Libuše Gramišová

"We knew that there was also our army fighting there. So we decided to leave everything here for them. And when the army came in April of 1944 I have entered the army too. The committee came and all of us aged 16 to 60 years - men and women went to the army. We went abroad (To Volhynia - editor’s note), but we fought as patriots. But we remained Czechs. I entered the army when I wasn’t even 17 yet."

"We stayed there for three months. And it was very tough training indeed. We stood by the woods. We have been ordered to stay along the woods to get used to the hard conditions. Of course they put us into bunkers. It was raining so we slept in the bunkers. The ground was soaked with water... And the village was just ahead of us. We spent the whole training in bunkers. We all spent the training time in the woods."

"We got beaten up there in Dukla. We were accommodated in a huge house when they started to fire. One German soldier was sitting on top of the factory roof giving precise information about the location of our soldiers. Their hits were precise. They burst into our kitchen and everything there was in the air, including our cook and everyone else around. Then we moved to some old fashion building with very thick walls. I’m not sure what whether it was some mansion or some kind of bureau. When they started the fire, we must have laid down by the walls to eliminate the danger. We could’ve been hit by the windows. We used the crossbars to close the windows. Everything inside was shaking. I wasn’t even scared that much. Young people see everything with different eyes, they are not afraid of anything."