Oldřich Gregar

* 1939

  • "We lived, as I remembered, in the parsonage, so the Trávník estate, well, it was a village. These were low houses, so you could see beautifully across the whole of Travnik to the vehicle repair shops, the railway workshops. And it was half past nine in the morning. My mother...my mother held me and we watched the Czechoslovak national flag go up on the assembly plant. She said: 'Oldříšek, watch well and never forget'. I didn't forget! You can see it on me."

  • "And the crew started shooting on the train that my father was pulling or driving. The locomotive ran into a load of armored fists, derailed. My father was wounded in the head and took a machine gun bullet in the legs, fortunately he was shot clean through only his muscles. There were also two dead in the service wagon."

  • "It used to happen that as early as March and April around 10 a.m. air raid alerts were issued. Well, they either went into the cellars or ran into the woods. Those who were from Javorka would run behind Rouba's Hill, here from the parsonage to Skala. First it started the buzz and then it started to rumble and the whole sky was dotted with silver dots of American bombers and described with condensation vapors. Well, thank God nothing fell on the city."

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    Česká Třebová, 25.03.2019

    (audio)
    délka: 49:46
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
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I haven‘t forgotten

Oldřich Gregar was born on 3 July 1939 in Litomyšl, but he has lived in Česká Třebová all his life. The border between the occupied Sudetenland and the Protectorate ran near his home town. Although they were Czech, the grandparents stayed in Horní Čermná in the Sudetenland, and his mother and little Oldřich often visited them. His father worked on the railroad and was seriously wounded while serving in combat during the May 1945 uprising. From his childhood, Odřich also remembers numerous air raids at the end of the war. He graduated from the Secondary School of Railway and Construction in Letohrad and then worked for the ČSD in the investment unit working on the reconstruction of the railway junction in Česká Třebová. He also participated in the construction of the airport in Česká Třebová. The invasion of Warsaw Pact troops in August 1968 was a strong experience for him. He retired in 2006. He has been interested in military history all his life and is even the author or co-author of several books, for example on fortifications in the Orlické Mountains and Kralicko.