“My head was hit before Dukla, there were about twelve hundred casualties there, it was just awful. The Germans were on hill tops, they could see us well down there. We were at the hills, we went but there was no point in it. The mine was dropped, its splinters hit my head, a thirteen-millimeter-long splinter. It was before Dukla, we went through such a sparse wood and I heard the mine. It wobbles, it sounds different than a grenade flying directly. Not only me, everybody went to the ground and all of a sudden there was a bang and I didn't know anything. It fell somewhere next to me when I was on the ground. The little lion saved my life because the little lions on our soldier caps were quite thick. It split just on that spot, it hit my head. It embedded itself, of course I dropped into unconsciousness for I don't know how long, I was all covered with blood. Then I saw somebody wrapping me up. He came also from Volynia, my daddy's friend, so he treated me. He dressed my wounds and asked me if I could walk. I told him there were some splinters in my legs but I hoped I was able to walk. 'Go down the hill, there is the major collection down there.' It was such a kind of place where they took the casualties from. So I got there, our doctor stopped me. He was a Jew, he was scared more than we were. 'Where are you running to?' - 'I'm not running anywhere, I'm on my way to the field dressing. I was sent down there so I'm on my way.' There were still some grenades in my pockets, I took a grenade out and I went down. There was the dressing station there. There were perfect big American tents, quilts on the ground. So we sat down and I got a tetanus vaccination. It was my sister's friend, she fainted.”
“Under the Russians there was a ban on private ownership in Volynia. There was no chance of having a private workshop. They imposed such high taxes on us that we had to work so hard in order to be able to pay the taxes that they imposed on us. We worked in the hop growing, my dad was an older apprentice and I did all the odd jobs but I was paid for it. So we paid it all back. We had a little field from priests. There was a little pig with it so we had some food. My mum had her sisters in the village so we had some food supplies. It was getting worse because the Germans... We could only have bread from barley flour, there was no rye nor wheat. The Germans took it all and there were no rations, nothing. They sold nothing in the shop either.”
“I live in Kolešovice 158, I was born in Dubno – in the Soviet Union (West Ukraine) in 1925. My father was a blacksmith and a horseshoer. He had his own workshop. I have got three siblings altogether, there is my sister yet. One of my brothers already died, the other one is still alive. My sister lives in Sao Paulo, in Brazil now. My Mum was a housewife because we were four children so she had plenty to do with us. There were four workers employed in the workshop, she had to cook and such, you know. I attended primary school, I finished it. Then I went to an apprentice school. I got trained as a locksmith.”
“There were about seventeen to twenty thousand people in Dubno and more than three and a half thousand Jews out of that. In our street there were only two Czechs otherwise the rest were all Jews. They were traders, so many Jews. And I, before the Germans came, I used to go to train football as a pupil. They (the Germans – editorial note) simply dug up pits in the football pitch and they shot them there in front of us and we weren't allowed to leave. We had to be in the pitch, there was a fence around. I knew all the Jews, I used to go to school with some of them, with boys. Many of them ran away, many of them stayed there. Then they dug up deep holes, there was an airport at Dubno in the direction of Křemenec...”
“We went to Dukla, they stuck us there without any previous information... there were probably spies there. They simply said - the Germans are not here anymore, they are gone. We were told that was real. There was probably bad spy work of the soldiers. We were divided. When we were approaching the output fighting position we got a terrible feeling in Machnowka because it was in a valley. There were hills all around, there were probably Germans waiting for us, it was just bad luck. There was an awful firing, too. Many were injured and killed in vain. Nobody knew what was going on. We went in columns of three. The whole brigade – the First, Second and the Third battalion. It was at the crack of dawn, we went in the gloom and they were beating us for about two hours. Everybody hid where possible because we wanted to avoid the firing. Then it calmed down because our submachine gunners came. They sorted it out there, they widened the horizon for our attack.”
Corporal in retirement Rostislav Čech was born in the village Dubno in Volynia in 1925. His father was a blacksmith. R. Čech had three siblings. Having finished the primary school he got trained as a locksmith. In Dubno he experienced both the Soviet occupation from 1939 and the German one from June 1941. As a teenager he was forced to watch the executions of his Jewish neighbours. After the Soviets conquered Volynia for the second time in winter 1944, the mobilization for the Red Army started. However, R. Čech decided to join the Czechoslovak Foreign Army. He was conscripted to Rovno in March 1944. He went through the infantry training in Romania. The infantry training was carried out in a tough way by the Soviet officers. Then he was sent to fight in Krosno, but his head was badly hurt when advancing through the Dukla Pass. Afer healing, he fell ill with pleuritis. He enrolled in driving school in mid November and he obtained the driving license for Studebakers. He was placed as a driver to the Fifth Artillery Regiment. He took part in Jaslo operation and the liberation of Slovakia. He experienced the end of the war in Olomouc. After the war he was transferred to the Polish border at Ostrava where he also demobilized after the Czech-Polish relations had calmed down. He settled down in Kolešovice in Rakovník region and he became a private farmer. He refused to join the JZD (Collective Farming). He avoided imprisonment only due to Zápotocký presidential amnesty. Died in 2010.
