Jak jsem pomáhal libyjské armádě - 1. díl

It could be said that the war gave something to anyone who completed it without often realizing it. Sometimes a feeling of self-confidence, a sense of order and, last but not least, an improvement in physical condition.


I also went through two years of war, so I can be a little smart and know something about it. I was called to one development. unit in western Bohemia. After the traditional "receiver", where he teaches a young soldier to march, to know military orders and regulations, and other military "very important facts" made me one of the techniques I admired and wanted to serve.


I became a rocket driver.


When I first sat in the armored cab behind the wheel of a twenty-ton monster, my knees shook a little, but over time - with increasing practice and mileage - all worries went away. Two years passed like water, and the hatched pheasant became a seasoned greaser.


One day in August, when, like every sophomore, I was cutting a meter and having what was said to be "in a few," a very interesting and, as it turned out, a lucrative offer emerged from clear skies. I was offered a job as a technical instructor, where I served for two years.


At that time, our republic concluded a contract with one Arab country, and that was the Libyan Arab People's Socialist Jamahiriya. As we later learned, jamahiriya means a nation-state. This business concerned military equipment, including the training of operating personnel. Although the decision whether to accept this position was not easy. I didn't worry for a long time, I really wanted to get to know another region. I remembered the words of my grandfather, who told me how before my companion went to the world "experienced" after training.


I completed a two-month preparatory course. One cold and dry November day, the weathered Il-18 detached itself from Ruzyně airport and headed for Libya. The whole group numbered about twenty men. When boarding this plane, everyone was worried about whether the few thousand kilometers would be kept in the air at all, because shortly before that, a plane of the same type crashed near Bratislava. After a few hours of flight, however, surprisingly, the landing area of the airport of the capital of Libya, Tripoli, appeared below us, where we managed to land successfully.


A Libyan officer with a colt at his waist was already waiting for us in the airport lobby, which surprised us very much. And as it turned out later, it was not the first time, many more surprises awaited us later. In our army, the weapon with sharp ammunition was worn only exceptionally, for sharp shooting or service.


The first two weeks we were located in a modern seaside resort on the outskirts of Tripoli. The one-storey bungalows overlooking the beach in which we lived, were built in Arabic style and perfectly equipped. We were attracted by swimming in the sea every day. However, the Libyans just shook their heads at us incomprehensibly. The water temperature in this period was around 20 ° C, and according to them, it was not for swimming, they considered us hardy.


Tripoli literally amazed us, especially perfectly stocked with goods from all over the world. Historical monuments, parks, and also the largest square, which the Libyans named Green because green is the holy color of Islam. And it was so literally and literally. The asphalt, which covered the entire area of the square, was painted green.


After two weeks of acclimatizing to the local climate, we were moved directly to the center of the capital, which they called Medina. They accommodated us in apartments of an eleven-storey block of flats without air conditioning. As it turned out later, in the summer months, when the temperature in the shade was around 40 ° C, we really enjoyed the African climate.


At the beginning of December, the training was fully launched. Rocket launchers and other equipment traveled from Czechoslovakia by train to Yugoslavia and then by Czechoslovak ship to the port of Tripoli. We assisted in unloading the equipment from the ship to prevent any damage. Our ship was moored at the pier, which was intended for military purposes, so we could see many very interesting things for us.A Soviet ship was moored nearby, and huge cranes were pulling elongated, narrow crates from inside it. What did they contain?


The lessons themselves took place five days a week, from Sunday to Thursday, Friday was a day when all the students concentrated on the central platform of the camp and the clergyman read excerpts from the Koran to them. We were not idle either, we sat in the classroom and discussed Marx-Leninist preparation. The leader of our group always appointed one of us to read various political articles from the two-week-old Red Law. Nowadays how comical. Letters and newspapers came to us by special mail, called cargo, with a delay of two to three weeks.


Saturday was a day off, so we spent this time exploring not only the capital, but also historically interesting monuments from the time when Libya was inhabited by the Romans. We loved Leptis Magna and Sabrata, the ancient cities on the coast, so much that we visited them several times during our stay.


The desire to get to know this country was great, in many ways we were helped by Arabic interpreters. They even led us to the idea of buying a ticket some weekend and taking a small trip to the nearby island of Malta. Our superiors heard this intention and immediately took action, if we did not think of emigrating, and immediately took away our passports.

Living in Libya is not so easy for our people. On the one hand, there is a strict prohibition, that is, no alcohol. We learned from the natives that if the police caught us consuming alcohol, which is sometimes obtained on the black market for a proper sum, we would have a kalabush, which means imprisonment. Pork chop? So you can only dream about it, there is no pork in this country. In the butcher shop you can buy mutton, poultry, sometimes camel and most often beef. A metal hook was placed on the wall next to the entrance to the butcher's shop, and on this hook, if, for example, beef was for sale, a cow's head hung. After some time, due to the local average temperatures around 35 ° C, it was strewn with a flock of flies.


Many in this African country were incomprehensible to us. It was common for two boys to walk down the street holding hands, but woe to a boy holding a girl. He would arouse public outrage, and I'm not talking about kissing a girl in public. The Arabs are of the opinion that only animals are loved in public. One expresses one's feelings only in private. Equality between men and women works in Libya only on paper. When a man walks down the street with his wife, the man always walks four to five steps forward, never side by side. If they go out of shopping, for example, the woman must always bear the purchase. In practice, emancipation is an unknown concept.


Teaching Libyan students to master the technique was not as easy as it initially seemed. The topic first had to be interpreted from Czech into English, which was provided by a Czech interpreter. Then from English to Arabic, this role was taken over by an Arabic interpreter, and it was very lengthy. Another problem was that Libyan Arabic has a very small vocabulary and some Czech terms simply do not exist in Arabic. For example, the rocket launcher is located on the chassis of the Tatra 813, the car has a relatively complex transmission, part of which is, among other things, the so-called planetary overdrive, and that was a tough nut to crack for interpreters. According to the curriculum, I had two hours on this topic, but it was far from enough. There has been much speculation about how to translate this term. No wonder one of the students on the desk fell asleep with boredom. I therefore warned the sergeant in charge of the class to wake the student in question. I later regretted this order because something followed that we were not used to in our army. The sergeant woke the soldier, but immediately after the next break he literally pulled him to an obstacle course, where he ordered him to do squats in the moat first and later push-ups. The student made a hero of himself, he pleaded with the sergeant, and so the worst happened. The sergeant broke a branch from a nearby tree, with which he properly nodded the student in such a way that his friends had to be taken to the infirmary, where he was recovering for a week.It was incomprehensible to us that the whole incident was watched from afar with satisfaction with a smile on the lips of the camp commander. We later learned that the sergeant in question had even received praise for strengthening morale.


Another handicap for us was the fact that some students were much older than us, which is why Libyan officers did not trust us at first. They thought that, given our age, we might not even have the experience to teach. Some exacerbation occurred after we moved from theory to actual field training.


There are time standards for all activities around the rocket launcher that Libyan students did not catch up with. At that time, the camp commander was Captain Barány. High rank here, considering that the highest rank in the Libyan army is a colonel, and this is the head of state Muammar Gaddafi. He visited the head of our group and explained to him the opinion of subordinate commanders, who thought that the time standards were unrealistic and that they could not be met in any case. It has gone so far as to suggest that even the instructors themselves would not meet these standards. Finally, he raised the question of whether Czechoslovak instructors could perform a demonstration of captivity to the firing position in the prescribed standards. The Libyans were distrusted. By no means did he want to admit that we wouldn't be able to put together complete crews. Estates pride and honor told us to do everything we could to prove that we were in our places. After proper preparation, a demonstration took place, which, except for small shortcomings noticeable to the Libyans, succeeded. We must have risen in price, followed by words of appreciation through interpreters.


Once the practice rides began, first in the field and later on the road, all communication between the instructor and the student was in Arabic and without an interpreter. Therefore, we had no choice but to learn at least the basic phrases. In the end, we adopted the local customs. If a student incorrectly engaged a gear while driving, each instructor had a beech wood gauge on hand, which was commonly used to measure the amount of fuel in the tank. In this case, however, it was used as a "negotiation tool", surprisingly, this method was very effective.
Note - Anton Semyonovich Makarenko would probably disagree.


As for the operation of our technology in desert conditions, I would say that it was quite successful. Of course, certain problems arose from time to time. Unfortunately, the Kopřivnice Tatrovka did a great disgrace here when it supplied the Libyans with a four-axle T-813 tractor for testing with a completely new one, you can say in a jargon with a "raw" engine. The camp commander ordered the car in question to be loaded with sand. Despite all the warnings that this is a new machine, he ignored our objections. He ordered the test driver to take the highway, where the engine seized after a few kilometers of driving at full throttle. After this event, the Libyan side was no longer interested in other Tatra cars.


In August, the holy month of Ramadan is celebrated in Libya. During this period, every adult Muslim is not allowed to eat, drink or smoke from sunrise to sunset. This is strictly observed and we foreigners have been strictly advised to refrain from these pleasures in public. Otherwise, it could be taken as a provocation, which of course we respected. A military cannon was placed in the middle of Tripoli, from which personnel fired in the evening as soon as the sun set. This blow was heard throughout the city and it was a signal to end the all-day fast. Training was also limited during Ramadan, especially in situations where daily temperatures were around 40 ° C in the shade. Outside in the sun, this heat was not bearable for us Central Europeans, so all the activity at that time took place only in the classroom.


Another big holiday was September 1. On this day in 1969, the young, then Lieutenant Muammar Gaddafi, led by other young officers, overthrew the king and decided to build socialism. A grandstand was built on the central Green Square and the equipment was properly shone for a military parade.The Libyans themselves were already behind the wheel during the parade, although we were waiting next to the grandstand in the minibus in case of a collision. From a distance, we watched as several buses arrived before the start of the party, from which, as we later named them, groups of yarns emerged. All the while, they shouted to Gaddafi's glory until death and death to American and Israeli aggressors. Beside Gaddafi, surrounded by security, stood the eternally unshaven Yasser Arafat. The whole celebration went smoothly and a stone fell from our hearts. The parade is over, the hoarse roars got on the bus and left, and in fact, without us realizing it, the mission that we were actually in this North African country ended for us.


In about a week, the entire rocket division underwent sharp fire. Everything went smoothly until the commanders of the individual crews, after aiming the rocket launcher at the target and receiving the order to fire, became so afraid that the launcher in question was eventually turned by the instructor himself. The rocket launcher swayed under the onslaught of flying rockets, huge clouds of swirling sand around, and after a few seconds it was all over. The entire frightened Libyan crew breathed a sigh of relief.


Before returning to his homeland, the entire rocket division received an order to move. The destination was an oasis about a thousand kilometers south in the desert called Sebha. We thought that this move did not concern us, but everything was different. The Libyans were worried about possible defects in technology, so we also had to participate in this anabase as a technical escort. The whole trip lasted several days, after about every 200 kilometers we replenished water and fuel in the oases. By no means was it a walk in the rose garden, once it even happened to us that in one oasis, after pumping water and driving a few kilometers, we found small worms swimming. As a result, this drinking liquid was unusable, a rather big problem in the given situation. In order to keep the life-giving fluid cold even at high temperatures, as when we pumped it, we used a so-called gerba. It was basically a bag sewn from a thick thick canvas, with a pouring top and a closable hole at the top. After filling this bag with water, there was a partial leakage of liquid and evaporation and cooling due to the laws of physics. And so while wandering the desert, we often met trucks literally hung by these gerbos.

However, Czechoslovakia was not the only country to export military equipment to Libya. As for cars, only in our camp, where we trained, it was possible to see the Italian Fiat, the American Johnson and then the Soviet Zilla and Gaza. At the Ogba air base near Tripoli, where we occasionally went to the hospital for various medical treatments, a large number of Soviet MiGs, French Mirages and, last but not least, our Albatross were on display.