LIFE DURING WORLD WAR I

World War I broke out about four months after Štefan Sr. set off for America.  Paulína and Štefanko were left in Drahovce. During the war food was scarce. Steve said that his mother had to go out into the fields at night to steal potatoes so they would have something to eat. He also told the story about the machine guns firing at the church, which I wrote about in an earlier post.

He said the Russian prisoners of war were made to work the fields and raise the crops, probably because many of the village men, having been drafted into the Austro-Hungarian Army, were away from the village.* Steve attributed the Russian soldiers with having saved the lives of the villagers, because they raised food for them to eat.

A war-related story that Steve told was about the Serbian boys in town after the war. They were the illegitimate offspring of Serbian solders or prisoners of war. He thought that they were tough and mean kids who would fight to the death.


Another war story that Steve told was about his Uncle Gabriel, who was sent to the Italian front. Word got back to the village that Gabriel wanted to see what an Italian looked like so he stood up to look out of the trench and an Italian soldier shot him in the head.

*In World War I the Germans and Austro-Hungarians fought the British, French, Russians, Italians, Serbians and the Americans. The Slovaks, who were under the rule of the Hungarians resented their rulers and were probably not very good soldiers for the Empire. As noted before Štefan Miklo, Sr. may have left Drahovce to avoid fighting in the upcoming war. 

Here is a photo of the World War I Memorial in Drahovce. There are two Miklo’s listed: G. Miklo was the brother of Štefan Miklo, Sr. I do not know who T. Miklo was.