Czechoslovakia. The army was determined to make extreme sacrifices in the event of war, but the politicians decided otherwise. The airmen were not given the opportunity to engage the enemy in direct combat and, like all Czechoslovak soldiers, had to submit to the Munich decision. To fight the decision the airmen could only resort to helpless rage.
To the most difficult order of his life, Maj. Hess, as a disciplined soldier, submitted with great self-denial, but as a Czech patriot he took a completely irreconcilable position towards the occupation. It was not a reason for him to break his oath of office, since its fulfilment could not be enforced in any way at that time: ,, ...March 1939... We boarded in the corridor of the barracks building for the last time," recalls one of his subordinates, who, like Hess, soon found his way into the foreign resistance.
"We were standing like stone statues when the squadron commander, Maj. Hess took over the reports. He stepped forward and his words faded into the distance, and we all came to life as he said with a stir: " ...and I believe, knowing you as I do and seeing you here before me, that we will all soon come together again to fight our enemy - as we swore to do. I believe that, we, the airmen, have not yet lost our fight... '"
"The participation of Czechoslovak airmen in the battle for England... will one day be a most precious boast for England and for us, which we shall carry confidently in our memory and of which we can be ever and justly proud," Hess himself would later write.
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