Hello everyone,
on the battlefields of World War 2, M5 Stuart was one of the ubiquitous tanks – but its career did not end there. After the war, it was used by many armies, including (for a short while) by the Czechoslovak one (although not actively). The Czechoslovak Stuarts never fired a shot in anger ever again, but one of them became the hero of one “special” operation after the war.
For four decades of oppression between 1948 and 1989, many people tried to cross the border illegally to escape Czechoslovakia, hoping to find freedom in the west. Most of those, who wanted to flee used relatively conventional means – in the beginning, they simply crossed the poorly guarded borders on foot, later they escaped as tourists (simply staying in the destination country for good or travelling further west) or they visited their relatives abroad. There were however cases (although they were relatively rare), when brave people used very unconventional methods to cross the more and more protected border. Several of these included the use of an armored vehicle (some were described in earlier FTR articles). However, there was only a single case where a real combat-worthy tank was used to punch through the borders.
