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EPISODE 16: POSTED 02 SEPTEMBER 2010

Learning to drive on charcoal and wooden blocks

After a few hours at Frankfurt Am Main, the train moved on towards Czechoslovakia. We had been given no food apart from the soup and we felt hungry. The following day we stopped at a place called Bodenbach. Luckily there was a soldiers’ kitchen there and we received more of the now familiar soup.

Near the soldiers’ kitchen was a restaurant and I went in to see if there was any beer on tap. To my surprise I saw a large bowl of apples on the counter — something unheard of in wartime! Customers could eat as much as they liked, free of charge. At Bodenbach we also received our provisions.

We were now near the old Germany–Czechoslovakia border. When the train stopped at a small border town, we dispersed to various shops and restaurants. This was paradise. We had no difficulty obtaining bread and vegetable salad without coupons. Butter and meat, however, were not available.

On 24 December 1944 we arrived at our destination, Rakovnik, a rather large provincial town with a population of some 13,000. Modern barracks built for the Czech army were now under German control — clean rooms, hot showers, two-storey bunks with spring mattresses, sheets and blankets. It was like a hotel!

The local people were quite hostile towards the Germans and to us, until we explained that we also came from a German-occupied country and had no sympathies for them. We told them that we were enforced “volunteers”, and that our situation was more complicated because of our experience with the Bolsheviks.

There were about 25 restaurants in the town and you could buy non-meat dishes without coupons. There was no restriction on purchasing beer and it tasted good. Brandy cost a little more because it was a black-market item. We could see that the German occupation forces trod quite softly on the Czechs, because they relied on their armament factories for weapons. The whole town soon knew who we were and we get on well with the locals.

At the drivers’ school we not only learnt how to drive but also had to understand vehicle mechanics and learn how to undertake fault-finding and repairs in case of a breakdown. We had training sessions all day, every day. The instructors were from the German Army and most of our group didn’t understand the language. My position was better because I could understand most of what was said. My experience with German vehicles in Riga was also a bonus.

We were up in the Carpathian Mountains and the weather was very cold. Most of the time — day and night — the temperature was below zero. Often the thermometer showed –20ºC or lower.

There was no petrol available for our training vehicles, which had all been converted to run on charcoal and blocks of wood. In the mornings we would use wood to light a small fire under the motors to warm them up. We often stalled on the streets of Rakovnik and the instructors would curse the old trucks and us. We didn’t know that there were that many swearwords in the German language and most of them were very juicy.

Things went particularly bad when we ran out of charcoal and had to use wooden blocks in the gas generator. They were specially cut for that purpose — about 50mm by 50mm — from green softwood. The gas generators hated them and often went on strike.

The following is a translated excerpt from my diary of 31 December 1944:

I am sitting on my top-storey bunk in the brightly lit room, deep in thought: What will the New Year bring to us? Will the five-year madness come to a conclusion? Will we see peace on our war-torn continent of Europe? Will I myself be still alive to see it?

On 10 January 1945 we were woken in the middle of the night and issued with rifles and five rounds of ammunition each. There were no other military units in Rakovnik and all 120 students from the drivers’ training school had to form a chain and proceed into the Carpathian Mountains.

We weren’t told what was going on or what were we looking for, but apparently something had been dropped from the air and we had to find it. So we were looking to find a thing called “something”. We spent the whole day on the slopes and were completely exhausted. I think I had quenched my thirst with too much snow and felt sick. We had marched and climbed the mountain for more than 14 hours without rest or food. My voice was beginning to fade.

The remaining days at the drivers’ school passed without too much trouble. I felt better, but my voice gradually disappeared. We had received no information from our unit and with the Eastern Front coming closer we were concerned about our future, being so far away from our mates.

One evening a group of us were sitting in one of the small restaurants, having our regular vegetable salad when the proprietor came and sat at our table. He told us he had some good news. He had received information that the Russians were near and that we would soon be freed from the German oppressors. Our Russian saviours would allow us to return home.

At that time we had no idea that the Czechs were mostly admirers of Bolshevik Communism. They had no first-hand information about Stalin’s misdeeds and the true living conditions in the Soviet Union. Their hope was only to get rid of the hated Germans.

Our host was surprised at our lack of enthusiasm about the “good news”. We told him about our experiences with the Soviets during 1940 and 1941, and suggested that under Russian rule they would have even less freedom than under the Germans.

His friendly mood vanished and he became rather hostile. He told us that the Czechs were a proud people and that no one, not even the Bolsheviks, could treat them like that. Anything that had happened in our homeland could never happen in Czechoslovakia.

But he didn’t have to wait long. The same terror that we had experienced three years ago soon ruled Czechoslovakia. Their President and other independent leaders were murdered or imprisoned. There were no free elections and Czechoslovakia was drawn behind the Iron Curtain, just the same as the rest of Eastern Europe.

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Rakovnic

The following information has been taken from the Central Bohemia information website:

"The town of Rakovník (16,700 inhabitants) lies in the middle of the Rakovník basin 59 km west of Prague. The first preserved written document of a trading settlement in the area dates from 1252.

"In the following years the settlement quickly developed into a fast-growing town to which Czech King Wenceslas II granted official town status in 1286. From the mid 15th century it was a centre of the hops industry. In the 19th century large deposits of ceramic clays were discovered, and so the ceramics industry began to develop rapidly. The 2nd half of the 19th century also brought a growth of the chemical industry. The soap-works set up in 1875 became, in the following century, the foundation of what is now the largest industrial company in the town, the Procter & Gamble chemical plant.

"The most precious monuments in Rakovník include the Late Gothic Church of St Bartholomew (pictured above), founded in the 13th century, a bell tower from 1495, town gates called Prazská (Prague) and Vysoká (High), dating from the early 1600s, the Late Gothic cemetery Church of the Holy Trinity built in the second half of the 16th century, the Baroque city hall from the 1st half of the 18th century and the remains of a Jewish ghetto extending next to the High Gate. A preserved cemetery dating from 1635 and a synagogue from 1763 where the Rabas Gallery is located are also parts of the ghetto.

A number of renowned figures of Czech cultural life were either born or lived in Rakovník for some time. The best-known ones include writer and professor of the local grammar school, Zikmund Winter (1846–1912), painter Václav Rabas (1885–1954) who depicted the Rakovník area in his work, and actor and director at the National Theatre, Zdenek Stepánek (1896–1968).

"The town surroundings offer many attractive tourist sites including the Krivoklátsko Protected Landscape Area and the Dzbán Nature Park. One of the most frequently visited monuments is the Gothic Krivoklát Castle. Moreover, tourists often head for the romantic ruins of Jincov and Tyrov castles, the Hamous farmstead in Zbecno dating back to the 16th century, the park of Lány Castle or the Tomás Garrique Masaryk Museum in Lány – the biggest museum in the Czech lands dedicated to the first president of Czechoslovakia (1850–1937)."