Richard Brhlík

“His main goal and the reasoning behind all of his negotiations was to get to England. Except that even in 1939 it was not possible to go to England directly. That’s why he travelled to Palestine. The journey was accomplished through a combination of boat and vehicle through Greece, through Istanbul. In Istanbul - I guess there was mission of the Czechoslovak foreign service there, I don’t know exactly, but simply - they gave him back his uniform and insignia. They accepted him back into the Czechoslovak army, as an officer with the rank of artillery lieutenant, and when he arrived in Haifa, his uniform was already awaiting him.”

“How he died: he and his colleagues were made staff members of the regional HQ, presumably for the Dukla region. As such, they were supposed to go out to the observation post one morning, because they had received the information that the Germans had fallen back on the other side of the valley, on the opposite slope. They climbed the lookout with binoculars, maps - you know, officers, the HQ staff and everything. The Germans were dug down in the opposite slope and they commenced mortar shelling. A wide, extensive, heavy mortar bombardment, which was aimed not only at the observation post, but at the whole hillside. There was shrapnel flying everywhere. Many soldiers and officers were cut up by shrapnel. My father had the misfortune of catching one of the shards directly in his chest, straight to the heart. He fell, and all he managed was to shout: ‘Oldo, help!’ at Staff Captain Oldřich Ševčík who stood next to him, ‘Oldo, help,’ and he was dead.”

“He believed - his diary shows that clearly - he believed the whole time, from when he en route from Palestine to England, the two years he was there, right until the end, in 1943, the entries he wrote with his own hand show how he longed for the war to end, and how he believed, maybe somewhat naïvely that, okay, the Russians had stopped Hitler before Moscow, so now things will go quickly and he could be back home by Christmas. That wasn’t true, however, not for another three Christmases. He had his sights set so amazingly clearly on getting home as soon as possible, no matter the cost, no matter the danger, just home, home, home.”