They Shot Me in the Belly

In March 1948, Miloslav Komínek and several of his friends decided to cross the border and flee from Communist Czechoslovakia. As a trained pilot, he was supposed to shoot two movies in the USA in which he was supposed to do the acrobatic flying, but the regime did not allow him to leave the country. Several hundred meters from the state border, he was shot in the belly by the Border Guard. “I stayed lying there. My friends saw that I was still breathing and they carried me to a nearby farm. I woke up two days later lying in a barn, in a story where they kept old hay. I came to my senses and saw a doctor and the farmer and his wife. I could see the fear in their eyes. They were risking a lot. It was the border area, which was strictly guarded; you couldn't even enter the area without permission. What could I have done when I saw the fear in their eyes?” Miloslav Komínek recalls. Although he could hardly move, he decided to try to cross the border again. He continued: "I decided to cross on Sunday, April 4. I didn't want those people to risk because of me. Unfortunately, the weather was bad that day, it was snowing and raining. I had only few meters left to the border, but I kept falling down all the time. I overestimated my strength. I couldn't stand the pain anymore, so I hid in a house and thought: ‘Be it the God’s will, whatever comes, I need to find some warm place.’ I was crawling for four or five hours a distance that a healthy man would make in thirty minutes.” In the end, exhausted and extremely tired Miloslav Komínek was arrested by Border Guard: “They got me in that house and took me to their office, where they were beating me up until I was completely finished.”