Major František Živěla

“I liked sports. I began with football in the former SK Židenice, which is Brno today, I don’t know how exactly they’re called now. It used to be SK Židenice, which was a foremost football club in Brno. I played there as a junior. I also played ice-hockey, I still have some photos here. That was in DTJ Brno 1, standing for Workers´ Sports Association Brno 1. Since I liked this sport and at that time there were no indoor ice stadiums in our country, I contacted HC Poprad. That was one of the best hockey teams of the time. The only club which had its own covered ice skating rink was LTC in Prague. So when I went for my military service, I applied to Poprad and at the same time I requested transfer to HC Poprad. This club was later renamed to HC Tatry, and they were based in Smokovec in Štrbské Pleso. That reason for it being that the winter season there begins early. HC Poprad began with their training sessions already in November, they were going up there to Štrbské pleso or somewhere all the way under the Lomnický Peak, because the lakes up there were already frozen and you could skate there as early as November. That’s why I chose Poprad.”

“Life in the Foreign Legion was tough. It was no fun. But if someone had already been a trained soldier from his home country like me, for I was used to this sort of thing, and personally I didn’t have any problems. Those who kept the rules didn’t have any troubles in the Foreign Legion. But if somebody wanted to rebel or disobey the orders, he didn’t end well. He would be put to prison immediately, or he could even be sent to Colombeshar for a couple of months.” Interviewer: This was some infamous prison? – “It was a penal camp on the border of the Sahara. It belonged to the Foreign Legion. It was a pretty tough level of a Foreign Legion prison.”

“I originally didn’t intend to serve as a member of air force ground personnel. I thought I would become a wireless operator, gunner, navigator, or even go for a pilot course. But when the emissaries came, they already had their instructions. When they asked me about my work experience and so on, I told them that I was in the police, but that I had worked in the Brno arms factory before. As soon as I mentioned the arms factory, I was selected right away. The selection process took some two weeks, and then we went to Meltshaw, I think. There were some five thousand air force members for training, boys and girls as well. We went to school there where we were divided into armourers, engineers, and wireless operators. I was sent to a course for armourers. After some eight months we were assigned to individual units. I got to the No. 310 Fighter Squadron.”

“We were to be airlifted to Prague. We were rearmed. We received Sten guns. We made wooden gun-stocks for them, because a regular Sten gun only had that tube, it was intended for paratroopers. But for a better grip it was more convenient to attach a gun-stock to it. We prepared this in a single day. I don’t know what date it was, we were to fly to Prague. All equipment. Eighteen or nineteen Harrows arrived there. Harrows were light twin-engine bombers, later they were used mostly for transporting paratroopers and ground personnel. We used to fly with them a lot when we were being transported from one airport to another. Some went together and there was an advance party, in order to arrive there earlier than the airplanes. The most essential airplane servicing personnel, armourers, mechanics and so on were to fly in these Harrows. We were also scheduled to fly to Prague in these Harrows. All equipped, ready, with submachine guns, grenades. Ten minutes before take off, the airplanes already standing on the runway – operation cancelled. We had to go back. It was just around six o’clock, BBC news was broadcast at this time, so it must have been at ten to six. We all returned very angry - we were so stupid that we would have let ourselves get killed in the very last minutes of the war. It really looked like that. Then we learnt that the Russians didn’t want it to happen this way.”

“Those of us who also wanted to go for the bomber planes immediately submitted the applications. Mine was turned down. I was so naïve that I wrote a letter to the British Air Ministry, explaining that I wanted to be flying as a gunner, because a gunner’s training took three weeks, and that the squadron didn’t want to release me for training etc. They responded politely that that was fine but that I was slightly preposterous. A gunner’s training takes three weeks, but for an armourer it’s up to one year. Thus they turned me down.”

“My service in the Foreign Legion was not that hard, because I was selected for the sports department since I could play several sports. It was not enough just to say: I can play this sport. There were ability tests. In the beginning, when we were being selected by the sport we applied for, I ran out to the football field, and I didn’t even kick the ball, and the adjunct commander was already shouting at me: ´Out!´ I thought that I must have been that bad. But on the contrary, he probably saw me readying myself for the kick, and he knew straight away that I was a good footballer. And I was selected for the team immediately. One or two hours after this selection I was already on the team and we played a football match. I’ve already made a good impression. And also when I then came to the training centre in Saida, there were two of us Czechs assigned there, and we played on the Foreign Legion football team there.”