Kamil Volný

* 1962

  • “It dawned on me quite early on. I had realized that I was in a place where bullying had become quite common. The more seasoned, veteran soldiers had their way as the professional soldiers, the officers, would leave the garrison in the afternoon for home. The command was handed over to the university graduates – corporals and sergeants. Of course, one commander was left to oversee the unit, but he was seated somewhere comfy in the building, I doubt he was even there. The platoon sergeants were commanding basically the whole unit from 4 a.m. to 6 p.m. It was all chaos and total disarray. The veterans did what they wanted. Those who were bullied the most kept their suffering for themselves and had to cope with it somehow. They had to endure it.”

  • “We set out for a military exercise that was held in Šumava, in the region of Kájov. Although I don’t recall the exact date of this exercise, I think that it was in early spring, sometime around April or early May as it was still pretty cold in the Šumava Mountains. The rain was still mixed with snow fall. We were carrying out various night exercises and operations. The conditions in which we lived there were catastrophic – we were permanently cold and went hungry all the time. To make matters even worse, one of the novices committed suicide in those days. He shot himself for unknown reasons. I heard some rumors saying that the veterans hid parts of his machine gun from him. He couldn’t bear it and shot himself with somebody else’s machine gun. He did it just as we were standing in line for lunch at the field kitchen. The shot barely missed us. It was the worst day ever. Since the moment he shot himself, we had to stay outside until the next day. The officers went ransacking through our stuff in the cabins. They were looking for live ammunition that some of the soldiers would keep. Sometimes, they didn’t use all the ammo so they just kept the spare bullets. The officers searched cabin after cabin, backpack after backpack. It was insane. In the meantime, we had to stand outside in the cold, waiting for things to come. Nobody knew when it would all be over. As was to be expected, the counter-intelligence and the military police send somebody over. It was a huge mess back then.”

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    Ostrava, 03.10.2015

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    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu 1980: A Turbulent Year in Poland and the Czechoslovak Reaction
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The worst bullies were the veterans and the bullying would commonly take place in the afternoon, when most of the officers had gone home

A.jpg (historic)
Kamil Volný
zdroj: Kamil Volný

Kamil Volný was born on July 9, 1962, in Petřkovice. In WWII, his father – being a German from the Hlučínsko region – had to serve in the Wehrmacht and thus Kamil was left with only a limited possibility to attend school. At the age of 18, he was enrolled for compulsory military service in the Czechoslovak people’s army, however, after only 3,5 months of service, he was discharged for health problems. In 1990, he applied for German citizenship and moved to the Federal Republic of Germany the next year.