“The artillery began firing at us. I had grenades hung on my body. There were decorative bushes around, and as I dived to the pavement, I already saw the splinters cutting these bushes. I hurriedly threw away the grenades. We walked back. We were with the farmers there. They had racing horses and the Germans took all these racing horses from them. They stole everything from them. He had two sons. He was riding in a wheelchair. I spoke to one of his sons. I could already speak French. I told him that I needed civilian clothing. As we walked there, we passed by two caves. There were fires. I thought that people were probably hiding there. They didn’t know Czechs too well there. There were many Poles. I said that I was Polish and that I needed to change into civilian clothing. He said fine, and added that there was a Polish woman who was working with the cows and that he would send for her. So we went to the stable. There were all sorts of clothes from the men who worked with the horses there. She brought me a bag, I undressed and threw it all into that bag. I only kept my new military leather boots. I said: ´I can’t walk in there.´ Thus we found some rubber boots, I washed them and exchanged them for my army boots.”
“It was on the third or fourth night. The second Polish woman asked me: ´Sir, do you have documents?´ I asked her: ´Why?´ - ´The Germans are here They are checking people.´ They pushed me between the suitcases and shirts. I squeezed in and they covered me there. They searched with flashlights there, but they didn’t dig in. They were conducting the check from two to five in the morning. I had a gun with me. I thought: ´In any case, I wish something happened.´ They passed. I don’t know if they found somebody or not, but they left. We spent some ten or twelve days there. But on the third or fourth day the tradeswoman brought me soup. I told her: ´I’d need to shave.´- ´I don’t have a husband, but I’ll get something.´ She brought me a razor, soap, cologne, and towel. I asked her: ´Where did you get that from?´ - ´Please don’t ask. When you are done shaving, come with me.´ It was in the other cave. There was an entire city council there. They sent one of them. There were blue identification cards, folded three times over. By chance I had a small civilian photo of myself, and they glued it onto the card. It was broken there. There was an embossed seal and it showed through. But one of them found out that there was the same emblem on the two franc coin, but the other way round. They pasted it there, so that one almost couldn’t tell the difference.”
“I walked to Châteauneuf. It was eight kilometres away and policemen caught me on the way. They arrested me immediately. I could already speak French well. They dragged me to the cells. There were bullet holes in the wall and the policeman told me that if I didn’t confess, then I would discover what the others before me had discovered. This bastard, if I say it so, said that I was a German spy and that I had false papers. These documents had been falsified. They certainly noticed it. And the Pole with whom we went there, no I mean the Frenchman, arrived there on a bike and half an hour or hour later he was already unlocking the door. This Polish man has saved my life. He had three children and his entire family, and he vouched for me. Thus they didn’t let me go and they sent me to the camps.”
“There was a Polish school in Životice, but later a Czech school was built. There was a brass lion above the entrance to the Czech school, about one metre by one metre in size. As a boy, I was curious, I watched everything. The officer on the horse turned around and stood there And firemen had a fire ladder and they used firemen’s axes to take the lion down. People were saying: ´Carry it with legs pointing up, so that it doesn’t recover anymore.´”
“When the Allies landed, they took over a section of some seven kilomeres of the shore, and the front stood for forty days. They were still bringing stuff in. As we were advancing toward the front, these twin-engine planes attacked us. They were special planes, for tanks. At that time there were already the rocket torpedoes, which were fired electronically. He approached us and fired it. We got hit. Out of our group of hundred and fifty men only eighteen remained. The commander jumped out first. The three men remained in there. I jumped after him. As a shooter, I was on the top. I jumped to a ditch which was just a few steps away, and I got hit by a splinter into my left leg. I squeezed myself into that bridge. There was a small hole in the bridge. I thought that I would be able to push it. You know, I was a wild guy. But it was no fun. Then they began advancing upon us from the sea again. Since I was wounded I was brought back to France. I was in a hospital. It was so overcrowded there that we were lying in the hallways. On some mattresses. I was there just for a week and then they made me to get out. I had this splinter in my leg, and they removed it, and stitched the wound. There were no tanks anymore. Only the Panzer grenadier. We were then assigned to the Panzer grenadier unit, because there were no tanks. There were probably no more tanks available.”
Oldřich Pich was born in 1925 in Životice, which is a part of Havířov today. At first, his native village was taken over by Poles in 1938, and a year later by Germans. In autumn 1943 he was forcibly drafted to the wehrmacht. With the 21st Panzer-Division he experienced the worst fighting during the landing of the Allies in Normandy. Only 18 men out of 150 in his unit have survived. He suffered a leg injury caused by shrapnel. Shortly after his recovery he escaped and he was hiding in caves for several days. Thanks to the help of a Polish woman he obtained false documents. He was arrested by French gendarmes near the town of Châteauneuf-sur-Cher in central France and he was accused of German espionage. A Polish man named Karol Kava saved his life, when he vouched for him with his own family. Oldřich Pich was then deported to a prisoner-of-war camp near Saint-Amand-Montrond and later to another assembly camp in the town of Bourges. Following a French officer’s call he volunteered to join the unit of general Wladyslaw Anders and he was transported to Italy. In Naples he contacted the Czechoslovak consulate and was transferred to the Czechoslovak units. After training in Great Britain he took part in the siege of the port city of Dunkerque. He demobilized in April 1946. As a civilian he worked as a head train conductor. As a former soldier in the western army he faced problems with the communist regime after 1948, and his children were not allowed to study at a university. Oldřich Pich passed away on August, the 13th, 2012.
