Pranas Čėsna's story about his brother joining the partisan ranks

Our small Dubėliai village (Kaišiadorys vlsč.) - in the post-war period there were 13 huts in it. In the forest there was also the Dubėiai (Dubė) farmstead. Among its inhabitants were perhaps fifteen men fit for the army, when in 1944 we began to hide wherever we could. My brother Adam Čėsna (born 1919) was arrested during searches and taken to Kaišiadorys, and then further - to the Russian army. Some time passed before Adam managed to escape and return home. Meanwhile, the men of the village and the young men we knew well from Svirplionys, Bagdoniškiai, Klūsai gathered in the forest one morning and decided to resist together. So I became Žaibas, I was 23 years old at the time. Stasys and Antanai Griesiai, Jonas Čėsna, Kazys Bauras, our cousins Antanas and Pranas Dzimidavičiai... It is not known whether the soldiers would have simply shot us, inexperienced village boys who had never served in the army, if it had not been for Pranas Jaromskas-Perkūnas, who became the commander of our platoon.

I had a simple rifle at the time, which my brother Adomas had slightly modified and repaired, while others were already carrying automatic rifles. I spent some time in constant fear. I participated in several battles. And now I remember the battle in the Jačiūnai forest, when we were ambushed by soldiers. The life of a partisan was not easy, fortunately we had many helpers who fed us and prepared us. And they did all this voluntarily, offering themselves. We had bunkers in the forests, we took risks by hiding in sheds and barns...

I walked for a year and a half, when once I was offered to legalize myself. No one knew about my partisanship, no one told my family. Once I opened the door to the new government, which guaranteed my release. Unfortunately, they kept me closed for a whole year, I sat in Kaišiadorys, Trakai, Vilnius... During the partisanship period, I wrote a short summary of the unit's activities, but before registering, I burned everything, including photos and other evidence of our activities. And now I have forgotten a lot.

Brother Adam's path was more complicated. He was a partisan until 1948. Now I don't understand how and what he did there, because he provided foresters with illegal passports. He would go to Vilnius with their photos, and from there he would bring back the passports. We had agreed on how and what to say if we fell into their clutches. I had to repeat that he works in construction in the village, often goes to Vilnius by train to buy tools, nails, locks... When they asked me about my brother in Vilnius, I didn't yet know that he had been arrested. They were leafing through some book and there was my brother's short signature on every page. That's how I understood that Adam had already been arrested. I considered my further actions. I didn't harm anyone, because I always repeated my pre-made song. Apparently, they knew more about my brother than I did, that he had been sentenced to 10 years in camps...