Miroslav Král

* 1929

  • “Everyone knew it was an occupation but everyone was afraid to say it because the communists still played a leading role. When someone said the truth, he was fired. Back then they had such power. To make one’s life miserable. When someone had a position, they suspended him. It’s our shame, too, that we let this happen to us. When I went back to civilian life, there were thousands of pilots here – the 311th, 312th, 313th wing, there were thousands of them. Mechanics too. They had all flown here after the liberation. I cannot understand why they let it slip through their hands like this. I later talked about it with my friends and they said that as soon as a leader appeared, someone the soldiers would follow, they immediately sent him to Jáchymov camps. Off to Jáchymov, and that was the end of him.”

  • “I was on duty and I saw two officers walking. They had these bags. So I greeted them and then I realized they had officers caps but British, not ours. Then I saw them walking along the… and someone must had warmed up two mosquitos for them. The engine had to have optimum temperature. And then they took off. Soon after, military intelligence arrived. They blamed me for not doing anything and not asking them. I told them I was charged to be in the hangar, not to keep an eye on someone. I said they had flown to happiness. They asked: ‘What did you just say, comrade sergeant?’ I repeated that they had flown away to happiness. And in that moment my time with the air force was over. I was not allowed to the hangar anymore and soon I received an order to report to military headquarters in Dejvice, where I was then discharged and returned to civilian life.”

  • “There were national socialists, but talk about pot calling the kettle back, and against them were the communists. This was because of the influence of Russians here. We had been under their rule since the very first moment. But people had no idea. They waved at them. They came here, and you can see that on the footage from Wenceslas square, the woman running to them and throwing them flowers. At that point people didn’t know yet what it was. It was all secret. Even after the revolution in 1948 it was kept secret. The whole truth about Stalin and what that bunch of his minions really was, what kind of people they were. Those who had fought in the East later revealed that during an attack, for example, those with purple peaked caps walked behind the soldiers and whenever a soldier turned around and wanted to back out, those NKVD men shot him. They maintained discipline this was, which was not common in any other army, to shoot your own people who realized it was crazy to go against a machine gun when they saw how massive the enemy’s superiority was. When they wanted to hide, those guys prevented it.”

  • “Seventy-five years after the war people have finally started talking about the fact that the Russians didn’t liberate Prague, since they had nothing to liberate. They only arrived on the 9th of May, whereas all the Germans who could had already turned tail and flew to the Western sector through Ruzyně. The fanatics that stayed here, they were only few. Of course, they did some damage but there was no combat activity on the Russian part. They arrived here and had nothing to liberate, given that we had already been liberated.” – “And do you remember the Vlasov army?” – “They came from Smíchov. They were not in this part of the city at all, as far as I remember. They were on the other side of the bank – in Smíchov. That’s where they were. Then they withdrew back to the Ruzyně airport and then naively went into captivity because they figured there was nothing good for them in store with the Russians.”

  • “We went to the station in Vysočany with the boys. The whole train was there, a transport of so-called national guests. They were accompanied by four or five SS men. The engine driver and the fireman had arrived at the Vysočany station and then ran away. The national guests, they were people running away from bolsheviks, from the Russians. They were mostly older people and women with children, as all the promising men were at the frontline. There was an excitement targeted against them. Sadly, our people… I never took part in it. The boys and I went to the train and opened one car and in it was on grandpa hiding by the hangers and another one on the other side… They were afraid of what would happen to them. We are experts in this area – there’s minimum tolerance and most of the time, as I recall, there are these ‘heroes’ who had tried hard to have as much as possible during the war and then after the war, after the revolution, they reached for a gun.”

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    Praha , 28.05.2020

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They flew away to happiness and I was discharged from the army

Miroslav Král - 1948
Miroslav Král - 1948
zdroj: Miroslv Král

Miroslav Král was born April 4, 1929 in Prague-Libeň. His father worked as a driver and a conductor of electric railways, his mother was a housewife. The family moved to a new building in Vysočany in the 1930s, which is where Miroslav attended primary school. After finishing high school in 1943, he started studying to be a mechanic in the Aero Praha aviation undertaking; he completed the apprenticeship in 1946. From 1946 to 1948 he continued studying a two-year program at the Military vocational school of aircraft mechanics in Liberec. After that, in 1948, he started working as a mechanic with the 1st Transport Aviation Regiment in Prague-Kbely. According to his recollection, the same year two officers left the airport without authorization with a de Havilland DH.98 Mosquito airplane while he was on duty, which then had a negative impact on his personal assessment, resulting in him being discharged from the army several months later. He had troubles finding a job afterwards. He worked in the steelworks in Kladno, as a personal drive or as a driver in the Kovoslužba Praha company. Later on, he worked as a maintenance man in a computing company. He worked until his seventies. He has a son and a daughter from his two marriages.