The Black Company or We Were at War Under the Comanche

The book captures with humour, irony and a certain exaggeration the now almost unbelievable world that hid behind the gates of the barracks of the Czechoslovak People's Army in the 1970s and 1980s. Through the main character Vasulin, readers will learn about what young men of that time experienced first-hand, from conscription to basic military service and reserve training. The story takes place mainly in a military work unit, in which, alongside soldiers with various medical limitations, illiterate, mentally retarded, nervously unstable, punished or members of national and ethnic minorities who did not speak Czech or Slovak served without weapons, even those who were cadre defective. Although it is a humorous book, referring to Švandrlík's Black Barons, it does not avoid the painful theme of distorted human fates as a result of bullying, moral failures and limitations of some officers of the socialist army. In addition to a number of grotesque situations and tragicomic characters such as Major Skutr, Lieutenant Vyplašenka or Lieutenant Colonel Startka, the reader will also get to know the lubricants of popular forms of bullying or the appalling conditions prevailing in the Soviet army "temporarily stationed" in the then Czechoslovakia. The aim of the book Black Company or We Were at War Under the Comanches is to entertain and to remind us a little of what we should never lend ourselves to again.