"Their (the German) sappers didn't have many losses. They had enough of them, and they mined up everything they could. For example - a soldier went to the toilet in a village, in an outhouse, and the outhouse blew up. Or he stepped on the second stair in a cottage - boom. No one dared use a bunker after the Germans until we had it cleaned out."
"We were very well received in England but they received everyone very well there, soldiers all the more so - I must note that in 1940, England was the only country to be at war with Hitler's Germany, as the French had capitulated. For comparison - everything was in great order there, and another amazing thing was the upholding of social standards. You could see that from when I was assigned to a course in Northern England, where I travelled by train, first class of course, as an officer. When I arrived at my destination, the employees came up to me and took my luggage. I told them where I was heading, and waited for a taxi. There was a general waiting behind me, and it was unthinkable that he would be served before me. I must say that our boys skipped line to start with, but they came to understand that that wasn't a good idea."
"I managed to get hold of a Harley Single: that was a pretty machine. Only suddenly I found out that it didn't work - it had a bad igniter. I already had the motorbike almost loaded into my car when the local wayman came up and gave me the igniter - I still owe it to him to this day. When I was drafting the schematics for a pile bridge, he helped me a lot, because he said: 'First Lieutenant sir, you can't build a bridge like that there. It's all rock.' You see I didn't have time to survey the site. And so I had to change the schematics, and we built a truss bridge there."
"I asked my Dad, who had been in the First World War, and he said that there were those there that weren't afraid. I don't believe that much - everyone gets afraid. But when you're the commander, you must realise that if you don't fulfill your role properly, you'll come to a sticky ending. One gets worried - you have to watch out. I remember I had a horse for transportation. It was a Siberian horse which didn't mind if there was gunfire all around, but when it started getting dark and the tree stumps in the forest started glowing, he plunged his front hooves into the ground and wouldn't budge. I was the most afraid when I was walking along the front alone, where I had my men. One time I was walking alone without even my horse and I saw I was close to a German recon patrol. I was so glad they didn't see me and I could get back safely, because alone in that forest I wouldn't stand a chance."
"I was lucky after the war: they didn't imprison me and I wasn't in the party, but I still lost my job in 1968. Nowadays, my grandson doesn't understand why I went to get myself killed in the war, but I was the product of the last phase of the Revival. We were patriots. Nowadays it's a different situation, understandably. There were many of us like that, but now we are fewer."
Josef Krčmář was born in 1917 in the east Bohemian village of Česká Rybná. After the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was established, he left for Poland, then France, where he joined the newly formed Czechoslovak Foreign Army. He underwent training in France in the town of Agde. After the French capitulation, he was transferred by boat to Great Britain. In 1944 he was redeployed to the Eastern Front to command a sapper battalion during the Carpatho-Dukla Operation.
