It was preceded by one
incident where one centimetre decided which way was my life to move.
I received my Private
Pilot’s License in summer, 1955 (it was just a piece of paper, misplaced and lost almost immediately).
Coincidentally, just at the time there was a campaign to get more people to
join the air force. I sat for entry examinations, successfully, and passed the
last hurdle, that being the medical examination – successful, of course. Of
course, but right at the end somebody noticed that my height was 186
centimetres – and the height limit for the Air Force pilots was 185 centimetres! And that was
the end of the promising career.
Czechoslovakian People’s
Army was outwardly a glamorous and highly regarded institution. Annual military
parades were impressive, and soldiers, at least in the public, were well
dressed and disciplined. The arms were plentiful, and the air force, my dream,
was boasting the new jet airplanes MiG-15.
At the time I was behind with my
studies, short of money to keep me in the dormitory – and was exactly of the
age for intake into the compulsory Basic Military Service. Following an
interview that took place in the old military barracks in Nitra I was lucky to
be sent to the Air Force, the “blues”, according to the colour of their uniforms.
In October 1955, I found myself in the training camp at the military airport of
Bechyně. There, our hair was shorn to almost nothing, we received our uniforms,
and were allocated our beds – eight two-story beds in a room of about 6 x 6
metres, in a long timber barrack. Personal lockers were in the common corridor.
And the training began.
Its main purpose was intimidation, to make us pliable and convince us that it
is important to keep our mouths shut regardless of what we think (“Shut up when
I am talking WITH you”, the sergeant would scream into our nostrils).
In one of the barracks there were some
150 of us “pheasants” – the term for beginners at the time. The commanders were
two officers and several NCOs; some of these were “old salts”, that is soldiers
towards the end of their Basic Military Service, the rest were selected from
among us, pheasants. From the results of selections of the latter it was
possible to guess what was to follow, for the selectees were the most
primitive, rude and cruel from among us. What system of selection was the
army using is beyond me, but the system was almost flawless (if only the
universities were able to extract something from it: the army knows how to
select the most suitable – the universities seem to lack the ability to recognize the
least suitable). The Czechoslovakia at the time comprised three linguistic groups
– the Czechs, Slovakians, and the Hungarians: we, the pheasants, came from all corners of
Slovakia, the commanders were Czechs.
Training used to start around midnight
on occasions. Under horrendous screams of “alarm, alarm” we were chased from
beds, and mustered in front of the barracks. From there we would be forced to
run, sometime to the nearby woods, sometime to the fields. There we would be
crawling in mud, attacking imaginary enemies, etc., until the commanders became
tired and marched us back to barracks. Under constant and substantial screaming
by the commanders we had to clean ourselves and our equipment and stand next to
our beds awaiting inspection. And the day started at five in the morning.
Screaming, abuses, and harassment accompanied our dressing, washing, tidying,
until another muster at six o’clock. Our names were called out and we had to
yell in response “here”, in Czech language (Slovakian equivalent “present” was
discouraged). And then breakfast.
The food was of poor quality and of
insufficient quantity. I used to thrive there because of the simple reason:
after the year-and-a-half long starvation at the University I ate everything,
unlike many others. The kitchen was closed for the weekends, and we used to get
so-called dry food: a piece of salami, cheese, canned fish, a kilogram of
bread. Those whose taste buds were above such lowly food used to give their
portions to Hatvani, and to other omnivores. My personal locker used to be full
of canned fish, smelly cheeses, until devoured by me, or until thrown out by
some eager officer during the frequent inspections.
During the day we were commanded to train in the time-honoured idiotic army exercises, marching, turning on the spot, saluting every piece of shit that resembled somebody of higher rank. Any trespass earned swift punishment in the form of crawling or running in the mud, digging of trenches or chasing the ubiquitous imaginary enemy.
In spite of my placid personality it was there I learned how to hate. To this day I hate corporal Škorpík, the mad sadist corporal Votroubek, both from somewhere in Bohemia, also two corporals from around Ostrava, whose names I thank God forgot (but anybody from Ostrava region, with their clipped-sounding language, is in my keep-the-distance-from books – those normal from them please excuse). If until then somebody told me that there are baddies in this world – I would not believe him. After my army service – I do believe!
Well, that last paragraph did me power
of good…
Among us, pheasants, there
were boys from all corners of Slovakia. I was
intrigued by the Hungarian speaking boys from the south of the region. Many of
them were refusing to speak Slovakian, let alone Czech, and I was convinced
that many of them were indeed ignorant of the two (main national) languages. In
the army that was something of an advantage, because they needed translator.
“Left TURN!” sounded the command. “Mitmongya (what is he saying)?”, piped the
question from the ranks. “And what is he saying?”, screamed the commander. “He
is saying that what were you saying, comrade corporal”. The ranks murmured
their mirth. “SHUT UP YOU ALL!!!”, screamed the corporal. “Mitmongya (what is
he saying)?”…
We all had our personal
sidearm. According to the army designation it was called Semi-automatic Series
32. That number I am not sure of, but it is sufficient in description of the
following.
Two of our Hungarians, Marczi and
Bandi, were on duty in the storeroom. Bandi’s command of Slovakian was so-so,
Marczi was completely ignorant. An officer arrived and asked “How many of those
bags are there?”. Marczi started – in the Hungarian language – one, two, ten,
twenty, thirty two… After some hesitation he blurted, rather proudly, “Series
32”. “Wasathematta?”, said gently, but with a hint of suspicion, the officer.
Marczi looked at Bandi, who just shrugged his shoulders and said, in Slovakian
“Don’t know.” “Fuck you, I know you are both up to no good”, yelled the
officer. “What’s the prick saying”, asked Marczi quietly and gingerly, in
Hungarian. Bandi just looked at him silently and sadly, the officer’s
vocabulary was far above his head…
I have fond memories of the Hungarian speakers from Nové "Zómky": greetings to you, Tibike Suchan, Bandi, Marczi, Miček, Vanek, and others! And to the gipsy Klempár from the east of Slovakia, and his fellow-gypsies (their mastery of Slovakian language was so-so)!!! They were the only ones to profit a bit from the army regimentation. Not much was expected from them because of their ethnicity. They were regarded as some kind of Švejks and behaved accordingly. They were allocated to the lowest of jobs, they stuck together, and had a bit of an enterprising spirit. For instance, they soon discovered that the musicians among us had some privileges. After a while Klempár received from home a cymbal (a kind of piano with sticks instead of the keyboard), heavy, black and dirty 100 kilograms monster. Another gipsy turned up with a violin, and they played in our motley group of “musicians” (a guitar, double base, a trumpet, large drum, accordion, and the cymbal and the violin. I’ll never forget you, Klempár, that you beat me in a wrestling match, despite your gammy leg! Because of your strength you were highly regarded among your fellow-gipsies, you were a bit of a vajda (headman) among them. And amongst the few Czechs among us were brilliant Jirkovský from Prague, and fat-and-friendly Vorálek from “Holomóc” (local pronunciation of Olomouc) region.
From central Slovakia I have good
memories of Garec and Cipciar, who, with their untranslatable dialect were
constant source of mirth among all of us.
Much later I read about
military service during Austro-Hungarian Empire by E. E. Kisch, and what I
lived through was not much different from his experiences. Similar with P.
Ustinov in his book Dear me, dealing with his life in the British army during
WW2. I am not in possession of any deep philosophy regarding armies, their
necessity, culture and position in the society. The Czechoslovak People’s Army
was at the time on the body of already sick society nothing but one of many
malignant tumours (from that point of view the governing Communist party was
leukaemia). The army was giving those riding on its back a false feeling of
security and superiority; those underneath it was trying to debase and turn
into some all-obedient mass.
After about four months of
training, we were housed in newish brick barracks and introduced into our new
places of work. I ended up in a workshop in one of the hangars called TOP
(Technical Detachment of the Squadron). In that hangar I touched the famous
MiG-15 jet fighter for the first time. Compared with the airplanes I used to
fly in aero club this was a veritable piece of machinery. The club’s airplanes
of the time were of wood/cloth construction, MiG-15 was all-metal with a mass
of about 5000 kilograms (the club’s airplanes had mass of about 600-700
kilograms).
The airplane itself has
been described sufficiently elsewhere. From my point of view as a mechanic,
everything around the engine has been copied from the British engine R-R Nene,
including the nuts and bolts. Those were in imperial sizes, and our metric
tools used to abrade their edges no end. The instruments were similar, if not
identical, with German Askanias. Inside the highly secret transmitter/receiver
there sat a large vacuum valve with Made in USA imprint. As to the overall
construction, as compared with other Soviet products, such as cars, motorcycles,
radios, etc., MiG-15 was of a fairly ingenious design and it was made quite well
(although their replicas made in Czechoslovakia under licence were of much
higher quality). I had many opportunities of seeing these airplanes perform at
various air shows, and I was able to compare their performance with an American
made Sabre, that used to be MiG-15s counterpart at various conflicts at the
time. The Sabre had much shorter take off run, and in the air its
manoeuvrability was far superior to that of the MiG-15.
After some 3 months of
theory I was sent to the electrical workshop, which was doing periodical
services and repairs of the electrical systems. After about a year-and-a-half I
was sent packing to the newly opened air base at Čáslav. There, together with a
colleague Luboš Pokorný, I was in charge of battery workshop. Since that work
is not entirely automatic, we had to sleep in the hangar, instead of in the
common barracks. The last few months of my army service were fairly peaceful
and uneventful. In October 1957 I saw the first satellite from the apron in
front of the hangar, the messenger of new times, and we soon realised that the
preceding campaign of “soviet mastery of the nature", opening up of new
agricultural frontiers and misguided diverting of rivers somewhere in
Kazakhstan, and other bombastic projects were but a monumental camouflage to
keep secret the Soviet rocket bases (in the same Kazakhstan).
We were sent home in December 1957. In the train from Čáslav to Bratislava and beyond there were a few of us, feeling strange in the unaccustomed to civilian clothes. In Bratislava we parted company, and I haven’t seen most of my good friends ever since, either the Hungarians, or the gipsies. Vale and seeya whenever: Tibike, Kőrösi Jancsi, Bandi, Marczi, end many others, and, of course, Klempár and your noble company of gipsies. And vale to many others, Laco Křivda, Milan Valentovič, Ivan Lednár, Jožo Guštara, Pišta Velický, Matej Zelenák, Jozef Sivák…………..
Remark.
Military exercises.
After
returning home from basic military service, I found a job as a technician at
Geodesy and Cartography, then as a worker in Dynamite and finally in 1960 in
air traffic control with responsibility over the territory of Slovakia. After a few years, my love
and I were planning to get married when I received an invitation to a military
exercise out of nowhere. It was only then that I realised that I had a civic
duty to take part in a 'military exercise' every few years.
In my case,
it was like this: I had to present myself at the local Military committee, which was in
Bratislava's Kollár Square. That's where a few of us were held for two days. I
don't remember the details, just that the speaker was Colonel
Sládeček, a typical military simpleton. From the benches, he was put in a rage by high-level
questions by a chap called Gosiorovsky. And finally, I was sent to the airport
in Trenčín, where I was supposed to spend the next about 3 months on the control tower.
Two career
soldiers served on that tower every day, one of whom was usually a sub-colonel,
the other a captain, or a major; I was an ordinary soldier in reserve,
according to the lowest possible rank I ended up with on active duty a few
years ago. We didn't have anything to do all day. There was a Training Air
Regiment at the airport with several choppers and once every few days a
military plane landed there or some military plane took off, because there were
aircraft service and repair workshops (there I had a friend named Kralovič, whose
sister worked in our office in Ivanka). With all that operation, the tower had
nothing to do with it, it was controlled from a caravan at the airport.
Next to the airport there were quite extensive warehouses, wooden dormitories and kitchens.
My job at
the tower was to operate the 'phone and listen to traffic on the radio receiver
in case anyone called us on that tower (in my 3-4 months no one called us even once). They also
had some interesting transmitters and receivers on short waves (probably) from when the Slovak
or German Luftwaffe was based at that airport, and with them I
played, they could catch all sorts of "Western" stations.
Once the 'phone rang, I answered according to the rules with the airport code name and my
name with the rank "Soldier Hatvani". The voice at the other end said "here's
KABAT" and asked for Colonel XX. I replied,
"Loyzo, XX isn't here, just Major YY." The voice fell silent, and
right away asked "what was your name, comrade soldier?".
I replied "Hatvani. "And yeah, is it you, Charlie, from the Bratislava Area?".
We greeted each other: Loyzo was the head of the military District Air Traffic Control Service based somewhere near
Brno, our counterpart in the air traffic control. Now that he has a message for
Colonel XX, but only for him! I told him to give me the codes; I knew what was going on, and I knew half of those military codes anyway (e.g. the KABAT mentioned was then the military Area Air traffic Control Service). He read them, and that "to no-one but to the Colonel XX." Looking at the codes, I recognized that some of important person would fly over Trenčín. I asked Loyzo who it would be. He
wasn't allowed to tell me but referred me to "the civilians"
that is, to my Area where I was employed. Basically, I didn't care, I just wanted to indicate to Loyzo that I knew
"wasathemata."
Major YY,
who listened to this next to me, asked me what was going on and I replied to
him that Loyzo had ordered me to give the message only to Colonel XX, the tower
chief. Before YY had time to get offended and mount an attack for insubordination we heard Colonel XX climbing the stairs from below. I gave
him the message, he read it and it was quiet for a while. I started listening to my
radios, I had headphones on my ears, but I heard the two of them arguing about something. Finally, XX called me to his desk: did I know where
the message come from, and if I knew what it meant. I knew both. How comes I, as an
ordinary soldier in reserve, have access to something so top secret!? I
explained to him that I work in the civilian air traffic control, and that with
that Loyzo ("for you, he's Colonel ZZ!" XX admonished me, sternly) I'm
cooperating when we're both on duty at the same time. Colonel XX didn't know what
to say and sent me back to my phones and radios.
The next
day, he told me that in my position at the Tower I couldn't be just an ordinary un-ranked soldier, that I
had to have some higher rank. And a day or two later, I was sitting in
the staff office, and an elderly colonel gave me about an hour's lecture on
how to act like a real military person (I had the impression that I needed to have four
years in the Military Academy for the rank of lieutenant). He had me sign
something, swore me in on some kind of a military "bible", and sent me to a nearby warehouse. That's where they were waiting for
me with a brand-new lieutenant hat, a uniform, a shirt and a pair of shoes.
I changed,
my old clothes were thrown in the trash, I bought two bottles of local whisky in the canteen, and all three of us got drunk on that tower, and
even the weather forecaster from the ground floor took part. The next day I had a few
moments of being uncomfortably surprised, I almost leaped away! when saluted by the lower-ranked soldiers; I felt miserable, I'm
not one of them anymore...
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