* 22.01.1909, Luhačovice.
† 22.01.2009, Leonard, UK.
Pre WW2
Josef Šnajdr was born on 22 January 1909 at Luhačovice, a small spa town in the southern region of Moravia, about 150 miles south east of Prague. For his schooling he attended 6 years at the local school, then 4 years of secondary school and then 4 years studying electrical engineering at the Vyšší státní elektrotechnická průmyslová škola [Higher State Electrotechnical Industrial School] in Brno. He matriculated from there and, for a year, was employed as a technical clerk at Ing. František Hönig a spol., strojírna, slévárna a elektrotechnická továrna, a Mechanical & Electrical Engineering factory at Hodonín, a town also in the southern region of Moravia, some 150 miles south east of Prague.
Josef was an active member of Sokol, a national organisation with a patriotic ethos which trained youth in physical fitness, discipline and civic duty where he was an excellent gymnast. During his youth, like many young Czechoslovak men at that time, he developed an interest in aviation and aspired to fly aircraft.
Military Service
To pursue that aspiration, in October 1929 he joined the cadet school at the Military Aviation Academy at Prostějov, where he trained as an air observer. On completion of his training, at the rank of četař [Sgt] he was posted to the 2nd “Dr Eduard Beneš” Regiment of the Czechoslovak Air Force which was deployed at Neředín airbase at Olomouc. Josef decided to make his career in the military and between 1931 and 1933 he attended the Military Academy at Hranice. On graduation, in September 1933, having achieved the rank of poručík [Lieutenant], for an unknown reason, he was posted to the 4th Mountain Infantry Regiment deployed at Trnava, some 25 miles east of Bratislava, Slovakia, where he was an Infantry Platoon Commander. His foray into infantry life was short as in March 1934 he returned to the Air Force and was posted to the 6th Air Regiment. who were deployed at Kbely airbase, Prague, as a junior officer.
Subsequently, Josef held various positions in the Regiment’s 71st and 74th Squadrons, and also completed a gas attack course, a physical education course and an observers’ night flying course at Brno airbase. In October 1937 he was promoted to the rank of nadporučík [F/O] and in May 1938 to Deputy Commander of the regiment’s 71st light bomber squadron which was deployed at Kbely airbase, Prague and equipped with the Aero Ab-101, a single-engined, twin-seat biplane, and the twin-engined Avia B-71. That year, Josef also commenced a pilot training course.
Mobilisation
The build-up of military forces by Nazi Germany along the Czechoslovak borders caused the Czechoslovak government to declare a partial mobilisation, on 20 May 1938, to counter that threat. Later that year, the threatening overtures Germany regarding the Sudeten regions – the German speaking areas – of Czechoslovakia caused the Czechoslovak Government to again declare a mobilisation on 23 September 1938.
During this tense time, Josef flew as a navigator with 71st squadron which was redeployed from Kbely airbase to the airfields at Zlosyň and Úžice, both north of Prague, and to Dobřenice and Svojetín, east and west of Prague respectively.
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. The 71st squadron redeployed back to its peacetime base of Kbely.
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.
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. Josef 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.
Resistance
Germanisation of Bohemia and Moravia had begun immediately. But by 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], working 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 Ludvík Svoboda, a former distinguished Czechoslovak Legionnaire from WW1, was planning the formation of Czechoslovak military units to fight for the liberation of their homeland. Within Czechoslovakia, former military personnel and civilian patriots covertly started to arrange for former Air Force and Army personnel to be smuggled over the border into Poland to join these newly formed Czechoslovak units.
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. Josef 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
On 3 June 1939, with the assistance of the two underground organisations, Josef travelled with fellow airmen Leo Anderle, Josef Kubak, Miroslav Mansfeld, Miroslav Kopecký and Josef Vopalecky. They went by train to Ostrava in north-east Czechoslovakia. This was adjacent to the Český Těšín region which had been annexed by Poland following the Munich Agreement of September 1939. There they were met by a former presidential guard who guided them to the Polish border from where they crossed into Poland. Shortly after crossing the border on 9 June, they were detained by Polish police and taken to the local Police Station. Here their details were taken and as the Police station was small and unable to accommodate the six, they were permitted, under parole not to try and return to Czechoslovakia, to leave the Police station and stay in a nearby hotel that night. The following day they returned to the Police station and were taken to Těšín Police station for further questioning. They were there for a week before they were released and travelled to Kraków, in southern Poland, where they reported for duty at the Czechoslovak Consulate.
Polish Disappointment
Unfortunately, once there, Josef and his colleagues, like all the previous escapees from Czechoslovakia, found that there was no enthusiasm from the Polish authorities to have Czechoslovak military units assembled on their territory as the Poles had no wish to provoke neighbouring Nazi Germany. This Polish attitude caused some of the Czechoslovak escapees to become discontented and disillusioned, with some considering returning to their homeland. Fortunately, patriotic speeches by General Ludvík Svoboda, a Legionnaire veteran from WW1 and Senator Vojtěch Beneš, brother of former Czechoslovak President Eduard Beneš, now exiled in in Britain, averted this return. Meanwhile the Czechoslovak Consulate at Kraków had 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, but 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 in Czechoslovakia.
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. Josef was the 301st escapee to be registered there, arriving there on 11 June 1939.
After a short stay at Bronowice Małe, Josef, and 138 other escapees left by train for the Polish Baltic port of Gdynia where, on 17 June 1939, they boarded the SS Sobieski, a Polish passenger ship which sailed via Dover, where the Czechoslovak military were not permitted to disembark, to Boulogne in France, arriving on the night of 19/20 June.
France
On arrival, Josef and his fellow escapees were met by the Air Attaché from the Czechoslovak Consulate, Paris. Each was given 20 francs to cover their immediate needs, and after two days there they travelled by train to the French Foreign Legion’s recruitment barracks at Place Balard, in the south-west of Paris, for medical examination and recruitment documentation to be completed for their acceptance into the Foreign Legion. This time was to serve as a familiarisation period to learn the ways of the Legion and to study French on crash courses, and they took every opportunity to practise their new language skills with French girls. Josef was accepted into the French Foreign Legion, on 17 August, at the rank of Sous-Lieutenant [P/O]. Fortunately for Josef, and for many of his colleagues, before he could be transferred to the Legion’s training base at Sidi-bel-Abbès, some 35 miles south of Oran, Algeria.
Fall Weiß
On 1 September 1939, Fall Weiß started – the German invasion of Poland. That resulted in England and France declaring war on Germany two days later.
l’Armee 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. Josef was posted to their Base Aérienne 705 at Tours, some 130 miles south west of Paris on 2 September 1939. 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. On 23 January 1940 he was posted for further re-training to Base Aérienne 122 at Centre d’Instruction de Chasse at Chartres, the l’Armée de l’Air fighter training airbase, about 50 miles South-West of Paris. On 18 April he was sent to the Fighter Training Centre at Base Aérienne 103 Centre d’Instruction de Chasse Châteauroux about 150 miles south-west of Paris.
Fall Gelb
This was the period of the ‘Phoney War’ with very little activity on the western front in France. The relative calm of the Phoney War ended at 05:35 on 10 May 1940 when ‘Fall Gelb’ – the German attack on Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg and France – took place. 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. The Battle of France had begun.
The lightning speed and ferocity of the German Blitzkrieg attack caused the l’Armée de l’Air units to rapidly retreat westwards. By that time, Josef’s training as an observer, then air gunner had been completed and he had started pilot training but made no operational flights during the Battle of France.
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 Châteauroux, Josef and his group made their way through the chaos of westward-bound fleeing civilians and military personnel, some 175 miles south-east to Bordeaux to be evacuated. There they met up with other Czechoslovak airmen from other airbases also seeking evacuation. 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. By the time of his evacuation from France, Josef had achieved a total of 2,000 flying hours as an Observer.
In the period from June to August 1940, 932 Czechoslovak airmen were evacuated from France and reached England. Operation Aerial was concluded on 25 June.
RAF
After their arrival, the Czechoslovak airmen were transferred to RAF Innsworth, Gloucestershire, for security vetting. On 7 July 1940, Josef and his fellow airmen were then transferred to the Czechoslovak Depot at RAF Cosford, near Wolverhampton. There, they underwent basic RAF training and elementary English lessons.
At this time Britain was under threat of invasion by Nazi Germany and the RAF’s emphasis was for fighter pilots for the Battle of Britain. Thus, Czechoslovak fighter pilots were quickly accepted into the RAF Volunteer Reserve and sent for fighter aircraft retraining. However, at RAF Cosford, there was now also a pool of experienced Czechoslovak airmen assembling that were not fighter pilots and thus became the embryo for a bomber squadron which would not need extensive retraining, but only require some brief retraining to familiarise them with RAF equipment and procedures. Officers amongst them were formally commissioned and they began to attend English language classes.
To provide a training cadre, serving RAF personnel were drafted in and a number of RAF ground staff were also posted to the new unit to provide technical and administrative support. Such training was initially undertaken at RAF Honington using nearby RAF East Wretham as a satellite airfield.
On 29 July 1940, Josef was posted to the 311 [Czechoslovak] squadron, a newly formed bomber unit deployed at RAF Honington, some 7 miles north of Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk. As a trained observer and partially trained pilot, Josef was accepted into the RAF Volunteer Reserve, at the rank of P/O on 2 August 1940.
To 311 Sqn
The squadron was in No.3 Group of RAF Bomber Command, and equipped with Vickers Wellington twin-engine medium-range bombers. Initially the squadron was jointly commanded, with Wing Commander Karel Mareš (who chose to change his surname to Toman to protect family and relatives who remained in the former Czechoslovakia), together with Wing Commander John Griffiths DFC, a Canadian serving in the RAF. Its role at that time was bombing raids on the Channel ports to thwart the build-up of landing barges that the Germans were assembling there in anticipation of invading England. They also targeted the railway marshalling yards in northern occupied Belgium and France to frustrate the movement of the German Wehrmacht to those Channel ports.
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 either being shot down and killed or captured.
On arrival at RAF Honington, Josef was allocated to S/Ldr Percy Pickard, later DSO and 2 bars and DFC, for pilot training. Whilst S/Ldr Pickard was mild mannered, approachable and humorous, he was also a very determined, hard task master and persistent instructor. Language differences proved a significant barrier. Due to the high variation in competence amongst the assembled Czechoslovak airman, Pickard decided to concentrate his efforts on those pilots with the most experience in flying. He asked the interpreter to direct him to the supposedly most experienced airman there who had 2,000 hours flying experience – Josef! After a flight together, wherein Pickard took off and then handed the controls to Josef, Pickard felt that the pilot was strangely inept for a man with so many flying hours under his belt who had difficulty flying straight and maintaining altitude. The tolerant Pickard gave Josef the benefit of the doubt, believing that communicating in a foreign language, an unfamiliar aircraft, difficult conditions once airborne and on the ground may have been the reason for the poor performance. He gave Josef a second chance, but after a few more displays of ham-fisted flying, Pickard, in his office, with Bedřich Schneider, the interpreter translating, lost his patience with Josef, shouting “How can a man who is not an idiot, say he has flown, 2,000 hours? and then flies like a drunken sailor even after 20 minutes of training on this simplest of aircraft? You are useless, truly useless.” “Oh, not pilot,” replied Josef “I observer.” Undeterred, Pickard pressed on, training Josef up as a pilot anyway and under his tutelage, he became an excellent pilot!
311 Sqn – Bomber Command
The squadron’s first operational sorties were carried out on the night of the 10 September 1940, when three crews took off from RAF Honington to attack the railway marshalling yards near Brussels.
Josef’s 1st Operational Flight was 10 October 1940 for a night raid on oil refineries at Hamburg, Germany. That night, three Wellington bombers took off from RAF Honington at 22:32, 22:40 and Josef, flying Wellington Ic, N2772, J, at 22:50. En-route to Hamburg, the aircraft experienced strong ant-aircraft fire, particularly over the target. Bombs were dropped from between 13,000 to 16,000 feet, the target was hit, resulting in a large fire which was visible from 60 miles away. All three aircraft arrived safely back to base, Josef landing at 04:47 after a 5 hr 57min flight.
However, just a few days later, the night of 16/17 October was the darkest ever for 311 Squadron. Josef was pilot of Wellington N2773 K, one of four 311 Sqn Wellingtons dispatched for a raid on Keil and the naval base at Bremen, Germany. Josef had taken off at 18:30. They reached their target, but due to low cloud, they were unable to observe the results of their bombing. On the return flight to base the bomber became iced up. The radio failed, and due to the ground being totally obscured by cloud, the crew were unable to get a positional fix. Hoping for a break in the cloud, Josef decided to stay airborne to the limit of his fuel. He took the aircraft down to below five hundred feet, and the crew had a brief glimpse of a strange piece of coastline, but were still uncertain as to where they were. Sometime later, with the fuel rapidly running out and no break in the overcast, Josef reluctantly ordered the crew to prepare to jump. After a quick round of handshakes and good luck wishes, the crew, one by one, leapt out into the blackness, with Josef, as Captain, last to leave.
It was raining heavily, so the crew got a soaking to add to their misfortune. One crew member, after a safe landing, knocked at a cottage door and requested help. He was promptly held up at gunpoint by the irate cottager. For him, this was the last straw, and he fainted! He came to sometime later, comfortably ensconced in an armchair and had his spirits revived with a mixture of tea and whisky. He was then collected by the village policeman and spent the remainder of the night at his home. A second crew member arrived at the village doctor’s home, having spent an hour trying to get down from a tree in which his parachute had become entangled. Unfortunately, things did not go well for P/O Miloslav Vejražka, the wireless operator; officially it was reported that his parachute had failed to open properly and that he fell to his death (although other accounts suggest that he was shot and killed by members of the local Home Guard, who mistook him for a German paratrooper!). The Wellington crashed near Blidworth in Nottinghamshire.
Of the four aircraft sent out, three did not return to base, and of their eighteen crew members, ten men were killed, two were captured and one was seriously injured. S/Ldr Jan Veselý’s Wellington had crashed in the grounds of Bentley Priory, with only František Truhlář surviving, but very badly burned. The Wellington flown by P/O Bohumil Landa was shot down over the Zuider Zee, Holland and the entire crew were killed.
That November, Josef was promoted to the rank of F/Lt. On 27 May 1941, he was appointed Flight Commander of the squadron’s ‘A ‘ Flight, and on 21 June 1941 to the rank of Acting S/Ldr. During his military career, Josef was noted for his excellent command abilities, sound judgement, balance and personal example and on 11 December 1941, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. When 311 Sqn Commanding Officer, W/Cmdr Josef Ocelka’s operational tour was completed, Josef was appointed to command of the squadron on 20 April 1942.
311 Sqn – Coastal Command
311 Squadron had been transferred from RAF Bomber Command to RAF Coastal Command in April 1942, because the loss rate of more than 40% of its aircrew and with a very limited source of replacement aircrew, meant it was unsustainable for the squadron to maintain bombing operations.
A new danger was now facing Britain, whose lifeline to its wartime survival was the convoys from North America bringing food and war materials to sustain its ability to fight the war. The German High Command identified this weak link for Britain, and as in WW1, sought to sink those supply ships by using submarines. To enable quick and easy access to the Atlantic, the Germans built submarine bases – heavily fortified concrete U-boat pens – in the Bay of Biscay, on the Atlantic coast of France, the main ones being at Lorient, Saint-Nazaire, La Rochelle and Brest, from where they sailed in pursuit of Allied convoys.
Whilst the Allies were able to protect these convoys with aircraft patrolling the Atlantic either from North America or Britain, the vast width of the Atlantic meant that the limited range of the aircraft resulted in there always being a central area of the Atlantic that could not be patrolled. This was the main area where the U-boats were able to intercept the convoys, with little fear of being attacked by Allied aircraft.
Thus, the Bay of Biscay became a primary area for RAF Coastal Command patrols where they flew around-the-clock patrols in anti-submarine sweeps in the search and engagements of U-boats returning from Atlantic patrols or those outbound for a new patrol. This was Operation Percussion, the Allied air and naval operation in the Bay of Biscay, off the south-west coast of France and comparatively close to the north coast of neutral Spain. They attacked U-boats attempting to leave or reach French ports by means of a surfaced transit of the Bay of Biscay.
For this new role, 311 Sqn was deployed at RAF Talbenney, in South Wales. From there, their Wellingtons would patrol the westerly approaches to the Bay of Biscay Often these patrols would be in the region of 9 hours duration, covering some 1100 nautical miles but not locating any submarines. During these patrols they would often come under threat themselves from patrolling Luftwaffe aircraft from bases in France, who were providing aerial protection for the submarines. On 20 April 1942, Josef was promoted to the rank of Acting W/Cmdr and on July 1942, to the rank of S/Ldr.
Dorothy, the wife of S/Ldr Percy Pickard invited her sister Hillary Hodgkin to a dance to meet the Czechoslovak airmen who had recently arrived at RAF Honington. There, Josef met Hilary and on 29 December 1942 they were married, Thus, Josef became Pickard’s brother-in-law.
The squadron were very successful in their new role – for the quarter ending 28 February 1943, 311 Sqn was assessed as ‘Very Good’, both by day and night, being the only squadron in RAF Coastal Command to achieve that assessment. During this period, Josef flew five operational patrols, with patrols now usually of 9 to 10 hour duration.
Having completed his operational tour Josef, was posted from 311 Sqn to the Czechoslovak Inspectorate General in London, on 1 February 1943, with W/Cdr Jindřich Breitcetl, DFC taking over that command. With 311 Sqn, Josef had flown 33 night operations over German-occupied territory totalling 184 hours 57 min with 44 hours 41 min in Coastal Command patrols.
Czechoslovak Inspectorate General
There, he was appointed Group Liaison Staff Officer of the Czechoslovak Inspectorate’s study group. His next posting was in December when he was assigned to RAF Coastal Command as Liaison Officer, as since Spring 1942, 311 Sqn had been transferred from RAF Bomber Command to RAF Coastal Command.
Operation Chilli commenced on 31 December 1944. This was the nocturnal aerial patrols and strikes in the Western Baltic Sea and its approaches into the North Sea, to prevent U-boats breaking out from their northern German bases in the Baltic and going into the Atlantic where they would attack Allied shipping. He went as an observer on that patrol, in Liberator GR VI, KG862, T, captained by F/Lt Vladimír Slánský. Take-off from Tain was at 18:38, returning at 05:54,.Several small vessels were sighted and probably some fishing boats, but the haze made clear identification difficult. A submarine was detected and 10 depth charges were dropped, but the haze made it difficult to observe any results.
On the 22 April 1945, Josef made his final operational flight – his 40th again as an observer on an anti-submarine sweep in the approaches to the Baltic Sea. Take-off from RAF Tain was at 08:45, returning at 19:42.
With the war in Europe finished on 8 May 1945, Josef’s new role, from 18 July 1945 was as a Liaison Officer to RAF Transport Command at the Czechoslovak Transport Pool at RAF Croydon. Again, this position as, since the end of hostilities, 311 Sqn had now been transferred to RAF Transport Command. He remained there until 1 January 1946 and his role was overseeing the gradual repatriation of Czechoslovak civilians to their homeland as well as equipment and supplies to aid in the rebuilding of the Czechoslovak Air Force.
After lengthy and delaying negotiations with the Russian ‘liberators’ of Czechoslovakia, arrangements were finally underway for the return of the Czechoslovaks serving in the RAF, to their homeland. The officers relinquished their Kings Commission, and all ranks now wore Czechoslovak insignia on their uniform. Josef had relinquished his Kings commission on 1 August 1945, and held the rank of podplukovník [W/Cmdr] in the Czechoslovak Air Force. During WW2 with 311 Sqn, Josef had made a total of 40 operational flights and achieved 252 hours 1 minute of operational hours flying.
Return to Czechoslovakia
Josef returned, with his wife and small daughter, to his homeland on 1 January 1946 and was appointed interim commander of the 6th Air Division of the Czechoslovak Air Force and was deployed at Havlíčkův Brod airbase, some 60 miles south east of Prague. The Division comprised two Air Regiments – the 24th Biscay Air Regiment and the 25th Atlantic Air Regiment. The 24th was equipped with de-Havilland Mosquito FB Mk VI and the 25th with the Soviet Petlyakov Pe-2 twin-engine dive bomber. In May to July 1946, pilots, navigators and ground crew from the 24th were sent to England, under Josef’s command, to retrain on this variant of the Mosquito.
Communist Putsch
In Spring 1948, following the Communist 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, subjected to other persecution with 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 to escape back to the West.
By early March 1948, these persecutions included 43 Air Force officers who had one thing in common – British wives and they came from a hostile ‘imperialist western country, loyal to the United States. With the assistance of the British Embassy, Prague, Hilary and their now two daughters, were able to be repatriated with other British wives, by train back to England.
In Josef’s case, his persecution started on 12 April 1948, when he was relieved of active military service and placed on ‘waiting’ leave – dovolenou s čekaným – from the Czechoslovak Air Force, more commonly known today as ‘gardening leave’ but with the former airmen receiving only a small fraction of their pay. Josef was aware that when he was placed on waiting leave, it was only a matter of time before he would be arrested by the StB, and tried on fabricated charges of being politically unreliable as he had served in the West during WW2 and was now classed as an ‘undesirable’ person in Communist Czechoslovakia. The usual outcome following such charges was to be sentenced to imprisonment.
2nd Exile
On 6 July 1949, Josef managed to covertly escape over the Czechoslovak border, through the Russian Zone of Austria, and into the Allied Zone. From there, after security vetting, he subsequently was able to make his way to England.
In England, like many other former Czechoslovak RAF airmen, he had hoped to be able to rejoin the RAF, but now age – he was 40 years old – was against him and he was unable to rejoin. He remained in England, and with Hilary, they formed Abbey Leather ltd and bought leather at auctions and sold it on to shoe and handbag manufacturers as well as theatre companies until his retirement. Initially they were located at the Old Barbican, London and later, as that bombed area was being redeveloped, at nearby Crescent Row, in East London. During this period Josef was also pro-active in the exile Czechoslovak movement in the UK, which following the 1948 Communist putsch in Czechoslovakia, London was becoming the initial destination for many of the escaped Czechoslovak airmen and soldiers.
Looking to preserve the spirit of patriotism and to continue the camaraderie they had during WW2, on 21 May 1949 they formed the Svazu letcu svobodného Československa [Free Czechoslovak Air Force Association] and Josef became its first Chairman. One of his achievements as Chairman was the Memorial plaque to the fallen 311 Sqn Czechoslovak airmen, at Thetford, Norfolk. Later, after Josef had stood down as Chairman, he was appointed its Honorary Chairman.
During this period he was pro-active in the 311 Sqn memorial plaque mounted at the Town Hall, at Thetford, Norfolk, which was unveiled on 21 September 1980.
Josef was at Brookwood on 23 March 1990 to greet Czechoslovak President Vaclav Havel, when he visited the Czechoslovak memorial and graves at Brookwood CWGC Cemetery, Surrey, UK.
Josef died on 14 September 1992, aged 83, and is interred at the Czechoslovak plot at Brookwood, Surrey.
Medals Awarded
Distinguished Flying Cross
1939 – 45 Star
Atlantic Star
Air Crew Europe Star
Defence Medal
1939-45 War Medal
Válečný kříž 1939 and 2 bars
Za chrabrost and bar
Za zásluhy I.stupně
Pamětní medaile se štítky F–VB
Remembered
Czech Republic:
Luhačovice:
On 22 January 2014, a memorial plaque was unveiled in the foyer of the town library, at his birth town of Luhačovice, to commemorate him.
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.
Article last updated: 30.04.2026.
