"So we went, we did reconnaissance through detection and through fight, two reconnaissances. We went to find out, for example, when it progressed, where the Germans have stopped. We came to the Germans, we got really close and we heard them digging the trenches. So when you were injured in that leg, how did it continue? I was transferred to the hospital and stayed in an hospital in Lviv. And I was there, I don't know exactly how long, but I was soon discharged, I still couldn't walk on my leg very well, I still had a cane. And and I was sent back to the reserve regiment in Humenne. After about how long since the injury, you were sent to Humenne? A month, or six weeks it must have been. Then I arrived to Humenne and from there I was sent to training center, when mobilization in Slovakia took place and we trained as new soldiers. We trained the artillery and I was in the reconnaissance training in that unit. "
"Uniforms, it was all from England, and some were also American, I don't know, because it was all perfect stuff. Those clothes looked like they were always ironed. Pants, pucks, it always looked good, a perfect uniform. I've never seen uniforms like that. When did you first get into combat? It was around Krosno for the first time. We went as the vanguard of the battalion, our company, as scouts. We came very close until they let us go to the Germans. And then they started firing, firing. We were there in such a large "potato field" and there, our company, lay down. We had about two wounded there. And then there were tanks and they fired at us, but they couldn't get to us, we were higher, so the missiles flew over the potatoes and they couldn't get to us. And then our artillery came there, started firing, set fire to a few German tanks, so they (the Germans) fled and we got out of there alive. "
"Well, there was talk of that unit. It was said that there was an army of Czechoslovakia beyond the border. And as we found out, on January 15, we joined the army, mainly from Moštěnice, in 1944. The conscription took place right in your village? No, the conscription did not, it took place somewhere elsewhere. It was a commission, in a village, I don't even know where. It kept moving. There was a staff, they took someone and said, 'That, that, that.' I was assigned to the reconnaissance unit. From the beginning there were just fifteen of them, I was sixteenth. They went young and old, all of them. And you said you went with your father. Father and brother. How old was your father at that time? Well, it was in 1944, so it was he was about fifty-one years old. And your brother was younger than you? He was younger. And by how much? Two years. ”
"The Bandander killed Slavek Tlusty. We lived on the border, where the border was, the Poles and the Soviet Union. And here was Moštěnice, a Czech village, and on the other side was Dědová hora, it was also a Czech village, but it was with the Soviets. Did I understand correctly - Dědová hora - as a grandfather? Yes. And they had relatives there, so the boy Tlusty, Slavek was his name, went there. And the Banderas thought he was carrying some news there, so they killed the boy. He was buried there, and then the Soviet police came, it was under the Soviets. We were in the military, so only then did I hear about it. And then they found him there, they got those who killed him, they caught them all there. "And do you know what happened to them then? Did they have a trial, those who killed him? Yes, I guess they did, the Soviets punished a lot, these Banderas. "
Josef Michalička was born on July 5, 1925 in the village of Moštěnice in Volhynia in the territory of the then Poland into the family of Vladimír and Slavěna Michaličková. In September 1939, Moštěnice, together with the eastern part of Poland, was annexed by the Soviet Union. Josef Michalička experienced violent collectivization, the family had to enter the collective farm. In 1941, the area was occupied by Nazi Germany, and the witness recalls the murder of Jews in neighboring villages and the night raids of the Banderas. After the liberation of the area by soldiers of the Red Army, he joined the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps. He then took part in the fighting at Krosno, Machnówka and Dukelsky Pass, where he was wounded. After treatment in a hospital in Lviv, he was transferred to Humenné, Slovakia, and at the end of the war he was caught in Kroměříž. Together with his family, he used the opportunity to repatriate and return to Czechoslovakia. He got married in 1949, farmed on a farm in Hrušovany, where he was again caught by violent collectivization. He worked as a driver in the Hrušovany unified agricultural cooperative and in 1961 he moved with his family to Žatec. Until 1983 he worked on a state farm in Žíželice, then he retired. Josef Michalička died on December 8, 2005.
