František Chlup

* 1934

  • “We, the boys, were wondering what it might be… Somebody said ‘it’s a kind of a rocket,’ or ‘they are flares for guns,’ and what not… Of course, I took one of the boxes home and I immediately started working on it in the workshop. I put down my backpack and bag and I reached for matches… I ignited it and it started doing ‘psssssss’ nicely. That’s a rocket, a rocket for sure, that’s great, I will go tell the boys right away… We always met in the evenings under the chestnut tree in the centre of the village. I decided I would try one more. But meanwhile it had rained, and the stuff was wet.,. I tried a second one, and I set it on fire, and nothing happened. I peeked inside – it was about that long – and it was only about half full. I thus took a pair of nippers, the type you use to pull out nails, I broke it in the middle to open it, and I grabbed a match and I held it close to it… And then I didn’t remember anything else, for a while. The blast was so strong that the steel nippers had scratches from the inside. When I came to myself, I had my nose soaked in a basin with Lysol, because the blast shattered the house and dad probably knew immediately what was going on. They ran there, and they found me lying there in blood.”

  • “Inside the room there was light like in the day. Red blaze… I remember that dad shook my mom to wake her up and he told her: ‘Don’t be afraid, there is a fire somewhere, and it’s close.’ The door from the room led to the kitchen, and the kitchen window opened into the yard. He jumped out of the bed, and he opened the door and there was so much light in the kitchen that it looked like during the day. The barn was already on fire. The fire was huge. I remember that we had a cleaning machine which we used when we made hay, and it had an iron framework; the gate already sizzled in fire, ‘ssssss,’ and the machine that stood behind the gate looked like a burning frame. Everything was already crumbling down.”

  • “There was a steep slope leading to the river and a railing… One German fainted there and he fell down. The unit walked in rows of three and there could be some twenty-four soldiers who were retreating, and the Cossacks were riding around them on horses. Two men picked him up and they tried to carry him – but just for about five metres, and then they threw him over the railing out of the road. He was alive, well, he had been, and he needed first aid. But as he moved he rolled down over the rocks; the slope was about as high as the ceiling here, and the rocks were quite big, and he rolled down to the river. There was not much water, but his arm fell into the water like this... He was breathing. The second or third Cossack stopped and he tied his horse’s reins to the railing and he jumped down on the rocks and he kicked the German. His body turned over. We were standing behind the railing and watching bubbles coming out of the water… He drowned. I don’t know if his family learnt that he had died there… He was a soldier, a young boy, and he certainly had not started the war. In moments like this I realize how nasty the war is.”

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    byt pamětníka: Chelčického 20, Jihlava, 31.03.2015

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    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
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This way one truly realizes how nasty the war is

František Chlup in a military uniform
František Chlup in a military uniform

  František Chlup was born in 1934 on a farm in Bítovčice, where he studied a two-year school and then he continued at a two-year agricultural school. In 1940, an arsonist set fire to their farmhouse and František‘s father spent three weeks in custody because of this incident. At the end of the war, German soldiers as well as Russian Cossacks were passing through Bítovčice. Lots of ammunition was found near the village and František got hurt when he tried to find out how the abandoned ammunition worked. He was to work at the farm, but he did not have much interest in agricultural work, and therefore he began working part-time in the company Motorpal. While working there he gradually learnt the electrician‘s trade and he subsequently pursued this profession. He also worked in the company Jihlavan, where he was expected to raise a low morale of a team of electricians. In 1954 he did his military service and he got married after his return. He has stayed with his wife ever after and in 2007 they celebrated their golden wedding anniversary.