Oldřich Kácha

* 1944

  • “In about May 1968, they started equipping the ambulances with radios, it was hot new stuff then, made by the Tesla Pardubice Co. And we had them already installed but we had not been instructed yet. It had to be reported to Moscow so that some spy wouldn’t get their hands on the technology. And when the invasion started, they just gave us the keys and said ‘Here’s your keys, just use them’. I remember how I set out for a ride and thought: ‚There are enemy tanks, I cannot get through!’ That Russki on a tank first shot in the air because people were actually throwing bricks at him. When a tank rides into an arcade, there’s a lot of material. He shot in the air and then he turned the barrel to the crowd. The square was full of people. I started the engine, drove the the pharmacy and I don’t know how many times I went there and back.”

  • “All those doctors were wearing white rubber aprons and we drove people from the Peace Square who had been buried under the rubble. At that time, cops were still cops and they used their own hands to dig the people out. When I saw that it was not possible to pass there, I turned the ambulance towards the pharmacy. He reversed a bit with the tank, grabbed a gun and shot in the air. I took the stretcher we had and we crouched behind that stretcher made of foam, which acutually had no sense. When the Russki stopped that, I went there again. All the people who were there helped me to get the wounded on the stretchers. I went to the car with the stretcher. I don’t know whether you had ever seen a dead or unconscious person. When you want to move them, they just slide away, it’s just a dead mass which is hard to grasp. The stretchers were U-shaped and we were not sure whether the people were still alive. They forced them to my ambulance, to the space for the stretcher. I told them not to fool around, that there’s another ambulance. They pulled the injured guy out, I put the stretcher with another casualty inside and drove on and then back to the square.”“All those doctors were wearing white rubber aprons and we drove people from the Peace Square who had been buried under the rubble. At that time, cops were still cops and they used their own hands to dig the people out. When I saw that it was not possible to pass there, I turned the ambulance towards the pharmacy. He reversed a bit with the tank, grabbed a gun and shot in the air. I took the stretcher we had and we crouched behind that stretcher made of foam, which acutually had no sense. When the Russki stopped that, I went there again. All the people who were there helped me to get the wounded on the stretchers. I went to the car with the stretcher. I don’t know whether you had ever seen a dead or unconscious person. When you want to move them, they just slide away, it’s just a dead mass which is hard to grasp. The stretchers were U-shaped and we were not sure whether the people were still alive. They forced them to my ambulance, to the space for the stretcher. I told them not to fool around, that there’s another ambulance. They pulled the injured guy out, I put the stretcher with another casualty inside and drove on and then back to the square.”

  • „Once, I had enough so I got my submachine gun and made a quick trip to Liberec. Because nobody knew nothing. And I did as I planned. But, my exhaust pipe cracked and it made a terrible noise. I was already in Turnov, I almost made it, and there was a cop on that spot. He told me to get it fixed. But, unfortunately, this one could read. He looked at my papers, read České Budějovice, called them and found out that everyone is out on field exercises. Then, the shit hit the fan. I was waiting there for I don‘t know for how many days and then a junior officer with his little gun came to pick me. He said that we would load the motorbike onto a train and that he would accompany me as an escort. But he had that little gun of his and I had a submachine gun. Like the Švejk stories.“

  • Full recordings
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    Liberec, 16.06.2022

    (audio)
    duration: 01:37:52
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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There’re enemy tanks, I can’t drive through with the ambulance!

Oldřich Kácha in the 1970's
Oldřich Kácha in the 1970's
photo: Archiv pamětníka

Oldřich Kácha was born on the 22nd of April in 1944 in Nymburk. Three years later, his mother married to a former soldier in the Western Allied armies, Stanislav Hnělička, which led to continuos persecution of the family after the Communist coup in 1948. After finishing basic school, Oldřich apprenticed as a car mechanic in Česká Lípa and in 1963, he started to serve in the army. During the two years of compulsory service, he served altogether 31 days in restricted solitary confinement, (i. e. without mattress and with hot meal only every other day), usually for unauthorised leave. After returning from the army, he worked as an electrician in the Pozemní stavby company in Liberec and in 1966, he got employed as an ambulance driver in Frýdlant. Later, he was transferred back to Liberec where he witnessed the Warsaw Pact armies invasion on the 21th August of 1968. With the ambulance, he had to find his way among the tanks to transport the injured to the hospital. In 1970, he got a job as a chauffer in the Elitex company in Liberec where he drove the peak management. Despite his bad dossier, he kept the job until 1980 when he switched for the same job in the Pozemní stavby company, also in Liberec. In 1983, he was investigated for endangering state’s foreign currency balance and spent 28 days in custody. He welcomed the fall of the Communist régime with great enthusiasm, helped to put up posters and drove students around. In 1990, he started his own transport company which he ran until 2004 when he retired. Then he got a camper van and moved to Spain. At the time of recording (2022), he lived in Spain and returned to Czech Republic only for summer.