Jak se časy mění - Vzpomínky na prvnísvětovou válku – Vácha Slavomír (2019)

This Czech-language memoir recounts the experiences of Slavomír Vácha, a young native of Brno who, in the second year of the First World War, hastily completed his school-leaving examination and enlisted to support the increasingly exhausted Austrian army. Travelling across European battlefields, he encountered the horrors of war and the suffering people inflict on one another, reaching manhood quickly as he was forced to command an entire unit at the age of eighteen. He kept a personal diary until the end of the war, recording its course along with numerous drawings and letters, and used these entries in the 1940s, during the Second World War, to write his memoirs. Vácha’s memories vividly show that war means not only fighting the enemy but also confronting the hypocrisy of one’s own commanders and one’s own doubts, including uncertainty about faith and the loss of the will to live. In such moments, the support of his family, conveyed from afar through letters and parcels, proves essential. A teacher by profession, the author describes a wide range of experiences from two years of war, from moments of suffering to paradoxically cheerful episodes behind the lines, including friendships with Italian civilians, forged one-day leave permits to Brno and parties in Traismauer, Austria. Although his participation places him among the so-called lost generation, his ability to write about wartime events with perspective and the credibility of a direct participant bears witness to the strength of the human spirit. His memoirs neither mourn the lost generation nor make light of the war; they are a compelling account through the eyes of a soldier who condemns the war into which he was unwillingly drawn in his youth and who, despite immense suffering, always tries to preserve his faith in God and humanity.