that instant. And he put the machine gun in front of me, you can imagine. I left the bike alone, I crawled down the hill and he fired like crazy. He was shooting two or three meters in front of me. I looked how to crawl under his shots... And the one who accompanied me was shouting: 'Josef, what's the matter?' I said: 'Get down.' He said: 'They're firing at us!' He put the gun down, it was from the forest. And it really was from the forest. It was the Germans who were firing because there was a Czech sarge shot dead on the same crossroads. He went for a check up just like me and he was shot on the road.”
“And our commander Kužel, lieutenant Kužel... he rode a horse. My acquaintance held the horse for him, a citizen of Prague, he was Czech and his surname was Prague. All of a sudden something hissed above our heads and a grenade fell under the horse. It gave such a bang that I wouldn't believe it could give such a bang. The grenade didn't explode, it stayed on the ground. The horse reared, he held him and suddenly our company commander came. He was making a decision about where to station ourselves against the enemy. We had no idea on which side they were. Then bombs and grenades started flying, they stroke everywhere. Well, and then the Germans turned up. 'Hala, hala,' they were shouting 'hala, hala' instead of 'hooray.' The commander encouraged them to assault, they were shooting all the live. We were at the end of the village. We had to recede and there were houses in the village that were covered with straw and it burnt as if you poured petrol over. The path was in flames, you couldn't go that way. The fences there, the chain-link ones had been there since WWI. The house and the building were surrounded with a fence so it was impossible to go through the gardens. Some of us got to the river, the little river was on the western side. We stopped there and trenched ourselves.”
I would like to know what was your relationship to your allies like, to the Red Army? “Well, we were very good friends with the Red Army. The Russians helped us wherever they could. When our infantry was assaulting, the Russians were helping with all kinds of things. I remember I got stuck in siege. Frankov, it was where more of our soldiers died in a gorge, there were nettles and elderberry. I fell in there and couldn't get out. The Carpathians were such treacherous gorges. Suddenly I heard some shriek in German. Shriek, my God, I looked through the leaves and I saw something... the officers had a kind of silver bands on their arms. He held his arm down and was swinging it this way. So I look from the greenery, oh man, it was a German! I didn't dare to stick my head out of there. And it was silent. I was there for two days. The Germans brought a mortar at night and they were firing at our side and the Soviet one. Not until the third day the Russians assaulted the place where I was and they set me free.”
The second lieutenant in retirement Josef Vedral was born on Volyně in the village Ostrov, the district Sienkiewiczovka on April 15, 1915. He attended a Polish school. Then he started four years of pork butcher apprenticeship in Horochov. In 1944 he got to know about forming the army of Volyně Czechs and he joined in. As an infantry member he took part in the toughest fights at Machnowka within the Carpathian-Dukla operation. At the end of the war he was transferred to the Žatec area where he took part in supervising peace in the then Sudetes. He settled with his wife in Damnice in South Moravia. Their son born on Volyně graduated from the Military Academy in Brno and worked in Temelín and Dukovany power stations. The next two children were born to the Vedrals in Czechoslovakia.
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
