Colonel (Ret.), Ing. Roman Kopřiva Ph.D.

* 1964

  • "They just came for me one morning at 1:30 a.m. from the operating room saying we were in trouble. It was always, 'Commander, we have a problem.' You already knew it wasn't good. I got there and - you've got the wiretaps, you've got everything, you can hear the gunfire, you can hear the guys calling to each other, it's quite unpleasant - and then you get a call from the commander of the group saying, 'We're bogged down, we're surrounded, there's a couple of dozen Taliban around us' and there were about twenty-five of ours there and 'I'm asking you, we're going to destroy that vehicle'. And so I had to make a decision and I said, 'OK, so mine it and blow it up' and I looked around and everybody was wide-eyed because it's not standard for somebody to destroy their own equipment. But you've got your own people's lives on mind at that moment, and if it's going to help them, it's just going to help them. And now I said, 'Boys, what have you done for my boys up there,' and we called in air support. We found out there were other contact teams of ours on the move that could help. 'And good. What else can we do?' 'Nothing now, we can just wait.' 'Great, give me a cigar.' That's when their jaws dropped. I took a cigar and I went outside to smoke. And everything went well. The vehicle finally got out. The guys broke away from the Taliban, got away from that kind of shooting, and got back to base safe. And when we got home, the boys came to me and said, 'Commander, you were so calm, you smoked a cigar, our guys were shooting, they're in danger - and you have a cigar.' And I said to them, 'Well, you don't know that I had thongs instead of my underpants, and my bottocks were so tight, and I was so afraid that it was the only way to get away from you, because if you get nervous, chaotic, and you start yelling, it's a total mess.' So the guys did what they had to do, which was good, I had a cigar, prayed that nothing would happen, and then I always just say to myself: luck favors the prepared."

  • "We were at a funeral where the remains of a Muslim were being buried. And they, the survivors, came down on us and demanded with all their might that the Serbs be punished and specifically named the people who did it, who killed him. You can't promise them anything like that. You can only work with that information, but you certainly cannot promise them that. Because you've been there for a while, and you've met these people. And then in the end you meet them and you more or less say, 'Yes, we have worked with that information, we know where he is, we know where he can be found, and now it's a question for other courts or for somebody else, it's not our business anymore.' Because they are demanding a vendetta. 'He is the one who killed my..., and you are going to investigate him here, and who knows what will happen to him in the end and so on.' However, even today, I believe that if you go there, the remaining hatred will be there, I remembered one such conflict recently. I had the opportunity to work in the Office of the Government, in the defence and security section. And I was at the meeting of the Bosnia and Herzegovina tripartite and our Prime Minister. Even though they were supposed to represent one country, each of them went against the other. In other words, when the Bosnian said that, the Serb immediately accused him of something. The Bosnian started to defend himself, and the Croat came in and started to disrupt the whole meeting, so it was very difficult for us as Czechs and for the Prime Minister to calm the situation down. But there you will understand quite clearly that the situation is not going to calm down. It may be a matter of generations, not even generations, but generations, if it will be calm there. Those who are watching today know that it's probably not going to be calm."

  • "There was a house not far from the base and there was always a little girl and somehow, every time we drove by in the car, I mean in an UAZ, we had an UAZ, so as soon as we got close she would start crying and run away. Always, always. And one time there were these old parents, we guessed it was grandma and grandpa because they were really in their seventies, the little girl could have been five or six years old, we don't know for sure. We suddenly stopped there and asked why that was. And they told us that when she was smaller, about three years old, that she eye-witnessed when her parents were murdered. And for us, such a high reward literally, any medal can go to hell in that sense, was when we actually stopped just before the end of the mission and she didn't run off and took the chocolate from us. And nobody understands that, I guess, but suddenly you find that it's something wonderful, that she stops worrying about some uniforms and things like that. It was a huge satisfaction for us that that willpower bore fruit."

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    Brno, 20.07.2022

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    Brno, 09.11.2022

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Those who are active make the rules. Those who don‘t are dragged along by events

Roman Kopřiva
Roman Kopřiva
zdroj: Witness´s archive

Colonel Roman Kopřiva was a member of reconnaissance units and special forces of the Czech Army. He was born on 20 September 1964 in Šumperk as the eldest of three children. He originally wanted to study archaeology, but was not admitted. Instead, in 1983-1987 he studied at the Military University in Vyškov. After successful graduation, he was posted to the 65th Ernst Thälmann Motor Artillery Regiment in Cheb. As a platoon commander he was in charge of 30 soldiers of the basic service. After two years he was transferred to the 20th Reconnaissance Battalion in Cheb, then to the Reconnaissance Battalion in Kroměříž, where he served as a company commander. In 1998 and 2000, he served as an intelligence officer in Bosnia and Herzegovina as part of the stabilisation operation SFOR 2. Upon his return, he was transferred to Prostějov to General Moravec‘s 601st Special Forces Group. In 2009, he was deployd to Afghanistan as a contingent commander of the Special Forces of the Army of the Czech Republic in Operation Enduring Freedom. He finished his military career in 2014 as a Defence Adjutant of the Ministry of Defence of the Army of the Czech Republic in Slovakia. Currently (2023), he holds the position of senior project manager at the Community Centre for War Veterans in Brno.