Leonid Václavovič Růžička

"Well, all I can remember is, it was in the morning. There was another Czech soldier with me. We were in the ditch. They just brought us some breakfast. The Germans started to fire at us. They were firing form the mine thrower. The mine was falling down. It killed this guy here next to me named Toms. I was just about to put him in the grave when I saw another mine falling down, straight into my hands. They took us to the hospital in Lvov town. In some other town, I forget the name already, there used to be people who were getting well. There they took out another piece of the mine out of my arm, I stayed for a little bit and then I went back on the front."

"It was really weird at the beginning. I didn’t understand anything. It was like: ´turn about, forward march, turn left, turn right.´ or they would say: ´Go get your gun.´ But what is it gun? In Russian language puschka (means gun) is a cannon in Czech language. It was really confusing and not understandable."

"There were two hotels there.The first hotel, then the street and then the other hotel. We stayed in one hotel and Mr. President stayed in the other one across the street. We were guards at this hotel entrance. And once...There was this little stream and a park around. I saw President Benes walking his dog in this park. He came to me. We said hallo to each other. He asked me where I’m from. And where are my parents. It took me a while. I answered him. I was either afraid of him or simply I was embarrassed. Then he continued his walk in the park."

This is liberal translation of the war song. "When the soldiers are out of the barracks on the streets, All Mr. officers and all the Prague’s dudes. Young men and pretty girls are meeting the soldiers. You can barely hear, You can barely hear The drums rumble."

"We held the pig. The Germans came here and took our pig. We woke up in the morning and our pig was gone. And it was a sow and was expecting the babies. I don’t know how to call it correctly. My mom went out and saw the Germans at the backyard cooking something. And there she saw our pig. She went straight to that officer and said: ´This is our pig and your soldiers stole it from us.´ and he replied: ´No way, our soldiers don’t steel. Your pig was running through the village and we made it run into the backyard to save it from the Romanians.´ and they both started to laugh. So they gave us back our pig and just that night the sow-babies were born."