"It is a wonderful feeling when you jump with the parachute and it opens itself. Before you land, it is amazing. You feel like jumping again and again…"
"All of the pilots were dead instantly, so as two of our soldiers. All of the others were heavily or mildly wounded. Vlastička had a gashed forehead, little needed and she would have been dead. Noone knew where they were, wheather in the German area or by the Soviets. That night they did what possible – I am not sure if they found an aid kit. In the morning, two soldiers and Vlastička went to locate the area they were in. Than they heard someone speaking Ukrainian so they came to those people. And they told them thah they heard a plane crash and that they also did not know whether it was the German’s or ours. "
"They brought my brother to Stalingrad. We were 120 km far from there but it seemed like five. The sound was very loud. My brother spent two months there and five of them (the soldiers) caught typhus. So they had them taken to the rear. Three of them died, two survived. My brother stayed alive."
"One of the women in the army lost a husband – being killed at the front. She had been avaiting a baby and when she discovered about his death, she lost the baby too."
"Since I was a kid I wanted to become a balletgirl. And then I found pleasure in sport, flying, and just like that I ended up in the II. Airborne brigade."
"At the beginning she was doing the laundry and that was not easy. She would do it by hand, there were no machines. After they got to know that she was a medic, they put her in a hospital. So she had lots to do. "
„Since I was a kid I wanted to become a balletgirl. And then I found pleasure in sport, flying, and just like that I ended up in the II. Airborne brigade.“
Lydie Horálková was born in 1927 in Kyiv to a Czech-Ukrainian family. She spoke Czech and studied in a Czech school since her early childhood. Those quite idylical times came to an end along with the beginning of the Russian war on Germany. In those times, most of the minorities in Ukraine were taken to Soviet camps. Mrs. Horálková‘s family were deported to a camp Oranky, where they had to stay for about a year. However, Kyiv was then already occupated by the Germans, so they moved to the Volga area. Mrs. Horálková‘s father got to Buzuluk in the meantime. Later, the whole family met him there and joined the newly created Czech army in the USSR. Mrs. Horálková herself joined the II. airborne division as an operator. She fought during the tough combat at Dukla, where her youngest brother was killed. She airlanded on the Tri Duby airport and witnessed the counter-offensive of the German army. Her brigade falled back to the mountains, where several tenth of soldiers died of cold and malnutrition - inclunding the important communist MP Jan Šverma. Mrs. Horálková survived, however with a deteriorated health.
