“The journey to Buzuluk? Well, it during war. Weapons and soldiers bound for the front had priority, then the wounded soldiers from the front had priority, returned cargo and packages from the front and what not were next on the list, but there were no special trains for our little group of five people. Therefore we made use of railway cars of various trains which were dispatched from stations in the direction we needed. We had to change trains many times. We rode in a regular cargo train, then in a cattle truck which had straw inside, we were cold because it was in winter, and only rarely we managed to catch a ride on a passenger train. And these were not too warm, either. The problem with railway transport was that there was a lack of trains, and the transport system was overloaded. As I mentioned, the soldiers and tanks had the highest priority, followed by other weapons for the front and soldiers heading there, and we were the very last ones.”
“When I got to the edge of the forest, from afar I could see that in front of the nearest village there were Soviet border guards who were watching the area. I was glad I spotted them, and I walked directly toward them. They gave me a friendly welcome and they asked me a lot of questions and let me wait with them till the new shift came to take over their duty. Then they arrested me. What was strange to me was that they had me take all my personal things out of my pockets, and place them to a bundle made of a handkerchief, and I had to carry in this way. I found it strange. But I still felt to be free, I didn’t see anything suspicions. When I came with them to that village, at first they led me to a room which was probably an office of the border patrol chief, and they interrogated me there, and after the interrogation and the signing of the protocol they put me inside a little plank room. The ground was covered with straw and the walls were made of wooden planks. I found that there were already four other defectors inside. Three of them were even younger than I. A border guard soon came and brought us a lot of food. For me it was the first time in three days when I had a proper meal, and I was afraid I might get sick. They called it borsch, but there was a lot more meat in it than anything else. When I put the spoon into the bowl, it remained standing, because the soup was so thick. We all ate and we felt very satisfied. I felt as if I had gotten to some feast. It became worse the following morning, when the border guards on horses showed up in the yard. They led us out and we had to walk to Skole, which was the nearest district town. Skole is the nearest district centre in the border region of Carpathian Ruthenia behind the border line.”
“We were attacking every day. During the day, during the night, the wheels were still rolling, and we were lacking sleep, but we kept fighting, shooting, firing, they were destroying our tanks, we were destroying theirs. The advance was very slow and we had basically lost most of our tanks before we reached the Oder River, and we were left only with tanks from the 2nd tank battalion, which was the battalion where I served. Even today, the battalion commander Buršík still claims that the preservation of our tanks has been accomplished thanks to me, because I had managed to maintain the connection and mutual combat support and thus also the best execution of our task. When we reached the Oder, the first battalion didn’t have a single tank left, and the third one was basically also left without any tanks. The attack on the bridge-head followed. The 2nd tank battalion was therefore the only one from the tank brigade which was ordered to cross the river together with the Soviet units and to make a forced crossing using a bridge which the Russian sappers built during the combat. On April 4, we had to start the attack on that bridge-head against the German defence and we had to extend this bridge-head in order to get it ready for the attack on Ostrava and then in the direction of Bohumín. It turned out that it was not possible, because the Germans had positioned their strongest defence there. We lost quite a lot of tanks there, perhaps five or six tanks, and the last of our officers perished there: the platoon commanders, the deputy of the battalion commander captain Lizálek, the commander of the 4th tank column, then second lieutenant Vajda, who was given the rank of captain in memoriam, he had also been decorated the Hero of the USSR in memoriam for the preceding combat from Kiev all the way to this bridge-head. The bridge-head was called Tworków, because it was near the town of the same name. I got wounded there, I suffered a serious leg injury, and it nearly severed my leg just above the ankle, and I had to be carried to hospital.”
“I should mention that together with the commander of the 2nd tank battalion we controlled the fighting of the 2nd tank battalion. We gave the tank battalion commander his own commanding tank, and we placed two radio stations inside. One served for maintaining connection with our superiors, that is with the brigade command, or with the higher Soviet commanders, and the other for giving directions to our subordinates. We agreed that we would both ride in the tank, or that he would either be in the tank or control the combat from a look-out point outside the tank. Whereas for me, I would basically take up the command of the tank and engage in combat with the tank, and at the same time I would control the combat according to the commands he issued. The minor commands, details and tasks in accordance with his orders were basically issued by me, and I reported to him as to my commander. This worked very well for both of us and we felt happy with it and we were very successful. In other places, the communication officers were sitting in the staff with the staff commander, just as it was prescribed, and they controlled the situation over the radio or telephone whenever possible. But I thought – there are 22 tanks and 22 radio stations in the battalion, while in the staff there are only three radio stations and a telephone team. My deputy staff sergeant Kryšaník will therefore manage to control the situation following my instructions. I left Kryšaník there and I was in contact with him over the radio, and I could also connect onto the staff radio network and this way I had direct access to the network of my subordinates, of the commanders of tank columns and platoons, and so on, and thus I was basically able to control every single tank.”
“The transports were worse than prison, because it was freezing most of the time and these were cargo cars, and they were heated only by a small tin stove, which couldn’t heat the whole train car. We kept warm mainly by our own breath and the stench, which was suffocating us inside the car. The sanitary conditions were terrible. There was only a tin bucket, which we used for... and which we poured out sometimes. There was no other sanitary equipment for washing, and we were terribly dirty. There was no healthcare during the transport. Many people were already sick, and many others were becoming sick. It is interesting that always, the first to become sick was a person who had originally looked most healthy and strong, and he eventually didn’t last long. We knew that if somebody got sick, they took him out of the car. From time to time they came to pick up these individuals or the dead corpses, and they were putting them somewhere else. We heard that the transport had a special car which was full of corpses, and they were allegedly unloading them in some of the stations.”
Colonel Ing. Vasil Jovbak was born in 1923 in Bukovinka in the Carpathian Ruthenia. After the Hungarian occupation he left for the USSR in 1940. He spent two years in various prisons, especially in Novosibirsk. Then he joined the Czechoslovak army unit in Buzuluk, became a tank driver and a radio operator of the 2nd tank battalion. He took part in the fighting for Kiev, Bila Cerkev, Dukla and in the Ostrava operation.
After the end of the war he served in the army till 1977, where the increasing pressure on him culminated in his dismissal for political reasons. He is the author of books on World War II and Carpathian Ruthenia, and the holder of several decorations. He died in 2009.
