Emil Dědek

“We lived in Volhynia. My ancestors. My grandfather came from Bohemia, somewhere from Volanice. My grandfather was one of three sons and they spread out. At first, we lived in Straklov but that was before I was born. I was born in Jezdec u Zdolbunova. Zdolbunov was a town. We were all farmers, everyone was in agriculture. Since I was a kid I worked on my own field.”

“Then I was wounded. There was a bang and a colleague of mine told me: ‘man, you’re wounded. there’s blood on you’. Before I was wounded, I spent two weeks at Dukla. Then I had to go to a hospital. I could walk but I had to rest. It was a Russian and a Czech field hospital. I was brought to a hospital with Russian doctors. Some of the Czech soldiers didn’t understand them, so they took me to help them with interpreting. I spoke Russian very well so I was interpreting. The surgeries were on until midnight. If you had a smashed leg or arm, they cut it away and I was there to do the interpreting.”

“These scoundrels came into the village and the first thing they did was to take the horses and the carriage. They took everything they liked and mugged everybody in the village. They preferred to stay in the towns, not so much in the villages. They saw that there were not that many things to steal in the village and went into the town instead. They Soviet army held its position: the Poles had to leave. They were called ‘Bolsheviks’.”

“Interviewer: where did you join the Czechoslovak troops?” “We enrolled in March 1944. We went to the regional capital Rovno. It was a rather large city already, with several regiments of Polish soldiers. They were gone so the Russians were there instead. We had some of the rooms, it was such a jumble. Someone was taken to Rovno by his parents, someone would walk there. It varied. I went to Rovno on a horse. I joined the army together with my younger brother. My sisters didn’t join.”