Lieutenant Miloslav Jungmann

* 1924  †︎ 2013

  • “Some Frenchmen were bad, and we executed them, too. When we caught somebody and we had information that this person was an ally of Germany and he was informing upon people, we would go for him and execute him. We didn’t do anything especial about them. He would just go. [Daughter: You didn’t have any qualms, grandpa, right?] No, none at all. We executed several of them who were like that.”

  • “We basically attacked at one line from the Belgian side. We were attacking from the Belgian side. Two soldiers from our company died there in combat. Well, not both, actually. One died and the other was wounded and he was taken to England for treatment.”

  • “I arrived there and I joined them in Lyon. Our soldiers came to Lyon over the Alps from Italy. [The government army?] The government army. I joined them and we went to the war front. At first we went to Arromanches, that’s the place where I was sent for vacation when I was a little boy before the war. [Daughter: For summer vacation.] For vacation. But what happened was that we arrived there and our soldiers were already gone. They were already at Dunkerque. I thus continued towards Dunkerque.”

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    Měcholupy u Předslavi, 26.09.2011

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It was stupid of us that we have remained in Czechoslovakia

Miloslav Jungmann
Miloslav Jungmann
photo: archiv Miloslava Jungmanna

Lieutenant Miloslav Jungmann was born October 11, 1924 in the village Velká Dobrá near Kladno in the then Czechoslovakia. However, he didn’t stay for long in his native village, because already two years later he moved with his parents to France. He began attending an elementary school there and later he learnt the locksmith’s trade there. That was already in 1942 and since Miloslav Jungmann had contacts with the French macquis partisans, with whom he operated as a civilian, the French militia began to focus their attention on him. He therefore decided to run over to the macquis side entirely and in early 1944 he became one of them. He operated with the partisans in the mountains near Lyon, and he was even chosen as the commander of one of the squads. In 1944 he established contacts with Czech soldiers from the government army who were passing through Switzerland from Italy to northern France and together with them he joined the 1st Czechoslovak independent armoured brigade on October 13, 1944 in Amiens in France. He took part in the siege of Dunkerque as a motorized messenger serving in the command company. When the fighting was over, the brigade moved to southwest Bohemia. Here he met his future wife and later he settled in the village Měcholupy near Klatovy. At first he worked as a driver for a foreign trade company, later as a driver for fishermen, and at last he became employed in the Škoda factory in Pilsen. He died on July 31, 2013.