Ivan Major

“We agreed upon it on Sunday, and on Monday morning we left the house and rode about fifty kilometers by bus. Then we had to pass through deep forests and over the hills that are in that region. And eventually we crossed the border with the Soviet Union. We had not made any special preparation for this, we simply left one day. Nor did we need anyone to lead us over the border, there was a well-trodden path leading to the border. We followed this path and then we saw a border stone – on one side it said USSR, and on the other Czechoslovak Republic.”

“I will tell you one episode; it took place before Kiev. The armies were assembling here, the Soviets, our Czechoslovak soldiers.... all awaiting the attack on Kiev. Suddenly a Soviet soldier comes to us and brings us a leg of meat and asks: ´Boys, would you like some meat?´ We thought, well, why not. So we took it and after a little while when we had to move the mortars to another place, we found out one of our horses was missing. And so we realized where this meat came from...”

“Three kilometres behind the border we were sighted by a Russian patrol, by three officers. They fired the rifle. We had to get down on the ground. Three others came and they took us to some other place. We were interrogated. They locked us in a room and there we waited for a trial. There were several more interrogation session and then were sentenced in Starobělsk. Each of us got a three year penalty. I spent this time in several prisons – the both the district ones and the larger ones, like Stanislav for example.”

“What about your life after the war? Did you stay in the army?” “We were happy that the war was over. We looked forward to starting a new life. A life in peace. We were glad that the Germans had been defeated. However I cannot say that something would be different today, that there would be peace. Pray God that the nations would finally agree they would live without wars and struggle and misery.”

“When we were on our way to the front, we would practice with mortars everyday during the journey there. There was lot of snow, but whenever we reached a place, they moved our train to a side track leading to a forest, where nobody could see us. And there we had to get out of the wagons and learn whatever was needed. We rode a train to a place about three hundred kilometers from Sokolovo, and from there we had to walk. We walked only at night, and slept during the day. There were no trains running, because the Germans had ripped out the tracks when they were retreating. We would walk about 35 kilometres every day. In about ten days we reached Charkov, where we were supposed to get some rest. But around ten in the evening there was an alarm, and we had to go directly to Sokolovo, and in the morning we already joined the front.”