Oldřich Glet

* 1920

  • “We left for a combat section just with the troop that had three tanks and we irregularly opened raid fire on the land occupied by Germans. It was practically irregular, according to the orders by higher headquarters. First, we were given instructions that were coordinates where we were supposed to fire on. And each tank had different targets. Well, it mainly consisted of shooting three times ten shots and half of them were always penetrating shots and the second half explosive ones. And there were always ten shots, so we always fired on three different places. There were three tanks so there were nine different places that we fired on. We took turns, we spent a week, ten days in the battle line and they relieved us, so we withdrew to the base to brigade headquarters. We always served as guards of the brigade.”

  • “So, we trained the marches because it should have been concluded by a festive parade for the officials, main commanders and it happened, I assume, on the 13th of May. And then we marched there, those who were available there, in front of Montgomery and General Liška as the main commander of the brigade. It ended with it and in a few days, we packed and then we spent five days on our way home on our own. We, at least I as a radio operator, had two radios in a tank so I was interested in what had been going on in the world. So, when I was free for a while, I spent a lot of time sitting on a radio, on one of them, I had to connect the second one to a certain frequency and I listened to the radio, to BBC. I caught it even in Czech but in many cases just because I was fairly lucky. And well, I got to know that part of our unit was leaving for there, that they were advancing in our territory. I got to know about the Prague uprising and so on. All of this was known but I got to know when the end of the war would be only when the Germans like crazy, they hadn´t been shooting before, so suddenly there was a fire as if it had been a festival and there were skyrockets and other things. They were already celebrating the end of the war and we even did not know about it yet.”

  • “In quite a short while the Frenchmen and finally the owners of the small hotel found out that we were not Germans, but Czechs and it gave an impulse that they and eventually the organization of French resistance movement FFI started. And I discovered it thanks to the fact that the headmistress of a local school invited us to an evening gathering where we spoke quite openly about us wanting to get to the other side. So, because of this it was offered to us whether we wanted to help with the crossing to Switzerland. Naturally we agreed with it and it happened afterwards. We expected the right time and it came when the owner of the company left for two-day journey to Germany where they had their central office. And nobody guarded us. We took advantage of it and they took us across the borders with help of the two, I call them partisans. It was not exactly easy as the Vlasov army had arrived a week or ten days before it on their tachankas and they guarded the boarders with Switzerland to prevent escapes. They were riding horses along the border and so on. We saw it during the time when we were crouched in a potato field waiting for a Swiss soldier who was at a certain place supposed to open us a wired fence that was along the whole Swiss border. It was so that we could get to the other side.”

  • “Well and they transported us for two days from there to Marseilles in cattle cars. Well and in Marseilles we walked directly from the train station to Marseilles prison where we practically lied in the cells that were intended for... because it was a newly built, a prison built in 1938 in France. for felons that had been taken to Guiana, to French Guiana. If you know the book ‘Papillon‘ and so on, he had been still transported whereas after it they were imprisoned in this prison. There were, in the cell that was intended for one, ten of us sleeping on bare concrete. And there, as I have said, we used two blankets that I had forethoughtfully taken with me. Because we had at least one blanket under us and we could cover with the second one. And the worst thing was that they perceived us as captives. Colonial units of French Army guarded us, but the economic management of the prison was in German hands and it was in command of a German captain in full, amazing armour with honours, who even personally invited me to persuade me not to join the foreign army.”

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    Praha, 21.08.2002

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    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
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As if the war never existed

Oldřich Glet in 1945
Oldřich Glet in 1945
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Oldřich Glet was born on the 25th of March 1920 in Michálkovice near Ostrava. He grew up in a very modest background, his father was a miner and his mother was a housewife and took care of the large family. They had six children; Oldřich Glet was the oldest one and he had to take care of and depend mainly on himself since he was fifteen. At that time, he left for Slovakia where he started to study at Vocational school of horticulture and one year later, he started to study at Higher vocational school of horticulture in Mělník. A German gardening company employed him after Secondary-school leaving exam in summer 1939 and he left for Dresden and subsequently to Berlin and he was sent to France in 1941. There, he managed to get in touch with members of French resistance movement Résistance and with their help he got across Switzerland to Marseilles which was in at that time already liberated part of France. His destination was Great Britain where he wanted to join Czechoslovak foreign military units. He had to wait two months in very difficult conditions of Marseilles prison for an acceptance by American authorities and a subsequent deportation to Italy. There, already under the command of Czechoslovak officer, he went through a basic training and he was transported on a boat over Gibraltar to Glasgow in Scotland in December 1944. He was trained to become a radio operator and he swore a military oath there. He became a member of Czechoslovak Independent Armoured Brigade Group and was transferred to the front near Dunkirk in France in spring 1945. He took part in the siege of Dunkirk as a radio operator of a tank company at the very end of war. On the 17th of May 1945 he returned back to Czechoslovakia across France, Luxembourg and Germany. He was demobilized in the rank of lance corporal in August of the same year. He studied at University College of Agriculture in Prague and then he worked at the Ministry of Agriculture. As a former member of Czechoslovak units in West, he had to leave the Ministry in 1951. He was forced to work in Spolana in Neratovice. Later he could start to work in his field again and he did scientific work in Research Institute of Crop Production in Prague. He achieved status of war veteran for his participation in World War II fights.