“So we wanted to get in touch with him, as we reckoned we’d join forces with them. But they didn’t want to take us in because they didn’t trust us, and so they said: ‘Start your own group and keep to yourselves.’ So we left and wandered about. Some of us found a place, some of us didn’t. It wasn’t organised in any way.”
“[The National Guard] was supposed to help the police keep the peace, right? That’s why we were sent into the border regions ahead of the army. We were to guard the railway line leading from Germany to Liberec.”
“And then I remember there was this one slope, I mean there was the road and we were to dig ourselves into the incline. We didn’t quite understand it, because the slope was bare of any cover, we’d be sitting ducks. There’s the enemy, there’s where you go, and up the hill. There was nowhere to hide. Nothing. So we didn’t want to stay there. We pulled back to the hilltop and [kept watch] from there, so as to stay hidden. I didn’t know the reason for it at the time. So I asked around, later, after the revolt, I talked with some officers here in Bohemia and asked them about it, because is nonsense. But they said it wasn’t nonsense, it was to be a sacrifice. The soldier can’t retreat from such a place. So he’d have to stay and fight until he died, to resist [the enemy] for as long as possible.”
“After lunch, towards the evening, it was about four o’clock, we left. We were leaving Trnava when the inhabitants came to wave and wish us goodbye. And even just the feeling as we were walking along. The youngsters, as many as there were, they joined us. It was worse with the old mothers and the such. They were crying because they realised what it meant. We took it that it would something different, the thrill and the experience, but the old ones already knew it would be no joke.”
“We wanted to go around Berlin, but they said it was occupied there, that we couldn’t pass, so we [went] west. But they chased us away from there as well. So we went back again. We tried hard, because we really were in the front lines. We started from somewhere in the morning and in the afternoon the place was liberated by the Americans. It happened a number of times during the march. So one evening we said to ourselves: ‘Right, this time we really will stay put somewhere and slip away.’ ”
“Then the Germans somehow managed to take Hronský Svätý Kříž (now known as Žiar nad Hronom - ed.), and so they cut us off. We couldn’t fall back any more, so we had to head up into the mountains around Kremnica. We reached Kremnica. We held on there for a while, and then fell back again. There was a so-called Gold Road leading over the mountains - from way back in Roman times when gold and silver were being mined in Kremnica - it led over the mountains to Banská Bystrica. A kind of forest path.”
Private (ret.) František Ralbovský was born on the 18th of January 1920 in the village of Záhorská Bystrica in Slovakia. After completing town school (upper elementary), he went on to study tailoring in Jablonec nad Nisou. In 1938 he joined the National Guard, an anti-Nazi organisation patrolling the border regions. After the NG was dissolved, Ralbovský found himself in Prague, from whence he moved to Slovakia and then Vienna. After vain attempts to find a job, he left to Jičín, returning to his native Slovakia after the Nazi occupation of Bohemia on the 15th of March 1939. He received a draft card calling him to serve in the Slovak army. He served in Trnava from 1941 to 1944, an extended period from what was originally supposed to be two years. In 1944, Slovakia was already preparing for the Slovak National Revolt and some military garrisons were supposed to take part in the uprising. Trnava was one of those garrisons, and so František Ralbovský joined other soldiers, travelling through Topoľčany to Banská Bystrica, the heartland of the revolt. After giving his pledge of loyalty, he left to fight for Prievidz. However, the uprising did not hold against German pressure and the soldiers began to fall back. Finally the Slovak army dissolved and the soldiers were left to their fate. František Ralbovský and other men wanted to either reach Eastern Slovakia, where could link up with the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps, or to join the Soviet partisans. Both options remained but wishful thinking, however, as the soldiers were captured by a German patrol immediately upon leaving the forests. František Ralbovský was imprisoned in Martin and Görlitz. When the eastern front neared their location, the prisoners were marched towards Erfurt and Jena, reaching Karlsruhe before turning back to escape the western front. Ralbovský attempted to escape the march, but without success. He was locked up into a mill, where he was liberated by the American army. He then returned to his native Slovakia through Amsdorf, Cheb and Pilsen. After being released from military duty he moved back to Jablonec nad Nisou, where he started a small shop. He later worked in a disability co-op and in Liaz. He retired in 1970, and after his wife died he moved to Bechyně to be with his daughter. František Ralbovský now lives in Bechyně in Southern Bohemia.
