Colonel Václav Volfík

“My father would send me daily into the forest in Díly, saying that Americans would soon be there. And they were. On the first of May, when I arrived to Díly, the village right here above us, Americans were indeed coming. Besides me there were many curious people from Postřekov. But when the Americans were on their way to Díly from Germany, they were driving jeeps and combat vehicles… the first one passed and the second one rode onto a bridge full of mines. The bridge blew up and five American soldiers were killed. The American unit expected resistance but there were no German soldiers left, they had withdrawn the day before, and the Americans were welcome by the mayor and girls in traditional costumes, so the Americans were taken by surprise. They welcomed them with saying “You are in Czechoslovakia.” So they spoke to their superordinates and said, OK, we can’t go any further. Eventually the locals convinced them to go to Postřekov to arrest or destroy German soldiers who were there. I used to pass them and I knew where they were so we led the American soldiers to them. They arrested the German soldiers, those didn’t even pose any resistance, they had their hands up, just plain surrendering to the Americans…”

“It was quite a strict regime. Political commissars had a great influence in the army. It didn’t concern me, though. I was a commander. When I got there from the academy I’d already been a battery commander. Then I became division commander, I commanded a non-commissioned officer school, I was always commanding. And I always had some political commissar behind my back who had no responsibility but had influence, he was supposed to provide counsel. It was annoying me. Many times I ended up in disagreement with them. I was telling myself, if the party and the government trust me, then why is there someone guarding me, right? These political commissars weren’t really helping with the training or education. He just went to present some political news or to read some scripts that no one understood, and the soldiers just slept through it. When I was arguing that I needed them for training we would get into conflicts. Yes, in sixty-eight there were talks about separation. But then August came and it got possibly even worse in some ways. I was in conflict with them till the end. In that division in Stará Boleslav I also had some conflicts with a political commissar.”