Josef Kadlčík

“I can’t say we weren’t well off there. Our platoon leader was a Praguer, one Lieutenant Bílek. I promised him if I’d ever go on patrol with him, I’d shoot him. I really did go on patrol with him. I had my first guard duty on the borders with him. I didn’t shoot the rascal. He was a real slave driver. We were the first platoon of the second company, and as the first platoon, we had to everywhere first, we left first, whether it was from the barracks or the firing range, and we had to be the first to reach our destination.”

“So they went there, they reached the bird’s nest [lookout tower], climbed to the top, and kept watch. They were supposed to patrol along the [tower] walkway, per regulations, and not hide in the cabin, when it wasn’t raining. It was in summer. They patrolled the walkway, and then Resutík came up and told Kříž he was going to the toilet and to have a drink of water. We used to go to an outhouse close to where the glass presser’s was together with a small spring. The trappers went by. Resutík had already climbed down. There was a tunnel leading under the wires. He went through the tunnel and off he was. And he’d told [Kříž] he was going to have a drink of water, but Kříž didn’t know. They hadn’t been shown the land, those boys, the rookies. No one showed them. When we joined the company, he took us and showed us around and told us: ‘Here’s this, here’s that, and it’s customary to do so and so,’ and then the next day we did a demarcation exercise, that is, to see where the actual border lies. At that location it was a stream, the border line was. And these rookies hadn’t undergone that. Perhaps that saved his life. So he went through the tunnel and crossed the grass strip into the copse where the Germans were.”