Adolf Kůrka

“There was an ash tree alley leading from the village. I hear from the side: ´Friend, friend, hilfe, help.´ Nobody wanted to go towards the school into the hands of the Russians. I didn’t go there either. There was one lieutenant and he went all the way to that soldier who had suffered a shot in his stomach and his intestines were coming out from his belly. The lieutenant put the man on his back and ran back with him. The Russians were shooting from the window at the lieutenant’s legs. He fell to the ground. He let the soldier with the open belly lie there and he crawled to the first house in the village where he reached help. He was wounded in his leg. I could not just stay there, because the boy was still crying there: ´Hilfe, hilfe.´ And so I went for him and I was pulling him. Meanwhile somebody brought a small wagon from the other side. He was still alive. We moved him to the wagon and he was sitting there, and he had his open intestines in his lap, but he was alive. They took him to the village, and so I don’t know what happened with him next.”

“All of a sudden I heard some noise from the right side. Voices of many people who were talking loud. We had received orders to be quiet and inconspicuous. The voices didn’t sound as German language. They were Russians. What to do now? We were sitting in a ditch by the road. Should we run back? It would be suspicious if they saw us running back. One of us said: ´We will pretend we are dead.´ At that time I had already lost my shoes in mud. I was barefoot, naked and I had a helmet on my head. What a sight, right? I was the first one from the right. The voices were getting closer and I looked up one more time. I was lying in the ditch and I looked on the ground once more. The soil was black and the wheat was growing high. The sky was reddish on the horizon, a new day was dawning, and I began to pray: ´God, I am still young, I have not enjoyed anything yet, and I am to die?´ At that moment as I was in the ditch I saw all my loved ones at home, standing above me and preparing for my death. I remembered how I once looked at a body of a dead Russian, who was killed expertly by a commissioner with a shot to the back of his neck. I was afraid of the shot to the nape, and so I moved the helmet a bit and I wished to get four or five shots in my back instead, that would kill me as well. As the noise was coming closer, I was not even breathing as I was scared. I was lying there, my feet in the wet ditch. My bare feet. I was lying there and they were already there and the steps of two men stopped and in their language I understood the word ´German´ four times. I was so scared that I didn’t even breathe so that they would not see my chest moving. The group continued walking, and only the steps of the two stopped and they said that we were dead. The ground was strewn with corpses on the Russian front.”

“That was where I saw a sexual intercourse for the first time. There were four women among us in the column. Young women in grey suits. All dressed in the same way. White blouses, and sharp-pointed collars. We kept walking on the main road. One evening we turned from the road to a turn-off road. There was a downhill slope in the field, and we thought that it would be the end for us there. As we walked on that field road, a Russian jumped into our column, grabbed one of the women by the collar and pulled her out. He threw her in the ground and he started grabbing her. The woman tried to defend herself. With her hands, legs, she was twisting her head. He was already kneeling over her, and she was still struggling. The Russian pulled out his gun, fired one shot next to her right ear, another next to her left ear, and the woman immediately lay still. The Russian satisfied himself and went away. The woman got up and rejoined the column.”

“We stood at attention and nothing was happening. After a while there comes a military policeman from the corner, leading a guy and a whole group with him. They brought the man inside a fenced area and made him stand there. An officer came to him: ´Sentenced to capital punishment, loss of military rank and all civil rights.´ The guy was pale, gaunt, and scared and he said something to the officer. He probably pleaded for his life. But the officer said: ´Nein, you have deserved this.´ He turned to the firing squad commander: ´Execute!´ And he stepped aside. The firing squad commander ordered: ´Attention, ready to fire. Attention – now!´ But they had blindfolded the soldier before it and tied his hands. I was standing close to him on the side. One of the soldiers went there and grabbed his hair and pulled him aside and covered him with a blanket. It didn’t take long and they brought another one. He was a robust man and his forehead was bandaged. They led him to the fence and the officer says: ´Sentenced to capital punishment. Do you want to say anything else?´ ´Nein.´ He turned to the commander: ´Execute.´ He raised the sabre again. ´Attention - fire.´ The guy must have seen the bloodied hair of the first man under the blanket. An officer came to him and shot him once more in the back of his neck, probably just to make sure. He grabbed him by his hair, raised the blanket and pulled him next to the first one. And still it was not over and they brought in another man.”