Josef Bryks
Josef Bryks, MBE, was a Czechoslovak cavalryman, fighter pilot, prisoner of war and political prisoner.
In 1940 he escaped the German occupation of Czechoslovakia and joined the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve. In 1941 he was shot down over German-occupied France.
Bryks was a prisoner of war for four years, in which time he escaped and was recaptured three times. After his third escape he served in the Polish Home Army in Warsaw, where he helped to get supplies to Jewish resistance fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
After his third recapture Bryks was moved to Stalag Luft III where he helped in the Great Escape, and then to Oflag IV-C in Colditz Castle, where he remained until it was liberated by the US Army in 1945.
In 1945 Bryks returned to Czechoslovakia and his Czechoslovak Air Force career. However, after the 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état the Communists purged Bryks and many other officers who had served in Free Czechoslovak units under French or UK command.
In 1949 the Communists sentenced Bryks to 10 years in prison and stripped him of his rank and medals. In 1950 20 years' hard labour and a heavy fine were added to his original sentence. In 1952 he was moved to a prison where he was forced to work in a uranium mine. Bryks died of a heart attack in a prison hospital in 1957.
Bryks was posthumously rehabilitated after the 1989 Velvet Revolution ended the Communist dictatorship.
Early life
Josef Bryks was born in 1916 in Lašťany, a village about northeast of Olomouc in Moravia. His parents František and Anna were farmers. Bryks was the seventh of eight children, but only four survived to adulthood. Bryks studied at the Commercial Academy in Olomouc and passed his Matura in June 1935.In October 1935, Bryks joined the Czechoslovak Army. He started his service in a cavalry regiment in Košice. At the same time, he studied at a school for cavalry officers in Pardubice until July 1936. From October 1936 to August 1937, he studied at the Military Academy in Hranice, where he transferred from the cavalry to the air force. He was promoted to lieutenant and specialized as an aerial observer. After his training, he was posted to the 5th Observation Squadron of the 2nd "Dr Edvard Beneš" Aviation Regiment, stationed in Prague. From October 1937, he trained as a pilot in Prostějov. On 30 September 1938, he graduated and was posted to the 33rd Fighter Squadron at Olomouc, where he flew Avia B-534 fighter aircraft.
On the day that Bryks qualified as a fighter pilot, the United Kingdom and France signed the Munich Agreement that forced Czechoslovakia to cede the Sudetenland to Nazi Germany. On 15 March 1939, Germany occupied the remainder of Bohemia and Moravia, and the resulting Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was forced to dissolve its army and air force.
In the meantime, Bryks' girlfriend, Marie Černá, became pregnant. On 18 April 1939, Bryks and Černá got married and her father, a butcher, gave Bryks a job as his assistant. The baby, a daughter, died two days after being born. Until the German invasion of Poland, Bryks secretly helped Czechoslovak pilots to escape to Poland. In December 1939, Bryks got a job as a civil servant at the Ministry of the Interior, but after three days he resigned.
Second World War
Escape from the Reich Protectorate
On 20 January 1940, Bryks escaped from Bohemia and Moravia. He passed illegally through Slovakia and into Hungary. He was arrested in Hungary on 26 January and held in jail in Budapest until 4 April, when he was extradited to Slovakia. He escaped, traveled through Hungary again, reached Yugoslavia, and on 17 April 1940 he reported to the French Consulate in Belgrade.From there, Bryks travelled through Greece and Turkey to French-ruled Syria, where he embarked on a ship to France. The ship reached France on 10 May, the day Germany launched its invasion of France, the Netherlands and Belgium. Bryks and other Czechoslovak Air Force personnel were sent to Agde on the coast of Languedoc. The Armée de l'air was fully occupied resisting the German advance and repeatedly having to retreat to different airfields. It had neither the instructors, equipment nor time to retrain the Czechoslovaks to operate French aircraft. On 22 June, France surrendered, and on 27 June, Bryks was evacuated by ship.
Royal Air Force (1940–1941)
Bryks reached Britain, where he was commissioned into the RAF Volunteer Reserve as a pilot officer. He was retrained at RAF Cosford in Shropshire, where he learnt to fly the Hawker Hurricane. On 4 August he was posted to the recently formed No. 310 Squadron RAF, which was the RAF's first squadron formed of exiled Czechoslovak personnel. However, on 17 August he was posted for further fighter training with No. 6 Operational Training Unit at RAF Sutton Bridge in Lincolnshire.Then on 1 October Bryks was posted to No. 12 Operational Training Unit at RAF Benson in Oxfordshire, which taught light bomber aircrew. On 11 November, he was posted to the Headquarters Ferry Pool at RAF Kemble in Gloucestershire, which worked with the non-combatant Air Transport Auxiliary. On 1 January 1941, he was transferred to No. 6 Maintenance Unit at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire as a test pilot.
Hurricane pilot with 242 Squadron
On 23 April 1941, Bryks was at last posted to a combat squadron. He spoke good English thanks to his secondary school studies in Olomouc. He was posted not to one of the RAF's Czechoslovak squadrons but to No. 242 Squadron RAF, which was commanded by Douglas Bader and had a large Canadian contingent. At the time, it flew Hurricane Mk IIb aircraft as night fighters, so Bryks was trained in night flying and navigation.When Bryks joined 242 Squadron, it was based at RAF Stapleford Tawney in Essex. While he was with the squadron it was transferred to RAF North Weald, also in Essex. Bryks became friends with a WAAF, Gertrude "Trudie" Dellar, who was the widow of an RAF pilot.
242 Squadron's rôle was changed to Circus offensives over German-occupied Europe, escorting RAF bombers with the purpose of enticing Luftwaffe fighter attacks. On 17 June 1941, the squadron took part in Circus 14. This was a late afternoon attack on Lille in northern France by 23 Bristol Blenheim bombers of 18, 105 and 110 Squadrons, escorted by 19 Hurricanes and Supermarine Spitfires. A large force of Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighters from I, II and III/Jagdgeschwader 26, led by flying ace Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Galland, plus Bf 109s from III/Jagdgeschwader 2, attacked the formation, shooting down 13 of the 40 RAF aircraft.
The RAF raiders managed to shoot down only three Bf 109s. One of these was downed by Bryks, but then three Bf 109s attacked his Hurricane, hitting its fuel tank and setting it afire. Bryks suffered burns to his face and ankle, and his cockpit filled with smoke. He bailed out at an altitude of, about west of Saint-Omer-en-Chaussée, losing one of his flying boots as he did so.
Prisoner of war (1941–1945)
Bryks landed safely and started to bury his parachute. Frenchmen who had seen him descend gave him a civilian coat to hide his RAF uniform and told him to go to a safe house in a nearby hamlet. Bryks hid in a barn until nightfall, then went to the hamlet, where he asked at a house for a doctor to treat his burns. The occupants betrayed him by calling the Germans, but when Bryks heard their motorised patrol coming, he fled the house and hid in a garden. The patrol caught him, beat him up and took him to St Omer.The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was subject to Nazi Germany, whose authorities deemed anyone from the protectorate who served in Allied forces to be a traitor. He could therefore be executed, and his family would suffer reprisals. Therefore, Bryks assumed the identity of "Joseph Ricks", born in 1918 in Cirencester, a Gloucestershire market town about from where he had been spent two months at RAF Kemble.
When he was shot down, Bryks was wearing the Mae West lifejacket of a Polish colleague from 242 Squadron, F/O Henry Skalsky. Therefore, the Germans who questioned him at St Omer suspected he was Polish, and sent him to Dulag Luft at Oberursel in Hesse for interrogation by a Polish-speaking German officer. There he was accused of shooting a Luftwaffe fighter pilot who was parachuting from his Bf 109 in the air battle near St Omer on 17 June. For this, he was threatened with being court-martialled in Berlin. After the war, no such shooting was found in German records for that day. The accusation seems to have been a false one to put pressure on Bryks.
File:Schloss-Spangenberg Germany October-2010 Front-View.jpg|thumb|Spangenberg castle in Hesse, where Bryks was held in Oflag IX-A/H from June to October 1941
On 22 June, Bryks was transferred from Dulag Luft to Oflag IX-A/H in Spangenberg castle in Hesse-Nassau. Here he advised the Senior British Officer, Major General Victor Fortune, of his true identity. Fortune knew the threat to Czechoslovak pilots in captivity and supported Bryks' assumed identity. And via the Red Cross, Bryks, posing as "Joseph Ricks", started writing to Gertrude Dellar.
Escape from Oflag VI-B
On 8 October 1941, Bryks was transferred to Oflag VI-B at Dössel in Westphalia. There again he advised the SBO of his true identity. The PoWs' Escape Committee authorised a team of four men, including Bryks, to dig a escape tunnel through frozen clay. On the night of 19/20 April 1942, three Poles and three Czechoslovaks escaped through the tunnel in pairs. Bryks was one of them, paired with a fellow Czechoslovak, Flight Lieutenant Otakar Černý.Bryks and Černý aimed to reach Switzerland. Around midnight on 28 April, Černý was recaptured near Marburg in Hesse-Nassau. Near Giessen in Hesse-Darmstadt, Bryks stole a bicycle. He passed Offenbach am Main. A German guard shot at him as he crossed a bridge near Stuttgart in Württemberg. After this, short of food and water, Bryks fell ill with dysentery. He hid in a wood near Eberbach in Baden. There, on 31 April, a group of Hitler Youth captured him.
Bryks had been on the run for 11 days and had travelled south from Dössel before being caught. On 5 May 1942, he was taken to Darmstadt and held by the Gestapo. He was returned to Oflag VI-B at Dössel, where he was treated in the camp's infirmary from 8 May to 10 June.