Teofil Dražil

“There were American sailors – and they got drunk with Russians – and the Russians lasted longer, of course, they were then carting them by the harbour motor boat to American ships.” “And did you yourself with them too…?” “…get drunk? Well, yes, but we were rather holding back a bit, a soldier, when he gets drunk, so what then, where shall he recover from the hangover… But the Slovaks, they roistered there then, they put there then hundred Slovaks, it was a Slovak army… and one of them, I don´t know what he had in the pub with the American, he was a strong man, but the Slovak, he was also a Jánošík (Robin Hood). He grasped the American and banged him against the door and the door burst open and he fell onto the pavement… And their captain was just walking past and they were both wallowing on the pavement, the American and the Slovak… And next day the commandant wanted to make a ´military service´ to us. Lining up, the Slovaks were separate and we were also separate, but we were like appended to the Slovaks. The captain went around the lined up soldiers and said: ´Who was drunk yesterday?´ Naturally nobody presented himself. It lasted for a while, but then it passed over – and then we left with a transport again.”

“The Ukrainians were building for them, the Germans, festival gateways from birches, and – Heil Hitler, Heil Ukraine. In our place there were those such students, those Ukrainian ones who were going to school in Lvov, but they had come from our village, well, so they were organizing it, in this way, they thought that Hitler would give them an independent Ukraine, that they would not be under Russia, that they would be independent when Adolf had promised it to them…”

“And we came into a village, and there was no garrison to be seen. Just an old one who had rheumatism and could not run too much. And we said: ´So where is your team, where are your boys?´ - ´They have just been here, they have just been here.´ Well, their guns were there piled up on the shelves and nobody anywhere – in a while they started to turn up, they had German girls there, so they had been making love, well… We said: ´Oh my God, you should have your guns at least hidden or locked somewhere, well, anybody can get in here, they can slaughter you here…´ Well, yes, … they were glad to survive…”

“…and then the year 1947 came and transports from Volynia arrived, they were going here to Žatec. At the railway station in Žatec, on the big building, there they had such a massive Stalin. And the Volynians said: ´Oh, we thought that we had escaped Joe, and he is here too.´ Well, we wouldn´t have left from there at all if all had gone back to the rails as it used to be, because we had there an arranged homestead, inspans, threshing-machines, binders…but we said, it had been all running around there after the WW1, there had been riots, troops, every ataman had wanted to have his own army, simply had wanted to manage by himself…”

“I got to a Russian first-aid station. I came there, it was such a bigger station, there the doctor bandaged me and said: ´You will go with the tankists.´ They were smashed up, lying on the cart, with horses they were driving them back, to the back. He gave me a snifter of vodka, such the glass like those from the mustard used to be, and he greased a piece of bread for me to get stronger. Good. They didn´t make any difference so as to say: ´It is a Czechoslovak, we won´t give to him.´ We were getting along with them quite well, so what. We were all in one bag, so we had to drag on together.”

“With them I didn´t have anything, with Germans, what there was, there was. And what with the civil ones, shall I somehow dicker with them, or what? So I was getting along with them quite well. The German (with whom T.D. was staying in a farm after the war) had a Czech for a mother and his father was German, he worked as a manager in an estate – and once he told me: ´I was born as a German and I will die as a German.´ And I said: ´But your Mum was Czech.´ ´Yes, but my Dad was German.´ Well, so German.”