* 28.11.1919, Křenovice.
† 14.10.2009, Cambridge, UK.
Pre WW2
Otakar Černý was born on 28 November 1919 in Křenovice near Slavkov, some 200km southeast of Prague. His father, also Otakar, was employed as a railway clerk in Ždanice for ČSD – Československé státní dráhy – the State Railway Company and his mother Helena, was a housewife. Unfortunately for Otakar, Helena left when he was only three years old and his father soon remarried.
For his education, he attended the local elementary school and then continued his studies at a grammar school in Brno.
From an early age he was fascinated with aviation and aspired to become an airman. At his grammar school he enrolled in the local Czechoslovak Aviation Club.. He was an adventurous youth and in the six weeks Summer holidays between both his 5th and 6th and 6th and 7th years at school, a friend and he would go on cycling holidays through Austria, Italy, France and Switzerland. Aged 17, he completed his education, matriculating from Grammar school at Brno.
Military Service
To pursue his aspiration to fly, on 12 July 1937, Otakar aged seventeen, volunteered for two years of military service, during which he was selected for a one-year pilot course at the Military Aviation Academy at Prostějov. At the end of May 1938, at the rank of svobodník [LAC], he was posted, as an observer pilot, to the 71st Bomber squadron of the 6th Air Regiment who were deployed at Kbelý airbase at Prague.
Munich Dictat
Following the Munich Agreement, when the Sudetenland was ceded to Germany, Poland and Hungary also took some Czechoslovak territory. About 30% of Czechoslovakian territory had been lost, which included its border defences, and the new revised German border was now only some 30 km from Prague.
Despite assurances given by Hitler at the Munich Agreement, also known in Czechoslovakia as the ‘Munich Dictat’ or ‘Munich Betrayal’, of 30 September 1938, that he had no further interest in territorial gains for Germany, just a few months later Hitler extended his demands that the remaining regions of Czechoslovakia become part of Germany. During this critical period, Otakar was shaken by the situation and later recalled:” It was all humiliating, I felt ashamed. Why didn’t we defend ourselves?” Shortly afterwards, he was promoted to the rank of četař aspirant [Sgt].
German Occupation
After the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, on 15 March 1939, many of the Czechoslovak Air Force personnel were offered the opportunity to join the Luftwaffe – only a handful accepted the offer – resulting in the Air Force being quickly disbanded by the Germans and all personnel dismissed. Otakar was one of those who refused that offer and, on his release, returned home from Prague to Křenovice. The same fate befell most of those serving in the Czechoslovak Army. For the military personnel and many patriotic Czech citizens, this was a degrading period. Many wanted to redress this shame and humiliation and sought the liberation of their homeland.
Germanisation of Bohemia and Moravia had begun immediately.
Resistance
But just four days later internal resistance organisations were being established. On 19 March 1939, former Senior officers of the now-disbanded Czechoslovak military had started to form an underground army, known as Obrana Národa [Defence of the Nation]. Obrana Národa also worked in co-operation with Svaz Letců, the Airman Association of the Czechoslovak Republic. One of their objectives was to assist as many airmen and soldiers as possible to get to neighbouring Poland where they could be formed into military units to fight for the liberation of their homeland. These two organisations provided money, courier and other assistance to enable airmen to escape to Poland. Usually, this was by crossing the border near Ostrava, via the Těšín area, the Czechoslovak border region which had been occupied by the Poles following the 1938 Munich Agreement, into Poland. Aged nineteen, Otakar was one of the many patriotic Czechoslovak airmen and soldiers who clearly saw it was their duty to go to Poland from where they could participate in efforts to achieve the liberation of their homeland.
To Poland
In mid-June 1939, Otakar received a postcard from Prague from his elder cousin and good friend, Karel Barva. The text read: “Be ready on 22 June at around seven o’clock in Opava, we are going to Poland.”
They met up and travelled to Ostrava, some 25 km away in south-east Czechoslovakia and only some 14 miles from the Polish border. That night, with the assistance of patriotic Czechoslovak railway workers, they were smuggled onto a freight train taking coal over the border into Poland. On 5 July 1939, they reported for duty at the Czechoslovak consulate in Krakow.
Polish Disappointment
However, there they were informed that the formation of Czechoslovak military units in Poland were just rumours because the Polish authorities would not allow Czechoslovak military units to be formed on its territory for fear of provoking Nazi Germany.
The Czechoslovak Consulate however been in negotiations with France, a country with which Czechoslovakia had an Alliance Treaty. Under French law, foreign military units could not be formed on its soil during peacetime. The Czechoslovak escapees, however, could be accepted into the French Foreign Legion with the agreement that should war be declared they would be transferred to French military units. The Czechoslovaks would, however, have to enlist with the French Foreign Legion for a five-year term. The alternative was to be returned to occupied Czechoslovakia and face German retribution for escaping – usually imprisonment or execution with further retribution to their families.
They, like most of the Czechoslovak escapees, decided that their best choice was to go to France. Initially they were transferred to Bronowice Małe, a derelict former Polish Army barracks from the Austro-Hungarian era, on the outskirts of Krakow that was then being utilised as a temporary transit camp for the escaped Czechoslovak military prior to their transfer to France. The barracks were in poor condition, and already well inhabited by Czechoslovak escapees whilst arrangements were made for their transportation, by sea, to France. Otakar was the 805th escapee to be registered there.
After a short stay at Bronowice Małe, on 27 July 1939, Otakar was one of the 547 Czechoslovak escapees who at 4 am, boarded the train to Gdynia. There, on 29 July, they boarded the MS Chrobry, a Polish trans-Atlantic passenger ship owned by the Gdynia-America Shipping Lines Ltd for their routes between Poland and South America. This was its maiden voyage to South America and would stop in at Boulogne, France, so that the Czechoslovaks could disembark there. The MS Chrobry arrived at Boulogne on the night of 31 July/1 August.
France
Early the following morning, Otakar and his fellow escapees disembarked onto French soil. There, they were met by the Czechoslovak Defence Attaché from the Czechoslovak Embassy, Paris, who gave each of them a little French money for their immediate needs. After some food they boarded a train for the thirteen-hour journey to Paris. They arrived there at 17:30 and were taken by coach to the Foreign Legion’s recruitment centre at Place Balard in Paris to complete enlistment formalities and undertake medical examinations. By 26 August, these were completed and the men were awaiting transfer to their training base at Sidi-bel-Abbès, Algeria. This time was to serve as a familiarisation period to learn the ways of the Legion, to have crash-courses in French. The French Otakar had studied at school in Czechoslovakia was now to become extremely useful to him. Fortunately for Otakar and his colleagues, before that process could be completed, Germany invaded Poland on 1 September resulting in England and France declaring war on Germany two days later.
l’Armée de l’Air
With war being declared, the Czechoslovak escapees who were now serving in the French Foreign Legion, were released from their service contract. For the airmen amongst them, this meant being transferred to the l’Armée de l’Air. Otakar was posted, at the rank of soldat 1 classe [AC1], to their Base Aérienne 705 at Tours, some 130 miles south west of Paris. This was the l’Armée de l’Air training centre for navigators, bomb-aimers and air-gunners. There he retrained on Potez 63, twin-engine reconnaissance aircraft and the Bloch M.B.210N twin-engine night bomber.
This was the period of the ‘Phoney War’ with very little activity on the western front in France. This relative calm ended at 05:35 on 10 May 1940 when Germany attacked Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg and France. In France, they came through the dense Ardennes Forest to skirt around the main defence of the Maginot line and swept Northwards towards the English Channel.
At that time, Otakar’s training as an air gunner was not yet complete and he made no operational flights during the Battle of France. However, the lightning speed and ferocity of the German Blitzkrieg attack caused the l’Armée de l’Air units to rapidly retreat westwards. The Czechoslovak airmen at Tours were transferred some 270 miles south west to Base Aérienne 101 at Toulouse. In March they we transferred 90 miles west to Base Aérienne 119 at Pau, just 30 miles from the Spanish border by 14 June.
Operation Aerial
Operation Aerial, the evacuation of Allied military forces and civilians from ports in Western France had been in operation from 15 June. To be included in this evacuation, the Czechoslovaks made their way to Bordeaux where they met up with other Czechoslovak airmen. From Pau, Otakar and his group of Czechoslovak airmen made their way the 100 miles north to Bordeaux to be evacuated. From there, a total of 89 Czechoslovak airmen, under the command of Major Alexander Hess and 300 Polish airmen were evacuated aboard the ‘Ary Schaeffer’. This small Dutch cargo ship provided cramped conditions for all onboard, and sailed at 13:30 on 19 June to Falmouth, England. After a prolonged voyage going 300 to 400 miles out into the Atlantic, to avoid U-Boats and Luftwaffe attacks, before changing course East to Falmouth, they arrived four days later at Falmouth, England, which was good timing as France capitulated on 22 June.
In the period from June to August 1940, 932 Czechoslovak airmen managed to be evacuated from France and get to England. Operation Aerial was concluded on 25 June.
RAF
After their arrival, the Czechoslovaks were transferred to RAF Innsworth, Gloucestershire, for security vetting. On 19 July 1940, Otakar and his fellow airmen were then transferred to the Czechoslovak Depot at RAF Cosford, near Wolverhampton. There, they underwent basic RAF training and English lessons. As a trained pilot Otakar was accepted into the RAF Volunteer Reserve, at the rank of P/O on 2 August 1940.
There was discontent amongst the group as they had been trained as fighter pilots in the Czechoslovak Air Force only to now find that they were being posted to a bomber squadron. As there were not enough navigators, radio operators or air-gunners pilots were having to be retrained for these roles. Two initial groups of men were put through a short training and familiarisation course at 11 Operational Training Unit (OTU) at Bassingbourn, in Cambridgeshire. The first group, consisting of 40 airmen, undertook the course during August and September 1940. Otakar was then posted there for training as a radio operator. There, from 24 August until 30 September, their training was on Ansons and Wellingtons. Once ‘qualified,’ aircrew were posted to the first of the squadron’s two training elements. The embryo crews would be involved in building their expertise through navigational and cross-country flights, blind flying, bombing and air gunnery practice. In September, the operational training element shifted to nearby RAF East Wretham to be with 311 Sq. Training of these flights was destined to end in December 1941, when a separate unit, No.1429 Czechoslovak Operational Training Flight [1429 COTF] would be formed.
During this training period, the Czechoslovak airmen would often go to Cambridge to socialise at dances or the cinema. On one of these occasions, Otakar met 20- year-old Miss Rhoda Annie Maye and they were married on 21 December 1940.
To 311 Sqn
In WW2, the standard operational tour for a RAF Bomber Command crew was 30 completed operational sorties. But by 1941, the odds of surviving a full tour were slim, and statistically only 1 in 6 were expected to complete their first tour without being shot down and killed or captured.
Otakar’s maiden operational flight was on the night of 3/4 May 1941 in Vickers Wellington KX-W, R1021, Captained by F/Lt Josef Šnajdr with Sgt Jaroslav Nýč, co-pilot, P/O Jaroslav Zafouk, navigator, Sgt František Knap, front gunner, Sgt Jiří Mareš, rear gunner, with Otakar as wireless operator. It was a raid on the oil storage depot at Vlaardingen, at Rotterdam. Take-off was at 21:10 from East Wretham and they returned to base at 00:25, having bombed the target, completing their flight in a time of three hours 5 min.
This was followed by night bombing raids, on moonless nights, on Calais Docks, France on 5 May, Emden, Germany, on 8 May, Hamburg, Germany, on 11 May and Hanover, Germany, on 15 May. With the return flights lasting between six to seven hour they would be under constant threat of attack from Luftwaffe night-fighters whilst over Holland and Germany and also anti-aircraft fire from ground defences.
For their raid of 27 May on Cologne, Germany, the crew were now captained by Sgt Jaroslav Nýč, and Sgt Karel Šťastný joined the crew as co-pilot. Night bombing raids to Dusseldorf, Germany, on 2 June, the Prinz Eugen at Brest docks on 7 June, Hamm, Germany. on 12 June, Dusseldorf on 17 June, Cologne, Germany on 19 June , Bremen, Germany, on 22 June and again on 25 June. Then Münster, Germany, on 9 July, Bremerhaven, Germany, on 12 July and then again on 14 July.
Shot Down
On the night of 16/17 July 1941, the RAF dispatched a total of 107 bombers for a raid on Hamburg. Eight of those bombers were Wellingtons from 311 Sqn, taking off from East Wretham at one-minute intervals from 23:01. One of those Wellingtons was R1718 KX-N which was lost in somewhat strange circumstances. The aircraft took off at 23:07 hours for a raid on Hamburg, but nothing was heard thereafter. It would seem that the bomber was attacked by a Luftwaffe Me110 flown by Hauptman Rudolf Schoenert of 4/NJG1 (4th Staffel of Nachtjagdgeschwader 1) who claimed to have downed a Wellington at 00:50 hours just west of Lemmer, south of Heerenveren, Holland. However, the crew – pilot F/Sgt Jaroslav Nýč, co-pilot Sgt Karel Šťastný, navigator P/O Jaroslav Zafouk, wireless operator P/O Otakar Černý and front gunner Sgt František Knap later reported that there had been an explosion in the nose of the aircraft, which they thought might be the result of ‘sabotage’.
Whatever the cause of the explosion, Jaroslav Nýč, after ordering his crew to bail out, attempted to make his own exit. Unfortunately, the escape hatch jammed shut. The Wellington was rapidly losing height, spiralling down from its original 20,000 feet. He tried everything to free the hatch, he kicked, banged, knelt and jumped on it, without any visible effect. Incredibly, just as he had given up hope, the hatch suddenly came free and he fell out of the aircraft. After pulling the ripcord on his parachute, deploying it, he passed out and only regained consciousness on the ground in a field full of cows. He rapidly became aware that one very large cow was staring closely at him and before he could move out of the way it brought its head down and gave him a monstrous sloppy kiss.
Captured
The blazing aircraft had most certainly alerted German troops and it was only a matter of hours until tracker dogs in the charge of armed soldiers, had, by morning located the surviving crew, apart from Otakar. They were captured and became PoWs. The body of Sgt Jiří Mareš, was found the next day, washed ashore, having drowned in the Zuider Zee after baling out of the stricken aircraft. [He was buried at the Lemmer General Cemetery on the 24th of December 1941].
Otakar managed to evade capture for two days. He had landed in a field by the shore of the Zuiderzee and hid his parachute. On walking by the shoreline, he came across a small fisherman’s hut. He slept in there and on searching the hut in the morning he found an old fisherman’s jumper. He removed his Irwin jacket and put the jumper on so that it covered his uniform battle-dress and covered his flying boot tops within his trouser legs. He saw a small town in the distance, and walked along the road there. It was Sneek, near Leewarden in the Friesland area of northern Holland. In the town’s market he managed to find some discarded fruit and made his way back to the hut. The following day he explored further along the sea wall by the shores of the Zuiderzee and noticed a small rowing boat by the side of the road. He devised a plan that he would return there that evening, drag the boat across the road and to the Zuiderzee and then row to England, some 160 miles away.
In need of some food for that trip, he went back to the market at Sneek for more discarded fruit. However, on walking back towards the boat he was spotted by two armed German soldiers who became suspicious that he was walking in an area where the local people would be on bicycles. Otakar was fluent in German but he was unable to produce any ID documents to them, and they arrested him. Whilst this was a serious disappointment for him, later, with the benefit of hindsight, he realised that that probably saved his life as England was some 160 miles away across the North Sea.
And so, Otakar’s operational flying had come to an end; he had completed 17 operational flights totalling 85hrs 46 min and he was now PoW no 3663.
Prisoner of War
The position of captured Czechoslovak Prisoners of War was somewhat different from that of the other nationalities. For those latter, the Geneva Convention of 27 July 1929 applied, on the treatment of PoWs and their rights. Captured Czechoslovaks were not granted the status of Prisoners of War, as the German authorities regarded the Czechoslovaks as Reich nationals, by virtue that since their occupation of Czechoslovakia on 15 March 1939, they had declared the country to be a Reich protectorate and its citizens thus were now part of Germany and subject to German law. Thus, any captured Czechoslovaks fighting for the Allies were not covered by the Geneva Convention and were classed as Reich nationals who had fought against the Reich. Such action was classed as high reason, (pertaining to paragraph 91 of the Reich Criminal Code), which according to that law, the death penalty by hanging could be applied along with severe repercussions for their families in their homeland.
As a captured airman, Otakar was now under the jurisdiction of the German Luftwaffe and was first taken to Dulag Luft I [Durchlager der Luftwaffe], their interrogation transit camp at Oberursel near Frankfurt am Main, Germany. There he would endure 14 days of solitary confinement and interrogation before transfer to a permanent camp.
During the process, the German interrogator, under the pretext of filling in a ‘Red Cross form’, tried asking military questions. However, when only their name, rank and number was proovided, the interrogator filled out the form himself to show the airmen that the Germans knew almost “everything” about the Czechoslovak 311 Sqn.
Escape from Oflag VIb
Otakar’s next promotion, to F/O, had been on 2 August 1941. On 8 October 1941, after interrogation at Dulag Luft I, he was transferred to Oflag VIB an Officer’s PoW camp at Dößel, near Warberg, Germany. After he had “settled in” and become used to a life of confinement surrounded by barbed wire he began planning to escape. With the approval of the camp’s Escape Committee, he and three others dug a 10mtr tunnel through frozen clay. On the night of 19/20 April 1942 Otakar and two fellow Czechoslovaks – F/Lt Josef Bryks and F/Lt Zdeňk Procházka – and three Poles, escaped through this tunnel and slipped away in pairs hoping to reach England. Otakar’s forged ID documents stated that he was Hungarian and working at Karlsruhe, Germany.
Once out of the tunnel, Otakar and Bryks set off on foot towards Marburg heading for the Swiss border, some 300 miles away. Initially, only travelling by night and avoiding towns and villages, all went well. But on their sixth night, around midnight of the 28 April, they were approaching a German village in a valley with steep hills on either side. They decided that they had little option but to go through the village.
Despite trying to hide between the houses as they made their way through the village, they were seen by a local German militia patrol. Bryks hid but Otakar was apprehended and arrested. Bryks managed to escape but was captured by some Hitler Youth, three days later, at Eberbach, just north of Heidelberg, about 180 miles from the Swiss border. But by this time, due to lack of food and water, he was seriously ill. After interrogation, Otakar was transferred to Stalag Luft III, at Sagan [now Żagań, Poland] and Bryks was sent back to Oflag VIB. Their fellow four escapees were captured soon after they had escaped.
Escape from Oflag XXIb
On 2 August 1942, Otakar received notification from England that he had been promoted to the rank of F/Lt. In the Autumn of 1942, he was transferred to Oflag XXIB camp at Schubin [today Szubin], Poland, about 220 kilometres north west of Warsaw. Shortly after his arrival he joined in the digging of an escape tunnel from the camp latrines to the potato fields behind the camp. During this period, contact with some Polish airmen in the camp and also some local Poles had led to some addresse;’s of places where they may be able to contact the Armia Krajowa, the Polish underground movement. Otakar escaped using the tunnel on the night of 3/4 of March 1943 and went to hide in a barn visible from the camp. The following day Josef Bryks, his previous escape partner who was also at Oflag XXIb, and S/Ldr Morris made a daring pre-planned daylight escape. They hid inside the tank of a sewage cart that came into the camp to remove effluent from the camp’s latrines. With only masks for protection from the foul gas, the cart left the camp at 15:00. Once free of the camp, the two made their way to the barn to meet Otakar and where they planned to hide for several days whilst they awaited contact with the Armia Krajowa.
This rendezvous had been pre-arranged and their rationale was that the usual action by an escapee was to get away from the camp as quickly as possible to avoid German search parties in the vicinity looking for them. During those days, food and water was brought to them by some local Poles. Unfortunately, during that time S/Ldr Morris became ill and he decided to leave early, before his health failed him, and go alone, heading to Gdańsk where he hoped to get aboard a ship to Sweden.
Warsaw
After ten days of hiding in the barn, Otakar and Bryks, heard from Armia Krajowa who advised that the Germans were now searching further afield for them and the coast was clear for them to go to Warsaw. They walked, and some three weeks later, on 6 April, they arrived in Warsaw. They went to the contact address given to them by Armia Krajowa who sent a message to London to verify the authenticity of the two claimed escaped Pows. London confirmed their identity and gave instructions that they remain with the Armia Krajowa while arrangements were made to get them back to England.
In the interim, both airmen quickly became involved with the Warsaw underground movement. For four weeks, they were given a ‘cover’ of working as stove fitters and chimney sweeps for the Bogumilski company and they went around Warsaw and rural areas in a horse-drawn carriage. In the carriage, they transported arms to the resistance groups and when they returned from rural areas they brought food back to the city. During the Warsaw ghetto uprising, between 19 April to 16 May 1943, they were taking weapons and food to the Jewish fighters in the ghetto.
Re-captured
Both men had already had three months of dangerous freedom in a house in a village a few kilometres from Warsaw, where a Polish patriot, Mrs Blaszkiewicz, who had two young children, was hiding them. On 2 June 1943, following a ‘tip off’ by a collaborator, the Gestapo surrounded the house at 23:00, and all inside were arrested.
They were taken, in chains, to the notorious Pawiak prison in Warsaw. Mrs Blaszkiewiczowá was hanged for aiding the two enemy airmen. Otakar and Bryks, now known as Joseph Brdnisz, were interrogated, beaten and threatened with execution for three months. The interrogations by the Gestapo were often very brutal. After 63 days, both airmen, physically and psychologically exhausted, were returned back to Stalag Luft III.
Stalag Luft III
The huts were large ones with double bunks accommodating some 40 men. Conditions were harsh in the extreme. Food was appallingly inadequate, the German interpretation of a prisoner’s daily food allowance [within the terms of the Geneva Convention] amounted to a mere 1/12th of a loaf of bread – three thin slices at most – three small potatoes and a bowl of soup. Even this scanty meal was further depleted, when, at the finish of their stored season, many of the potatoes had become quite inedible.
Frequently, and especially in hot weather, the so-called soup had gone off and could only be consumed when the nostrils were pinched together. The onset of winter lowered despondency to a new level as their under-nourished bodies strived to ward off the bitter cold. Had it not been for the weekly distribution of Red Cross parcels, the sick-list would surely have reached greater proportions. Those parcels sustained them in spirit as well as in body, providing a link with the outside world with a silent ray of hope that this limbo state would not last forever.
The parcels came, in turn, from three sources – Great Britain, Canada and the United States of America – portions being, not surprisingly, more liberal from the two North American countries than those out of strictly-rationed Britain. The contents averaged a small tin of butter, cheese, tinned meat, powdered milk and dried eggs, sardines, jellies, some chocolate and 40 cigarettes. A certain meat loaf seemed, even to their deprived palates, evidently lacking in a reasonable meat content and gave rise to a joked threat that, after the war, they would unite in seeking out the supplier named on each tin and shooting him as an enemy agent.
Here, Otakar later became one of the some 600, out of the camp’s 2,000 PoWs who were actively involved in the preparation of the legendary “Great Escape”, and was one of the diggers on the ‘Dick’ and ‘Harry’ tunnels. Fortunately, he did not manage to escape. Otakar and Bryks were allocated places amongst the planned 200 escapers for the night of 24/25 March 1944, but due to a miscalculation, the tunnel – 102 mtrs long – wasn’t extended far enough and didn’t reach the shelter of the trees surrounding the camp This slowed down the rate of escapees being able to leave the tunnel. The 76th was sighted by the patrolling German guard and captured. Otakar and Bryks had been allocated escape positions later than 76th. Of those 76, only three managed to get back to England, the rest were captured and an enraged Hitler ordered that 50 were murdered as a reprisal.
Gestapo
The Gestapo – Geheime Staatspolizei, the secret police of Nazi Germany – classed all Czechoslovak PoWs as being guilty of high treason. In the summer of 1944, 24 of them were taken from various PoW camps to Pankrác prison in Prague for Gestapo interrogation at their HQ at the notorious Petschek Palace in Prague. Otakar was one of the 24 taken there. During the brutal interrogations, the Gestapo made use of the traitor Augustín Přeučil, a former Czechoslovak airman from l’Armée de l’Air and the RAF, who stole a Hurricane II aircraft and flew it to Belgium to hand it over to the occupying Germans. He was now in the service of the Prague Gestapo.
Czechoslovakia had, since the German annexation, been declared a ‘protectorate’ of the Reich. Czech citizens were classed as citizens of the Reich and those Czechoslovaks who fought against the Reich were deemed to be traitors. . For their treason, the Czechoslovak PoWs at Pankrác prison were sentenced to death by hanging for taking up arms against the Reich.
Fortunately, information about these sentences reached the British Government via the Red Cross, the Protection Power for Allied PoWs The reaction from the British Foreign Office was that “the Czechoslovak RAF prisoners-of-war, having sworn allegiance to H.M. King George VI, and having served in the British Forces in British uniform, should be treated under the terms of the Geneva Convention in exactly the same way as British prisoners-of-war”. They instructed the British Ambassador, in Berne, “to make immediate communication to the German Authorities via the Red Cross, regarding this and to add that the British Government would regard any prosecution for treason as illegal and that the persons responsible would have to answer for their activity after the war.” There would also be repercussions to German PoWs held by the British in the event of any prosecution or executions of the Czechoslovak PoWs. This resulted in the Reich Military Attorney terminating any criminal proceedings with the proviso that “the hearing should only take place after the war”.
Oflag IVc – Colditz
On 26 October 1944, Otakar was transferred to Oflag IVc – Colditz – the castle which was now a high security PoW camp for incarcerating officers of several nationalities, who were persistent escapers, VIP prisoners and a few others. There he joined fellow Czechoslovak airmen Sgt Karel Batelka, W/O Vilém Bufka, F/Lt František Burda, P/O Emil Bušina, Sgt Čeněk Chaloupka, P/O František Cigoš, W/O Emanal Novotný, Sgt Václav Procházka, Sgt Alois Šiška, W/O Jan Truhlář, F/O Václav Truhlář, W/O Petr Uruba, F/Lt Erazim Veselý and also Captain Richard Zdráhala who had served in the Free French Artillery and been captured in North Africa. By mid-January 1945, Sgt Josef Sůsa, F/Lt Josef Bryks, F/Lt Ivo Tonder, F/Lt Karel Trojáček and P/O Bedřich Dvořák, also Czechoslovak RAF airmen, arrived as well. Amongst the other PoWs there, these Czechoslovak airmen were known as the ‘Czech Squadron’. There, still with death sentences hanging over them, they waited and hoped that the Allies would win the war.
Liberated
Colditz was liberated by the American Army on 16 April 1945. During his time as a PoW, Otakar had escaped twice and also assisted others to escape. The Allied PoWs there were repatriated back to the UK by Operation Exodus; a large-scale airlift conducted by the RAF, using adapted bombers or DC3 transport aircraft, during April and May 1945 to repatriate British prisoners of war liberated in the closing stages of WW2. By the end of May, a total of around 3,500 flights had returned approximately 75,000 former prisoners to the UK. Those at Colditz were flown to Brussels and from there on to England. On their repatriation to England, the Czechoslovak PoWs, after medical checks, were debriefed by the British Authorities about their experience and treatment by the Germans whilst in captivity.
They were then transferred to the Czechoslovak Airmen’s Depot at RAF Cosford, arriving there on 19 April 1945. There Otakar was granted 28 days leave before having to return to 10 PRC [10 Personnel Reception Centre], the RAF Hospital at RAF Cosford and then to Medical Rehabilitation Centre there. In early August 1945 he was posted back to 311 (Czechoslovak) Sqn who were now deployed at RAF Manston, Kent, awaiting their return to Czechoslovakia.
Return to Czechoslovakia
Otakar returned to Czechoslovakia on 20 August 1945 and remained in the Czechoslovak Air Force at the rank of nadporučík [F/O]. Rhoda and their young son joined him shortly after. He remained in the Czechoslovak Air Force initially at their HQ at Prague-Karlín until 31 October 1945 and then, from 1 November 1945 he went to the VLU Air Research Institute [ Vojenském leteckém učilišti ] at Prague- Letňany airbase where he was engaged in the development of aerial target drones for the training of air-gunners. In 1946, with the assistance of the Air Force, he achieved an ambition and began studying, for two afternoons per week, at the Electrical Engineering department at the Technical University in Prague. During this period he was also pro-active with support for local aviation clubs.
Since their return to Czechoslovakia in August 1945, some 30% of middle and high command positions in the Czechoslovak Air Force were now held by former Czechoslovak RAF personnel. During this same period, with the covert assistance of Moscow, the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia was gradually gaining political power.
Communist Putsch
In Spring 1948, following their putsch, the Communists systematically pursued a programme to demean the ex-RAF servicemen as they were considered to be tainted with capitalism and thus ‘undesirable’ in the new Czechoslovak regime. Many were dismissed from the military, demoted, stripped of their Czechoslovak medals, arrested, imprisoned and subjected to other persecution and the degradation of having their Czechoslovak medals stripped from them and being demoted to the lowest rank. With this political climate, many of these servicemen sought to again escape back to the West. By early March 1948, these persecutions included 43 Air Force officers who had one thing in common – they had English wives and they came from a hostile ‘imperialist’ western country, loyal to the United States.
In early April 1948, fellow former RAF airmen F/Lt Josef Bryks, F/Lt Josef Čapka, W/Cmdr Vlastimil Chrást and Air Marshall Karel Janoušek, were all intent on escaping to the west. Bryks, Čapka and Chrást had already organised with the British Embassy in Prague, for their British wives to travel back to England. Janoušek was aware that an arrest warrant had already been issued for him by the StB – Státní bezpečnost, the state secret police – and so his escape was a matter of urgency. The four airmen met at Kynšperk, a small town some 90 miles west of Prague and just 9 miles from the border with the American Zone of Germany. There, they had pre-arranged with a guide who would smuggle them across the border, but they were to be let down. The guide said because it was a full moon, it was too dangerous and he would not take them across the border. Chrást and Janoušek decided to return to Prague while Bryks and Čapka went to Olomouc where they met F/O Ondřej Špaček, also a WW2 RAF airman, who had been there several days awaiting to escape himself. Reluctantly they decided to postpone their escape and Bryks and Chrást returned to Prague.
Betrayed!
On 16 April 1948, Bryks and Chrást went to Otakar’s flat where they told him of their intention to escape. Bryks and Chrást then returned to Prague. Shortly after, Janoušek, was put in contact with a new guide, and some others who also wanted to escape. They intended to escape via Klatovy, a small town just 11 miles from the border, with just the Šumava forest to cross through at night. Unfortunately, unbeknown to them, one of the new escapees was Jaroslav Doubravský [also known as Jan Hrubý, Igor Dischinger, Antonín Navrátil or agent A-5], an undercover Communist informer who worked for the OBZ [Obranné zpravodajství] – the brutal military counter-intelligence agency which operated within the Czechoslovak armed forces on behalf of the Communist Party. Doubravský informed his superiors and Janoušek was arrested on 30 April 1948 at Přeštice, enroute to Klatovy.
Janoušek was taken to the Domeček, the notorious OBZ prison at Hradčany, Prague, and interrogated, during which process Otakar’s name and that of Bryk, Čapka, Chrást, Václav Bozděch, Josef J Hanuš and Jan Plášil, were mentioned. This resulted in them being arrested. Otakar was arrested on 3 May and charged with having knowledge of an escape attempt but not reporting it. Fortunately, Rhoda and their son had, along with other British wives, already been evacuated to England by the British Embassy. In the fabricated, closed court trial which started on 14 June, Otakar together with fellow airmen from the group, Bryk, Čapka, Chrást, Josef Hanuš, Janoušek, and another 14 civilians were sentenced on 17 June 1948. Janoušek to 18 years, Chrást to 15 years, Bryks, Čapka, Špaček, 10 years, Hanuš two months, and Otakar 3 years hard labour while Václav Bozděch and Jan Plášil were released due to insufficient evidence against them. On his release, Hanuš wasted no time in making his escape to the American Zone of Germany, as had Bozděch.
Imprisoned again
After the verdicts were handed down, Otakar, Chrást, Bryks with about 60 other prisoners were taken to Dolní Jiřetín, one of many former prison camps in the area, some 50 miles northwest of Prague. There they were put to work in the local coal mine. In April 1949, Bryks was transferred to the secure Bory prison, near Plzeň, because it was evident from the letters he was writing to his family, that he was preparing to escape. Otakar was warned that he would be following him there the following week.
Escape
As an experienced “escaper” it was clear to Otakar that escaping from a permanent prison would be very difficult, if not impossible. So he used his wartime escape experiences, in the early hours of 7 May 1949, and together with two other prisoners, Vladimír Pechek and Josef Gapa], he successfully got through the camp’s barbed wire perimeter fence and headed north towards the Ocre mountains, in the north west tip of Czechoslovakia, which they reached by dawn of the first night. There they hid in the undergrowth during the day and watched in the distance a search party with dogs looking for them. The next night they reached the German border, The 3rd night they crossed the border into the Soviet Zone of Germany. After the 4th night of their escape, they changed direction and now headed south west to the American Zone of Germany. Now with little food, when they were in a rural area, they would pretend to be Hungarians, and they knocked on a farmhouse door asking for a slice of bread or a potato. By the 12th night they were approaching Hof which was in the American Zone. With the aid of a people smuggler, on their 13th night, they crossed the border into the American zone, where they gave themselves up to a German border patrol and were collected from there by the US authorities, for security vetting by the American CIC [Counterintelligence Corps]. During this Otakar expressed his wish to return to England where he would rejoin the RAF.
In the interim he was then taken to the Displaced Persons camp at Amberg, some 30 miles east of Nuremberg in the American Zone of Germany. From there he was able to contact the RAF Liaison Officer in Wiesbadem, Germany who advised him regarding the formalities required for rejoining the RAF and how to proceed.
Still under American jurisdiction, he was next transferred to the Displaced Persons Camp at Ludwigsburg, north of Stuttgart, Germany. The camp was the former Stalag V-A Prisoner of War camp from WW2 and now housed several thousand mainly Polish displaced persons. After about a month there, he was handed over to the British authorities, accepted back into the RAF at the rank of AC2 and flown back to England in a RAF Dakota transport aircraft on 31 October 1949. There he was reunited with Rhoda and Richard who had been repatriated back to England, on 7 December 1948 by the British Embassy UK. Otakar was later to learn that his friend Bryks had been less fortunate and, on 11 August 1957, had died of a heart attack in the prison hospital of the Rovnost uranium mine in the Jáchymov mining district, some 70 miles north west of Prague. He was only 41 years old.
Return to the RAF
Since Spring 1948, the RAF had become aware of the plight of former Czechoslovak RAF airmen and their families who were now often destitute having spent time since their escape in a Displaced Persons camp in Germany. However, regardless of the airmen’s previous RAF rank, they now were only offered the rank of AC2 whilst the RAF established what roles these escapees could undertake in the post WW2 RAF Service. They were transferred to No 2 RAF Cardington Recruitment Unit near Bedford,, usually for periods of between two to four months, while the RAF were ascertaining their future roles in the RAF,. The men, many of whom had been awarded DSOs or DFCs for their wartime service, were kept fully occupied. They were required to undertake general service training, including taking instruction on service subjects, physical education, English lessons, but also to undertake menial tasks like sweeping floors, scrubbing tables, dishing up food and cleaning toilets at weekends for new recruits when civilian staff where not available. After completing the entrance formalities, Otakar was offered a Short Service Commission for five years at the lower rank of F/Lt, which he accepted.
On 1 February 1950 he was posted to 236 OCU [No. 236 Operational Conversion Unit] at RAF Kinloss, in Scotland for training as a Signaller/Radar Operator on new radar equipment used to detect submarines in RAF Coastal Command. On completion of his training, he was posted to 38 Sqn which was deployed at Luqa airfield, Malta, and flew four-engined Lancasters equipped with advanced anti-submarine radar detection equipment. Their role was the surveillance for Soviet submarines in the Mediterranean Sea, during this period of the Cold War. In mid-1951, Otakar returned to the UK. His next posting in September was to No 1 Air Signallers School at Swanton Morley, Norfolk where he was an instructor on radio navigation and radar equipment. On 9 June 1952, he was posted to 66 Group Communication Flight at RAF Turnhouse, Scotland. The unit’s role was to provide light transport and communication support to Command Headquarters for the Group.
Otakar retired from the RAF, at the rank of F/Lt, on 31 January 1955, having flown some 2,000 hrs during his post WW2 career in the RAF.
Civvy Street
In civvy street, he was employed by a technical literature publisher where he wrote technical manuals for the military and aviation industry. Between 1975 and 1985, Otakar was employed by Phillips Unicam, in Cambridge, which was the UK’s largest manufacturer and supplier of laboratory analytical instruments where he wrote technical manuals. Despite being retired, Otakar continued to maintain his interest in aviation, as in his spare time, he would be training young Air Training Corp cadets on gliders.
On 14 October 2009, shortly before his 90th birthday, he died at his home in Cambridge. Sadly, he passed away just two weeks before his award of the Order of the White Lion, 1st Class, the highest Czech decoration, which was awarded posthumously on 28 October 2009.
Medals Awarded
1939 – 45 Star
Air Crew Europe Star
Defence Medal
War Medal
Válečný kříž 1939 and 3 bars
Za chrabrost
Za zásluhy I.stupně
Pamětní medaile se štítky F–VB
Remembered
Czech Republic:
Křenovice:
He is remembered at the memorial at Křenovice for the RAF airmen from that district.
Prague 1 – Klárov:
In November 2017, his name, along with the names of 2533 other Czechoslovak men and women who had served in the RAF during WW2, was unveiled at the Winged Lion Monument at Klárov, Prague.
Thank you for helping defeat the Nazi’s in WWII. Your story must be remembered by your descendants. My father, Leo Turnovsky, was with the RAF Sq. 311 and also returned to Czechoslovakia in 1945, only to escape again in 1948. He escaped once before from Hitler, as he was Jewish. His name is also on the Winged Lion Monument and on a plaque in Havlickuv Brod.