Alexander Urban as a soldier

This photo shows my father, Alexander Urban, in the 1920s as a soldier of the Czechoslovak Army. He joined up in Trencin. He told me that they even promoted him. He worked as a laborer in the kitchen. A local Jewish merchant used to supply them with meat. Well, and once it didn't smell good, and they refused to cook it. By the barracks there was an alley with plum trees. They ordered some soldiers over to pick the plums, and made plum dumplings from them. They cooked them out in the courtyard. Their superiors liked the lunch so much that they promoted the cooks. The second time was when they drafted my father during the mobilization in 1938. But he stayed there for only a short time.