AALP

Sergeant Stanislav Gazdík (1970)

Vendredi, 13 Avril 2012 07:47

I use my past for better future and live for today.

A former Sergent chef of French Legion special forces Stanislav Gazdík was born in 1970 in Karviná. He served the compulsory army service from 1989 to 1991, at the turn of the regimes. After returning home, he decided to take advantage of the newly acquired freedom and in May 1991, he left to the French Foreign Legion. He was placed to the 2^nd Foreign Parachute Regiment CL (2.REP). In 1994, he was promoted and until 2003, he served at the special unit of the regiment - CRAP (GCP). He took part in several missions to Africa and former Yugoslavia. From 2003 to 2006, after he left the legion, he served in the so called "Gestapo", a unit responsible for recruitment of new legionnaires. In 2006, he established a private company Operational Defense Group s.r.o., which specializes in individual and customized training in the area of corporal self defense.

as legionnaire

Stanislav Gazdík in Tchad 1998

At Žižkov

Memories of the Foreign Legion

Military decorations of Stan Gazdik

Book of Stan Gazdik

Stanislav Gazdík in 2010

Colonel (er) Valérien Ignatovitch (1929) - Biographie

Vendredi, 13 Avril 2012 06:22

“In 1968, I was transferred to a foreign language education center. My order was to teach French officers to speak Czech. It took almost two years, the whole day they used to study Czech. They didn’t speak but they understood everything. That was my task.”

Even though Valérien Ignatovitch, a Retired French army Colonel, never owned a Czechoslovak passport, he speaks fluently Czech. He was born in 1929 in Vienna, his mother was Czech, his father, Sergeji Ignatovič, was a Russian immigrant. The family lived in Strasbourg and later moved to Neuilly sur Seine, one of Parisian suburbs. In 1951 he enrolled to a military academy and finished his studies three years later. Between 1955 and 1960, he served in the Foreign Legion in Algeria because he couldn't find an appropriate position elsewhere in the French army. After his return he served in various infantry units in different districts in France. In 1968, after the Russian invasion to Czechoslovakia, he was transferred to monitoring of Czechoslovak military communication tapped by a Bavarian unit. Between 1968 and 1970, he taught French army officers Czech. He is retired, in 1990s he worked occasionally as an interpreter for the French army. He is a chairman of the Association of Czechoslovak Volunteers in France. He lives in Paris.