Fighting at Dukla

“My first assignment to the battlefield was in Dukla on 8 September 1944. They stationed us close to the battle line - I think it was somewhere close to Krosno. At Dukla, I got into combat for the first time. It was a terrible experience. Before the whole operation started, General Koněv conferred with his commanders and told them: ‘look, we have to help the Slovaks with their uprising. There’s no other way to get to Slovakia then through the Dukla Pass. Therefore we have to take that pass as quickly as possible. It is approximately 100 kilometers from Krosno to Prešov. I suggest we move by about 20 kilometers a day. In this way we could be in Prešov in five days’. But the whole operation was poorly prepared because no one had counted with the Slovak uprising. Therefore, there were no reinforcements available in time for the operation, no lookouts had been set up, the terrain had not been explored and the rear of the army group had not been developed and supplied well. We were practically going into battle with our eyes blind folded. The Soviets thought that we’d simply storm the German positions and sweep the pass. Brute-force tactics was something the Soviet commanders had always excelled at. They thought they could take the German positions in the pass by force. But they were completely wrong. On the first day of battle, we marched in the morning towards the German positions. It was after a rainy night and there was a morning mist that mercifully hid us from the German eye. But then, all of a sudden, the mist disappeared, the sun came out and our cover was gone. The Germans had us served on a plate and started to shell us with their mortars. It was a carnage. They shot our ranks to pieces and dispersed our brigade completely. We were totally demoralized after this bloodbath. Our general staff was accommodated in a former school building but they were ready to retreat any minute. I was instructed by the general-staff signalmen to go to the army rear where the petrol stockpiles were located. They gave me a twenty-liter petrol can and told me to get petrol for their car. I set out and the first thing I saw on the way was a dead coachman and horses lying scattered on the road. I then went by a farmhouse that was full with grenades, ammunition and our soldiers. I told them to give me something to drink as I was totally thirsty. I think that I had fever on that terrible first day. So I drank and told them that I would stop by on the way back. After I walked away a few hundred meters a German mortar grenade hit that building and there followed a series of uninterrupted explosions that left me scared to death. So these first days at Dukla were awful for us. We suffered terrible losses in men. The Germans were well prepared, they had reinforced their positions, they had set up lookouts in the mountains and their fire was very accurate. They could hit whatever they wanted. They were simply superior to us. Naturally, it took much longer to get to Prešov then five days. In the end, it was whole three months. The battle started on September the 8th, I was there since September the 9th and we crossed the Czechoslovak border on October the 6th. We didn’t get to Prešov till after Christmas. It was sometime in January.”

• born in 1924
• originates in Luck, Volhynia
• went to a Czech school, was in the Sokol
• wasn’t able to graduate because of the war
• joined the Czechoslovak army in the USSR in February 1944
• was assigned to the signalmen, worked mostly at the headquarters
• saw first action in the battle for Dukla
• journeyed all over Slovakia
• graduated after the war (in May 1946) and was demobilised
• completed agricultural and forestry studies at university in 1950
• worked with the company Czechoslovak State Forests in Horšovský Týn
• retired since 1983
• has the rank of a pensioned Lieutenant Colonel