Vasil Špir

“There were about sixty shafts. When we arrived there all that was there were a few shabby shacks. When we were leaving, we were going by train – the prisoners had built a railroad to Vorkuta. So we worked in the shafts till 1942 when the exile government in London requested our release. We were supposed to go to Buzuluk, to the Czechoslovak army.”

“At Kiev it wasn’t so bad. It was much worse at Biela Cerekev. We suffered much more there. It was a slaughter and the frost was terrible. When you spit somewhere it froze instantly. I was wounded at Biela Cerekev. It happened on the fourth or so. So they put me in a Russian hospital and after I had recovered I went back to my unit.”

“When the order came they gave us new clothes, new trousers – everything was brand new. But when we came to Buzuluk we looked like rags. We changed everything for food because we were given food rations for ten days – it was called “pajok” – but the journey lasted forty days. So we had to steal food wherever we could, usually on the railway stations, where we were stealing millet, rye and wheat. When we were handed out food we cooked. There were trains that were carrying exclusively “zaključonyje” – prisoners.”

“Once I was delivering grenades to one of the units but when I arrived on the spot, I found out that they had already left. They just left me a note pinned to one of the trees: “leave it here, we’ll pick it up later with horses”. So I was unloading the boxes with the grenades, I was throwing them on the ground. All of a sudden, Svoboda was riding by on his horse. He said: “what are you doing man? You’re gonna get killed and destroy the car”. I had quite a lot to do with Svoboda. We were driving day and night. In the Dukla pass, there were tons of mud, it was terrible.”