Although he grew up a strong anti-militarist , he ended up having a significant military career and was awarded military decorations by four countries : France ( Croix de guerre ) , Poland ( War Order of Virtuti Militari ) , Yugoslavia ( Order of National Merit ) and Czechoslovakia ( several decorations including the Czechoslovak War Cross and highest order of Czechoslovakia , Order of the White Lion ) . He fought as a volunteer in International Brigades in Spanish Civil War and French anti-Nazi resistance during World War II . After World War II he returned to Czechoslovakia and took part in strengthening the dominance of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in the years leading to , and immediately following , the 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état . His military career culminated in the late 1940s when he became the general secretary of all communist organizations in the Czechoslovak Army . In the early 1950s he fell victim to communist purges and was sentenced to 12 years of prison . Served over five years in prisons and labor camps in uranium mines . In 1956 , he was released and later fully rehabilitated . After the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 he emigrated to Switzerland . Died in Yverdon-les-Bains in 1983
Czechoslovak War Cross
Czechoslovak War Cross 1939–1945
Otakar Hromádko