Pravdaže mi povedali „tauglich“... Spomienky vojaka Juraja Orosiho na Veľkú vojnu

About 400 000 men from the territory of today’s Slovakia enlisted in the First World War. Despite their irreplaceable place in the ranks of the Austro-Hungarian army, in which they fought on the front in Galicia, Serbia, Italy and even on the western battlefield, we have very few authentic memories or testimonies of the period from 1914 to 1918. One of those who has preserved his story from the Great War is Juraj Orosi, a native of the eastern Slovak village of Cabov in the Vranov nad Topľou district. Through his memoirs published in Slovak Defense, we go back to August 1915 and the main hero of our story travels to the Galicia battlefield from where, after various peripetias, he reaches the front again in Romania. However, Orosi’s story does not end with the end of the First World War in 1918, but through his lens we follow the events of the first post-revolutionary years, which were characterised by fighting with the Hungarians or the building and formation of state bodies and the army. Juraj Orosi’s memoirs are a valuable source of knowledge about the times that influenced the younger generation and Juraj Orosi himself. He dealt with his disillusionment with the new conditions by moving to the United States. It was there in 1937 that he published his memoirs of the First World War and the founding of Czechoslovakia in Slovenská Obrana (Slovak Defense).