“In the evening the Germans gave us hell again. They knew our position, and they threw couple of mines there and I got wounded. I was blown by the blast, it injured my ribs, tore through my shoulder blade and it also hurt my lungs and heart. It was aimed directly at my heart, but luckily the blast was somewhat muffled by the bones, by the shoulder blade, it was not that powerful and thanks to this I remained alive. I was picked up by the medical team, they carried me to our first-aid station, it was called sanbat, and there was a Russian doctor who operated on the wounded. It was at night, around midnight, I had a hole in my body the size of a pigeon egg, I was bleeding from my lungs and back, and I was coughing out blood. And this Russian said: ´budět operacija,´ meaning we will perform a surgery. I did not know what he would do, whether he wanted to remove the splinter, or what... And he made two incisions on my body, about twenty centimetres long, and he could not get any further. But he was already slightly under the influence of alcohol and then he let me be. And in the morning they carried me back to the battalion first-aid station, which they called sanbat, meaning sanitarnaja batěrija, and later I was transported to Jasliska, there was our brigade hospital. And I was there and I was dying, I was running a 42°C fever, they were applying cold compresses on me… And two days later…There was our commander, general Škvařil, who arrived there as a supervisor over this hospital, and when he saw me, he ordered: ´Operate on him immediately.´ He operated on me, he took out of my body a bowlful of stuff, pus, blood, and whatever was there when he opened the wound. I was in pain, the pain was horrible, but then it got a bit better.”