Martin Udržálek´s eyes

At the end of September 1944, an officer Tomáš Sedláček was together with other members of the second paratroop brigade seconded to help in the Slovak National Uprising. After its bloody suppression the insurgents set out to cross Low Tatras (Nízke Tatry) to the east in the direction of the eastern battlefront. Later on many legends were being told about marching through the mountain valley and along the mountain Chabenec. “You have to realize that in mountains there was about a meter of snow,” says the witness. “Soldiers and civilians had to change their direction several times; climb steep hills, many people froze or hurt themselves and weren´t able to proceed.” Tomáš Sedláček had a memory on the march and he had recalled it in his whole life. “In our transport there was also Martin Udržálek, a Moravian Slovak, having about hundred kilos, the company´s commander. He fought on the northern slopes of Low Tatras where the Germans overshot his heel. Soldiers from his unit made a stretcher and pulled him. Standa Uchytil, a commander of the battalion told me he had to beat the men with a stick so that they didn´t leave him somewhere. It wasn´t any fun to pull such a heavy man in the snow up to the hills. “They dragged Udržálek to us and our doctors treated him. Now we were about to start the hike through Tatras along Chabenec. We tied Martin on a horse that went in the front, but as soon as the horse got into the slope, Martin fell. They placed a blanket on the ground, gave him a trench coat and a gun and left him there. And now just imagine this: the whole line marched by him! And we couldn´t help him, we couldn´t take him with us. When I saw him lying there I couldn´t walk by him and look in his eyes, so I rather walked around through the deep snow. I could do nothing for him. My duty was to walk on. The interesting thing is that it all ended up well. Some civilians found him and transported him to the hospital in Banská Bystrica.”