Is that the same novel as "The Good Soldier Schweik" -- it sounds like it. That is one of the funniest books I've read.
I must say though that I prefer the Cecil Parrott translation of the opening sentence, which is closer to the original Czech anyway, even if it doesn't convey the idea that "they" had done it to "us":
'And so they've killed our Ferdinand,' said the charwoman to Mr Svejk, who had left military service years before, after having been finally certified by an army medical board as an imbecile, and now lived by selling dogs -- ugly, mongrel monstrosities whose pedigrees he forged.