Support for War Veterans and Ex-Soldiers of the Armed Forces of the Czech Republic

Structure of the Army of the Czech Republic

The Army of the Czech Republic (also known as the Czech Army; CZA) was established on January 1, 1993 by the division of the Czechoslovak Army into Czech and Slovak parts, and became fully professional in 2005. The Czech Republic has been part of NATO since March 12, 1999 (Vojenský Historický Ústav [VHU], 2018).

The Army of the Czech Republic is one of the components of the Armed Forces of the Czech Republic (together with the Military Office of the President of the Republic and the Castle Guard), as formulated in Act No. 219/1999 Coll., on the Armed Forces of the Czech Republic (2022). This Act regulates in particular the status, tasks and structure of the Armed Forces of the Czech Republic, their management, training and equipment with military material. Its § 9 reads “The primary mission of the Czech Armed Forces (CAF) is to ensure the military defence of the country against aggression and to meet commitments derived from international obligations and treaties of the Czech Republic on collective defence.” The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Czech Republic is the President of the Republic (although he is not a member of the army). The budget of the Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic in 2022 was 1.35% of GDP, in 2023 it is 1.52% of GDP, with a political commitment of 2% of GDP in the future (Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic, 2022b).

In 2022, more than 28,000 professional soldiers are serving in the Armed Forces of the Czech Republic, with plans to increase the number by another 1,100 in 2023. In addition to the professional soldiers, there are more than 8,000 civil servants and civilian employees working in the defence department (Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic, 2023).

The Army of the Czech Republic (ACR) is headed by the Chief of the General Staff of the Czech Armed Forces. The Army has three levels of command: the general staff is at the strategic level, the command for operations is at the operational level, and at the tactical level the ACR is made up of land and air forces, it also includes special forces and cyber and territorial forces.

The basic criteria for joining the Army are: Czech citizenship, attaining 18 years of age, no criminal record, medical fitness, being apolitical, and at least a high school education (university education for officer rank).

The Czech Republic also has a concept of training volunteer citizens who are not professional soldiers for various reasons, via undergoing a Voluntary Military Exercise (the completion of the course does not contractually bind the citizen to the Czech Armed Forces) and the Active Reserve of the Armed Forces of the Czech Republic (Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic, 2019). This was created on the basis of Act No. 585/2004 Coll., on Liability to Conscription and its Ensuring (2022). After acceptance, the citizen becomes a soldier of the Active Reserve. In 2021, there were more than 3,600 members of the Active Reserve (Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic, 2022c). Table 1 shows selected demographic information about soldiers in the Czech Armed Forces.

War Veterans in the Czech Republic

In the Czech Republic, participants in foreign operations are defined as war veterans, this status is not granted to all soldiers leaving active service. The status of a war veteran is defined in Act No. 170/2002 Coll., on War Veterans (2022). In short: a war veteran is a citizen of the Czech Republic who, after 8 May 1945, served continuously for at least 90 calendar days in a foreign mission in a place of armed conflict or in a place with a significantly deteriorated security situation; or served for at least 360 calendar days (in aggregate) in other foreign missions.

In the Czech Republic, the official status of ‘war veteran’ is not automatically conferred, but on the basis of a request from a specific person. This application is then assessed according to the statutory criteria and, if these criteria are met, the person is granted the status of a war veteran and issued with a certificate proving that he or she is a veteran. Obtaining a war veteran certificate makes available benefits and services that are not available to all (former) professional soldiers.

War veterans in the Czech Republic are most often participants in missions in the former Yugoslavia (UNPROFOR, SFOR, IFOR, KFOR), Afghanistan, Iraq, or Mali. The first foreign operation in which Czechoslovak soldiers participated after the Velvet Revolution in 1989 was Operation Desert Storm in Kuwait in 1991.

The issue of care for war veterans is addressed in more detail in the Concept of Care for War Veterans in 2017–2021 (Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic, 2017) (details below), which further divides war veterans into three categories: WWII veterans (total 107,254, 83 living), modern war veterans (total 16,205, 16,009 living), and participants in resistance and resistance against communism–the numbers in all three categories correspond to the numbers of officially recognized veterans (Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic, 2022c).

The Department for War Veterans of the Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic is responsible for the issue of war veterans‘ certificates. It manages the database of certificate holders, but not of war veterans in general. Therefore, the population of former participants in foreign operations is not fully captured in any existing database or list; in particular, participants in foreign operations in the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia who were not professional soldiers are not traceable.

Problems of War Veterans and Former Soldiers

Soldiers at the end of their service and ex-soldiers face relatively common problems (for this group), which for the sake of simplicity can be divided in this text into three categories: qualification and further employability, social security, and health care.

The first category mainly deals with the issue of soldiers‘ employment in the ‚civilian‘ labor market. A change of employment is a major change in the life of a soldier, given the nature of the military occupation, because the employment rules are completely different in the civilian labor sector. However, the military profession is currently not perceived as a lifelong occupation and it is necessary to adapt quickly to the change. The retraining courses provided by the Army of the Czech Republic to departing servicemen under certain conditions serve this purpose.

Meca (2011) described the target group for the first time, focusing on the problems of new veterans outside active service and focusing his research on labor market issues. In his article, he also considers aspects of health, psychological and other consequences associated with participation in the mission and the interest of war veterans in government assistance in accessing the labor market for modern veterans. The labor market employability of ex-servicemen is discussed by Binková (2019), who pointed out, for example, that greater than a fifth of respondents took more than half a year to get a new job. Ďuriš and Hodný (2020), in an article based on a questionnaire survey among veterans leaving active service, mainly reflected on the problems of lack of information and the related (possible) resentment of respondents towards the system. They also pointed out that the set system is not sufficiently responsive to the problems and needs of soldiers, especially before leaving the service.

The second category deals with the problem of the individual›s reintegration into society, respectively his/her removal from the military environment and the associated social security. It is not only about social/community ties, but also about the issue of housing (especially in cases where the soldier was provided with it by the army) or the need to deal with everyday problems that were to some extent ‹solved› by the army-e.g., eating, dealing with the authorities, providing health care, etc. Former soldiers and war veterans also face financial problems, sometimes leading to over-indebtedness and foreclosures, associated with the relatively high social status of professional soldiers and also fluctuations in income during foreign operations. Given the time and other demands of service, family and partner problems related to long-term absences are also common.

The needs of veterans off active duty are addressed, for example, by Laštovková, Brnula, and Novotný (2019), who describe the need to update/change the current system of care. Social care for veterans and its development in the history of Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic is mapped by Brnula, Laštovková, and Kucler (2019).

The third category deals with health care provision both psychologically and physically. Soldiers are insured by their own health insurance company and are cared for by health facilities of the Ministry of Defence. Both active-duty soldiers and war veterans are entitled to this care.

On the psychological side, one of the potential problems is post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after returning from a foreign operation. This has been widely discussed in the medical community, and outside of it, it has been addressed, for example, by Krutiš, Mareš, and Ježek (2011), who examined the development of PTSD in combat troops and military doctors and nurses. Significantly higher development of the syndrome was found in the latter group. Unfortunately, in the Czech environment, there is no comprehensive analysis dealing with the issue of PTSD in Czech soldiers in relation to, for example, suicide and other effects of the syndrome. Looking at the physical side, the care of war veterans is consistent with the quality of medical care and health care in the Czech Republic, which ranks about average in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries (Ministry of Health of the Czech Republic, 2019).

In general, there is a rich inventory of qualifying work of all levels in the Czech Republic focused on target group of war veterans, but none of this has been reflected significantly in the publication output.

In the Czech context, there are no works analyzing socially risky behavior of war veterans or former members of the Czech Armed Forces, which is common in foreign production (substance and non-substance addictions, suicide, violent behavior, etc.), mainly because there is a lack of data or lack of access to it.

The above-mentioned research (in all three areas) reflects the problematic parts of the support offered and highlights the main problems of (potential) users. Despite this, there is a lack of publicly available comprehensive analysis of the current system, especially work aimed directly at updating the system or changing it effectively. It should be noted, however, that such comprehensive work requires access to a large amount of data not only from the system itself, but also from its current and future users. This data is not openly available at the moment.

Types of Support Offered

The current possibilities of care for war veterans are summarized in more detail in the Concept of Care for War Veterans in 2017–2021 (hereinafter referred to as the “Concept”) issued by the Ministry of Defence on 24 January 2017 (an update is being prepared, but has not yet entered into force). The Concept divides war veterans into the three aforementioned categories and is the first strategic document in the Czech environment to focus attention on modern war veterans and their needs. It divides modern veterans into four categories: active duty, pre-retirement, off active duty of working age, and off active duty of retirement age, and the Concept identifies the different needs of these groups as well as changing trends in their numbers.

The Concept addresses care in the areas of health care, social and community support, financial support and financial compensation, moral awards, gifts on life anniversaries, war veterans’ benefit programs, education, and employment support, depending on which of the five groups of war veterans they belong to (according to the Concept): WWII veterans (DV), war veterans – participants in the resistance and resistance against communism (VV-OOK), modern war veterans in active service (NVV-CS), modern war veterans after leaving active service at working age (NVV-PV), and modern war veterans in retirement at retirement age (NVV-DV). An overview of the entitlement areas for each group defined above can be seen in Table 2.

The Concept defines priorities in the areas of social, medical and psychological care and media image. However, it has not resulted in any regularly evaluated action plans. In the context of the objectives set out in the Concept, the Ministry of Defence has built three Community Centers for War Veterans: in Brno (2016), in Olomouc (2019), and in Prague (2021). The centers are established by individual military hospitals and are open to all war veterans (i.e., not only those from the armed forces). Their main tasks include counselling and organizing events for veterans or promoting veterans in public. The needs of war veterans are interpreted differently by the different providers (military hospitals), which means that the range of services and support offered is not uniform from one center to another. They differ, for example, in staffing-not only in the number of staffed positions, but also in qualification requirements-and jobs are defined and filled according to different priorities (e.g., there is not always a social worker among the center staff). The activities offered also differ, being oriented towards awareness-raising and social activities, or rather towards counselling and support activities.

The Concept also guarantees legal benefits and services to war veterans, and describes in more detail the placement in the Care Home for War Veterans (a residential social service for people with reduced self-sufficiency). Two such facilities are currently established in the Czech Republic: Care Home for War Veterans in Prague (Poppy) (9 beds) and Care Home for War Veterans in Karlovy Vary (White Cross) (28 beds).

For active-duty veterans, the Concept focuses on the development of psychological care and guarantees preventive health checks provided by military hospitals for all veterans.

Another pillar of care for current war veterans is the annually announced subsidy program Care for War Veterans, in which the Ministry of Defence is the provider of support. The strategic document for the program is the Concept and its aim is to provide assistance to war veterans in social danger. The program itself implements care for war veterans in the Czech Republic, which is otherwise not secured in any way, while its concept is currently being reoriented and is beginning to target more the care of modern war veterans (in view of the declining number of WWII veterans) (Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic, 2017).

The program now supports a single ongoing project, which is provided by the non-profit organization Czechoslovak Legionary Community. The project is aimed at Second World War veterans, Third Resistance veterans and modern veterans aged 60 and over (who make up the majority of those supported). They are cared for nationwide by field workers from the ranks of former members of the Czech Armed Forces, providing or facilitating individual information, counselling, and social prevention services, as well as cooperating with social welfare bodies and local government authorities. The project also operates a free helpline (Československá obec legionářská, 2022).

The current care options for war veterans are therefore based on four pillars, which are not always available to all groups: benefits in commercial and non-commercial form, including health care in departmental facilities (discounts, counselling, and allowances for goods and services); community centers for war veterans; outreach care provided on the basis of a MoD subsidy by an external provider; and Residential services in Care Homes for War Veterans (enshrined in Act No. 170/2002 Coll. on War Veterans (2022)). Thus, elements of professional and peer assistance can be identified, as well as outpatient, residential and outreach services, but they are not interconnected and do not form a coherent system.

The key organizations in this perspective are: Military Hospitals, the Department for War Veterans of the Ministry of Defence (the Department for WV MoD), the contributory organization Military Spa and Recreational Facilities (VOLAREZA), and the Military Solidarity Fund and the Czechoslovak Legionary Community project focused on care for war veterans.

Another (no less important) part of the support is the Psychological Service of the Czech Army, which provides psychological assistance not only to soldiers and war veterans on active service, but also to their families and employees of the Ministry of Defence. It also sets up the so-called Military Psychological Help Line, where applicants can call for help, and its own Facebook page is available for chat.

Seminars for soldiers leaving the Czech Armed Forces are organized by the Czech Armed Forces Personnel Agency, which is responsible for the comprehensive care of soldiers and thus fulfils the tasks of personnel and human services in the Czech Armed Forces.

Retraining courses are provided by the Army of the Czech Republic to departing servicemen who (1) are not war veterans but have served in the Armed Forces of the Czech Republic for at least 5 years, or (2) war veterans, on the basis of the Concept (see above). In addition to retraining courses, soldiers have the possibility by law to take a leave of absence to look for employment before leaving the Armed Forces of the Czech Republic. The overview of provided care for individual groups of recipients is provided in Table 3.

Furthermore, Section 131 of Act No. 221/1999 Coll. on the Armed Forces of the Czech Republic (2022) specifies the system of retirement allowance, severance pay, termination pay and death benefit. The entitlement to the financial support listed below applies to former soldiers, including war veterans not on active service.

The most commonly used is the retirement allowance for soldiers who have completed at least 15 years of service, with the amount of the allowance increasing each year (up to a maximum of 55%, or 60% in exceptional cases).

An alternative is a lump-sum severance payment, which can be claimed if the service has lasted at least two years and is based on two average monthly gross service salaries, increasing by one monthly salary for each additional year (up to 18 times the monthly salary).

In the event of the death of a soldier, the spouse and each child shall receive a death grant.

The Czech army does not have its own military court system and any problems must therefore be settled in a civilian court (this also applies if the act in question took place during a deployment on a foreign mission). Part of the punishment for a final conviction is always dismissal from active service without financial entitlement and with the removal of military ranks, as a member of the Czech Armed Forces must be criminally blameless by law.

Outside the state aid system are non-profit organizations and foundations, which finances medical assistance to veterans, former soldiers, as well as firefighters, police officers, and their families. They are a rather insignificant link with a fragmented offer of assistance, usually in the health and social fields (labor market, single parents, etc.). Some commercial companies provide discounts on products or services or other types of benefits to veterans on the basis of certificates.

Among political issues, war veterans are visible in a limited way depending on the political situation in the Czech republic; two former generals have announced their candidacy for the presidential elections in January 2023 (direct election): Hynek Blaško, as a candidate of the far right and linked to the disinformation scene, and Petr Pavel, a former chief of general staff, top NATO military official. The presidential election was won by Petr Pavel, his identity as a veteran and heroism in the mission (Czech and French decorations) formed the important points of the campaign.

Public View

There is no specific public research in the Czech Republic mapping the public’s view of former members of the army and war veterans. Nevertheless, the situation can be fairly well estimated on the basis of several sources:

• – Public opinion surveys - these are focused on public confidence in the Czech Army and are conducted several times a year. One example is the surveys conducted by the Centre for Public Opinion Research of the Czech Academy of Sciences (CVVM), in which public confidence in the Army of the Czech Republic has tended to increase over the years. In the latest survey from the spring of 2022, 73% of respondents expressed confidence in the Czech Armed Forces. It is the institution that enjoys the greatest trust of citizens (Centrum pro Výzkum Veřejného Mínění, 2022).

• – Prestige surveys - once every few years, the Czech Republic also carries out an assessment of the prestige of the professions, with professional soldiers scoring an average of 56.4 out of 99 possible points among the public in 2019. In the ranking of the professions evaluated (26 in total), the military one moved from the 22nd position (2004) to the 11th (2019) (Centrum pro Výzkum Veřejného Mínění, 2019).

• – Society’s commitment to helping - reflects society’s active involvement, particularly in fundraisers that are held regularly to commemorate Veterans Day. One of the main actors in this regard (apart from the Military Solidarity Fund) is the organization Post Bellum, which organizes annual collections and operates a website in support of war veterans (Post Bellum, 2023).

• – Institutions focusing on mapping war veterans and their lives - here again, we can mention the Post Bellum organization, or its project Memory of the Nation, which maps (among other things) the stories of war veterans, which it then “stores” and further makes them accessible and promotes (Post Bellum, 2023). Another example is the Military History Institute, which implements the oral history project Memory of a Soldier (Vojenský Historický Ústav, 2021).

• – Media reflection - the issue of soldiers and war veterans is the subject not only of artistic treatment, but also of a relatively wide range of news and documentary content. Apart from a wide range of interviews with (even former) representatives of the Army of the Czech Republic, let us mention for example the Czech Television series Foreign Missions, the series Provedu! Afghánská mise (Yes sir! The Afghan operation) (Rafaj, 2014). Increasingly common are also book-length readings by war veterans and journalists themselves, e.g., Stehlík (2014; 2017), Mertlík (2019), Hamšík (2022) or Rožánek (2022).

Veterans’ Day and its celebrations do not have a strong tradition in Czech society as it has only been commemorated since 2001. The symbolic wearing of the Remembrance poppy is not very widespread either (although in recent years it has appeared more often with politicians or editors of state television). On 11 November each year, selected veterans are presented with high ministerial honors by the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defence.

Discussion

The positive thing about the current state of care for former soldiers and war veterans is that there are elements of care and efforts to apply them to the target group. This activity provides a very good start to the creation of a quality base (a system of care and research activities) for ex-servicemen and war veterans.

However, the system of care is rather outdated and its development depends more on the „enthusiasts“ who are active in this field, rather than on systematic and conceptual attention to the problem. Even in the parts of the system that are administered directly by the Army of the Czech Republic, and thus by the Ministry of Defence, the processes are not entirely uniform, conceptual and systematic.

In connection with the inconsistent system, it is also necessary to point out the low activity/interest of experts, especially from the field of social sciences, who would not only bring new and quality information (research findings) from the environment of former soldiers and war veterans, but at the same time would open up possibilities for improving the system of care-from streamlining to better accessibility.

Future Challenges

A major challenge for the Czech Army, the Ministry of Defence, and researchers will be to make the system of care for ex-servicemen and war veterans more effective, which needs to be brought into the present and prepared for future challenges in an already very dynamic world. In order to achieve this, the actors concerned must fulfil several basic tasks.

The Ministry of Defence, in cooperation with the Army, will have to set clear requirements based on the needs of the target group, while also setting limits to the possibilities that will have to be respected (e.g., with regard to funding or staffing). At the same time, the institutional representation will have to establish more open cooperation with researchers who-given the very specific and closed group-do not have all the necessary data needed for research and for proposing changes. Extracting data from ex-servicemen and war veterans themselves seems to be the most crucial here. Thus, a clear weakness in the whole process is the lack of data for decision-making and analysis.

The new planned concept of care for war veterans will also have to cope with the fact of the increasing age of modern war veterans, who will in the near future require the same level of health and social care as the current number of WWII veterans, which is much smaller. The territorial coverage of care and service provision is also undoubtedly a challenge. In the Czech environment, it will also be necessary to establish the professional specialization of social work with soldiers (military social work), which practically does not exist yet.

Conclusion

The article has presented the care for war veterans in the Czech army and the definition and classification of war veterans, including the criteria that must be met to obtain the status of a veteran (resulting from the legislation of the Czech Republic). It also presented the basic strategies, concepts, and the most important institutions in the field of care for war veterans (i.e., former soldiers). It focused on the position of veterans in society and pointed out the basic problems that plague this area.

In general, the current situation in the field of care for war veterans can be summarized as a dynamically developing area. However, there is certainly room for improvement and, most importantly, it is time to make changes to the system that reflect not only current support needs but also prepare for future challenges. Changing the institutional approach and motivating researchers to help reconfigure, improve, and expand the frontiers of knowledge is presented here as the cornerstone of these changes. It is necessary to prepare for the expected systemic changes coming with the new/updated Concept, linking cooperation with non-profit organizations, but also, for example, the possible change in the nature of the expeditionary army to territorial defence, which would play a significant role in the current legislative definition of a war veteran.

Competing Interests

The authors have no competing interests to declare.

Author Note

The system of care for war veterans is currently undergoing systemic changes in the Czech Republic. The number of people involved in caring for war veterans is increasing, the structure of institutional system and the character of their training and education are changing. The changes do not concern ex-servicemen (non-veterans). Therefore, some information in this text may not be entirely up-to-date.