František Šťastný

"I heard from friends that Dukla was a useless operation. General Svoboda himself was punished for ordering the people to go up there, when there were only a few Germans on that mountain. If they had surrounded the place instead, perhaps it would not have ended like this. But today it is too late to speak about it, too late."

"The captain chief immediately promoted Reicin to a second lieutenant and me to a corporal. He didn’t follow the usual order of a lance-corporal and so on; he made me a corporal straightaway. But I didn’t like him, he was such a bother! That day was my name-day and I drank a little bit, when he came in. I was supposed to say: ´Comrade second lieutenant, what do you wish me to do?´ Instead, I told him: ´You Jewish motherfucker; don't you even come close to me!´ And I threw a chair against the door when he opened it. He ran away. The next day they tore off my epaulettes, and I was ordered to transfer to the guard unit. Well, and so I went."

"We attacked in the evening. I don’t even recall the name of that village - Machnowka or something like that. The Germans had been watching us. They started firing signal flares and the place was just as light as a day. They also opened fire from mine throwers. The Germans had katyushas, and the Russians had vanyushas. Those who ran got shot. Those who laid down and crawled like I have saved themselves. I was crawling all the way to the forest and a Russian soldier who was standing there shouted at me: ´Stop, where are you going?!´ I was not running, but at that time you had no idea where you were or where your unit was. The Russian heard that I could speak Russian too, and he showed me where to go, and thus I reached our unit."

"While the Germans were there, they were helping me. Those Germans were not the owners, who were detained in Postoloprty at that time. They were Germans who were helping the farmers, and when they were then forcibly deported, I remained there all by myself! The farm had an area of ninety hectares! I had two pairs of horses, a tractor, five cows, and village bull--it was a large farm."