“I got to Buzuluk on 14th of February 1942. The food was better but they would bully you. The petty officers were made company commanders and liked to get drunk and shout at us. In the morning I was putting the English uniform, I didn’t know how to do it, and there was a commander and he shouted: ‘Soldier! I will make a soldier out of you! MY name is Tachecí.’ And when I was already an officer and he was still a company commander, once he didn’t salute. I didn’t stand on these greetings but I wanted to make fun of him. So I said: ‘Mister commander, you do not salute to your superior officers?’ He knew who I was and he saluted five times and then he asked: ‘Enough?’ Of course it was enough.”
“Our battalion joined the fights on 10th of September, a day after the beginning of the offensive. The intelligence had found out that during the night, the German forces had transferred a division from as far as Subcarpathia. We met them right in the first fights. The first day, the casualties were so high that the battalion, which had consisted of three companies could then hardly put together two of them. The next day our position was on the right wing and by chance we managed to advance eight kilometers and win over the hill 534. We saw Dukla and Ivla, two villages. From this point we could control the last road that in the western direction and that was why there were severe fights to conquer it. We fought over that hill for a week. Once it was captured by the Germans and then by us. In the second battalion, that went through the fiercest fights there were two people that proved great courage. One was a Jew and the other a Ukrainian. They practically held the hill. And the assaults came three times a day.”
“If I had known what it would be like in the Soviet Union, I would have never gone there. When I came to the Russian side I got to a small village. I had to swim across the river San and I was wet and I lost my coat somewhere. The villagers took off my clothes, put them on the stove where I also slept. They gave me dark bread that I have never eaten before. They were very kind and hospitable. So I thanked them and went to the Soviets and then I was immediately arrested.”
A German plane flew over and somebody was joking about the ceremony it would have been if so many officers died at the same time, and what a fine funeral would they have set up in the nearby church
Ján Bačkovský v době po válce jako důstojník armády, nedatováno
Ján Bačkovský was born 24th October 1919 in Eastern Slovakia. He didn‘t finish his studies at the Greek-Catholic pedagogical institute in Prešov and left the country to the Soviet Union after the change of the regime. He was sentenced to five years in a labor camp for illegal crossing of the border and until 1942 he worked in Ukhta. After the release, he left to Buzuluk where he joined the Czechoslovak Army and passed through the fights at Sokolovo, Kiev, Bila Tserkva and Dukla. He served in ranks from private to second lieutenant in the anti-tank unit. He was injured at Dukla, after the recovery, he was transferred to the recruitment unit in Košice and organized the mobilization. After the War he studied at the Military Academy at the Headquarters in Warsaw. His studies were terminated after two years because of political reasons. Later he worked as the head of the department of Military studies at the Faculty of Military Health Sciences in Hradec Králové.
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
