“One of them got hit, it caught fire. That was the other one, I severed its track. And the other one was following him, it turned its rear part on me, turned its ass on me, and there was the fuel tank, so I just fired a shot right into that fuel tank, and he was done for.”
“And then the guys came: ´You see, from that railway station, from one of those skylights… There was a window in the roof, that guy is bothering us, shooting at us from a machine gun, come, have look at it.´ So I went there and fired two shoots and everything was fine. Right into that window. Those rifles we had were excellent, precise rifles.”
“When the Hungarians seized Košice, the first thing they said was: ´Where are those stinking Czechs?´ They said it in Hungarian. But I was able to understand, I knew they were saying: Holvanág abidéš Čehék?” “Could you repeat it so that…” “Holvanág abidéš Čehék? Where are those stinking Czechs?”
“And this watch duty was fine, because people were smuggling things over to Hungary, and Hungarians from Hungary were offering us Csabai sausages and Slovaks were giving us lard, fat... We have not eaten a slice of plain bread during that time.”
“And this was the first time in my life, I mean after we got rid of the Germans, that I saw katyusha rocket-guns in operation. And that was great!” “Was it in Polom?” “No, not Polom, that was already on the other side of the river Váh, before Varín, somewhere closer to Žilina. And what monsters they were! Have you ever seen it?” “On television.” “The katyushas were literally jumping, but it was not just one shoot and that’s it, it kept moving and bursting with fire. Whatever got into their way got burnt. The Germans were completely stunned by them.”
“All were telling me that I had sent her home to die. She was not able to hold any food in her stomach. But it was the pig-slaughtering time, and neighbours were giving each other meat to taste. And one day, they sent to her, to her parents, some headcheese. And she tells her mom: ´Give me some of that headcheese.´ And the mother thinks: ´Well, the girl’s health’s bad enough, I won’t make it any worse by that.´ The girl vomited every meal, but not the headcheese! The entire village was them bringing headcheese to her.” “So you could say she recovered thanks to that headcheese.” “That was the only thing she was able to eat.” “How long did it take her to get healthy? How long was she ill?” “About two or three months.” “That’s a long time.”
“I have never been more afraid in my life than there. We, with that antitank rifle, were lying behind a heap, there were heaps of stones which people collected from the fields. And I was lying behind that mound of rocks, and suddenly a mine slammed down right in front of that heap. That was… Stones were flying through the air and nothing happened to me.” “How come, were you so lucky?” “Yes, it was luck.”
Warrant-officer Jan Mertoš was born to a single mother on October 20th, 1923 in Gelnica in the district of Spiš in Slovakia. He had no siblings and he never knew his father. When he was eight he became an orphan. He spent five years with a farmer in Bohemia; then returned to Košice. After the Hungarian occupation, Jan Mertoš left Košice and he learned the shoemaker‘s trade in Hájniky (Sliač). On October 1st, 1943 he was drafted to the Slovak army. He served in the Ersatz Company in Zvolen until August 1944. After the Slovak national uprising, he actively took part in combat - in early September 1944 he became a member of a Rebel Paradesant Brigade. He served with this brigade until mid-November 1944 as an antitank gunner. With one assistant, he operated an antitank rifle, with which he destroyed two German tanks.
After the uprising was ceased, he became a civilian and remained so until the arrival of the front. On April 4th, 1945 Jan Mertoš was drafted to the 3rd independent brigade of the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps., again as a member of an antitank unit. He fought with this 1st Csl. Army Corps in western Slovakia and in Moravia. After the war, he briefly worked as a messenger for the Ministry of Defense. He then served on the Hungarian-Slovak border. His last position in the post-war Czechoslovak Army was as an instructor of an antitank training course in Trenčín in from 1945-1946. From 1947 until his death, he lived with his wife Anna, born Křížková, in Teplice, where he worked as a shoemaker and later as an employee of a civil engineering company.
