František Peringer

“The soldiers received an order, the order was to set out for České Budějovice. The comrade generals wanted to confuse the capitalist enemy, who could see all of it. And to make it seem like we weren’t going hard north, we drove from Klatovy to České Budějovice, where we were to turn round and finally go actually north. We did that, but to describe it from the end, we arrived at the airfield in Čáslav unfit for combat. When I was returning from the event that I will try to describe, I saw tanks broken down in ditches, trees demolished, APCs and other military vehicles that were completely smashed. Allow me, to make a complete record, to read out some verified information. This is from sources regarding the event, how many soldiers actually took part and which vehicles did or did not reach Poland. The operation included 17,309 soldiers, 541 tanks, of which 80 tanks broke down. Those were the ones we met when we set out after them. 261 infantry fighting vehicles, 335 armoured personal carriers, of which 122 did not reach deployment, and 139 guns, of which some 120 had malfunctions. So like I said, we were unfit for combat. We found that our army was not worth its upkeep. The equipment was old, and the December weather conditions were extreme, minus 20, 25 degrees [Celsius]. The soldiers started freezing to the vehicles, to the armour. They were soaked with diesel and oil. When they slept, they leant against the vehicle, and of course their uniforms froze to the skin, they froze to the tanks. We had to cut them free, in Čáslav and on the way there. Some of them – I didn’t see it, but some of them lost their fingers or even their limbs, they had a frozen hand or a frozen leg. The weather was insane.”

“Our doctors suspected that something was afoot because they were visited by a lot of soldiers, mainly from the tank companies, who complained they were overworked. Because they had joined in October 1980, they had had one month of prelims, and then after being sworn in they were forced to climb into the tanks in the night after their daytime jobs and learn to drive them – with all the less sleep because of it, of course. They just couldn’t go on, so they said: ‘We’re terribly tired, bossed about in the morning, bossed about in the day, bossed about in the night.’ The doctors started to suspect that something was going on because this was not entirely standard. We had information from Poland, we knew that something was happening there. We knew there was a reformist movement there and reformist events. But we had no idea that there could be a repeat of what happened here in ’68, we had no idea, of course. But we did know there could be some extraordinary exercise because the soldiers were learning to drive. We were all ready for that, to be part of some exercise. That was nothing extraordinary. But we didn’t consider it that important.”

“In other words, we received the order indirectly, it was clear we were going to a military exercise. That we were going to attack the Poles, and that we would go at the Poles by heading to České Budějovice [in the opposite direction than Poland – trans.], that kind of silliness would never have occurred to us. The units that set out after receiving the order on 6 December, they knew it and they also drove straight towards Poland, and as I have heard, some of them even entered Poland. The soldiers were afraid of the Polish, the word was that ‘Poles aren’t Czechs, Poles won’t just let some tank crews drive around Poland.’ Our soldiers knew that the Poles would defend their country. And then there were some of our soldiers who said: ‘At least we’ll get to do some shooting!’ Different kinds of mentalities. Some were reasonably afraid, others were unreasonably eager to shoot at people. But that’s how it is with people. Yes, there were those who would have enjoyed it. The question is, they might’ve been bragging, but I don’t know, I’m not sure that every other man is ready to shoot at people, especially without cause. There was no vital threat here, and if there was, for what reason? If anyone asked himself those questions, everyone would’ve done all they could to avoid it. And if someone can’t see this, he might reckon he’d have himself a hunt.”

“So we waited for the tow truck from Týn, but it was already being used elsewhere. It took six seven hours for it to arrive, in that freezing cold. Then a second one came and they managed to pull it out. They opened the tank hatch, the crew were obviously already dead. I won’t describe it in detail, all four of them. Doctor Deniger wrote out their death certificates, but Mr Wolf was the only one whom he suspected of dying from mechanical injury, by breaking his neck or something. All the other ones had very clearly died by drowning and suffocation. All four soldiers were alive when it happened, which is a terrible tragedy. The way I see it, those soldiers could have lived if the other tank crews that had been down there hadn’t been called away and had pulled the tank out. Another big problem was that the bodies were frozen. They had to remove hundreds of rounds of ammunition from around them in the tank. It was awful, I can’t describe it. Doctor Deniger examined the bodies. Then a helicopter landed there with some general of ours. I don’t know what it was, but he wasn’t exactly on the bright side because Doctor Deniger was with one of them, it happened to be that Mr Wolf, who was married and had a ring. The general told him: ‘Doctor, take off his ring, so his comrade wife has the ring.’ That’s like from some TV series. The doctor said: ‘But I can’t, you can see that it won’t come off.’ The general said: ‘Then cut the finger off, that can’t be a problem, it’s dead anyway.’ The doctor retorted: ‘You do that yourself, I won’t do it.’ We went through their papers and saw that the one man had been married. We even saw that he had three children, though in the end he was only expecting one. The three we saw were not his, just relatives, as I found out recently. Until now I’d thought he had three children, the kids were there in the photos, he had them rolled into a tube.”