Učitel na frontě - Deník legionáře Josefa Dudka – Dudek Josef (2019)

This Czech-language diary recounts the wartime experiences of Josef Dudek, who was on holiday after completing the third year of a teacher-training institute when war broke out. He initially passed the draft examination because of an eye defect and was able to finish his studies, but mounting battlefield losses led to his entering military service in the summer of 1915. The defect was no longer considered an obstacle, and he was sent to Austria for officer training, where he first encountered anti-Czech attitudes among some superiors and colleagues. In January 1916 he left for the Eastern Front, where he was soon wounded and then suspected of feigning his injury. By May he had been sent to the Italian Front, only to return east in the summer to help stop the Russian offensive. He went back to Italy in April 1917, encountering everywhere the incompetence and laxity of senior officers and their growing distrust of anything Czech. Italians captured him in May 1917. In captivity he learned about the struggle for Czechoslovak independence. These experiences, together with the increasing hostility of his German and Hungarian colleagues, eventually led him into the Czechoslovak army, with whose 34th Rifle Regiment he took part in the celebrated battle at Doss Alto and the war for Slovakia in the summer of 1919.