"There was a German lantern in Zlín, there was Gestapo and there wasn't much going on ... one was worried. We listened to French radio from Toulouse, where there was also a Czech broadcast. There we learned that there is a Czechoslovak army in France. It was a division composed of those who left there in the 39th year, and then, when there was the mobilization of our Czechs and Slovaks who lived in France, they also came to that division. We who came from the Protectorate also got there. "
"Then I was with the ammunition platoon, it was a platoon that carried grenades to the artillery, just ammunition. Then later after the invasion, when we arrived in France, they turned it into a transport division. But in the meantime, we were patrolling the coast, Walton-on-the-Naze, and there I experienced German raids for the first time. They flew there regularly, always on Sundays. They were such bastards that they always flew there on Sundays around noon. Six Messerschmitt or Focke Wulfs arrived, three throwing bombs and three chasing the streets and firing machine guns. They broke our house too. "
"The first attack on Dunkirk was on October 28, 1944. They did it without tanks. It was just our infantry, they were members of the tank division, and they went like infantry. The attack was very successful. At that time, they captured about 300 Germans and killed some, and ours were not afraid at all. "-" How is that possible? There were mines. "-" They attacked in boats on the water. They attacked the German positions. It was a very successful attack. Then there was talk that on November 5, another attack on Dunkirk was supposed to happen. But our boys were probably too chatty, someone must have disclosed something to the French, those, who went to Dunkirk were informed about that and they told the Germans. They were prepared for the attack. As they put it, they were even able to turn coastal cannons inland. "
Vojtěch Jůna was born on May 26, 1920, in Jílové u Držkova in the Semily district. He spent his happy boyhood here. At the age of 14, he went to Zlín to be trained at the Baťa factory and remained there until 1940. In February 1940, he and a friend illegally left the protectorate with the intention of joining the Czechoslovak foreign army that was forming in France. Through Slovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Syria, they reached Lebanon, where they enlisted in the French Foreign Legions so that they could then sail to France. He reached the French shores in May 1940. He was accepted into the 1st Czechoslovak Division upon arrival, shortly before the German invasion of France. He was assigned to the radio operators, but without training, he could not take part in the fight. Until the June defeat of France, he worked in Agde in a replacement company as a supplier. Then he got with other Czechoslovak soldiers through Gibraltar to Great Britain. There, he served in a “car unit”, in 1943, he underwent a demanding parachute training and then returned to his troop. In the summer of 1944, he was in the ranks of the Czechoslovak Independent Armored Brigade transferred to the European mainland to France, where from October 1944 to May 9, 1945, they besieged the fortress of Dunkirk. He returned to his homeland on May 30. After the war, he worked for two years at the National Reconstruction Fund. In 1948, when the Communists announced the Intelligence Action and clerks to factories, he had to leave the site. He then worked as a driver in a chemical plant. From 1951 he lived in Lovosice.
