Vladimír Zajíc

“In the end we found a shed containing a fireplace, some bloodied bandages and so on - only we’d arrived too late. That was to be the second den. We were pushing our way down to the train station, and they had continued on through the foothills of the High Tatras. That was unfortunate, because if we’d have began the search the second day, we would’ve stopped them, because like this it was the poor interns in Magura-Ľupča that copped it. Then we had Burlak passing through, that was a thing. Burlak’s gang consisted of some 80 to 120 people, but then they split up into small groups. That was the worst.”

“The graduation was a glorious and inglorious event. A month before the headmaster of the academy called me and fourteen others to his office and said: ‘Gentlemen, I must inform you that unfortunately you will not graduate as army officers, but as police officers, as you are members of the ministry of the interior.’ I was dumbfounded. I had returned my badge, I had returned my uniform, I had returned my pistol, I had sent a written request to the gendarmerie headquarters in Újezd - and nothing. In all the tumult of the revolution someone had decided to ditch his responsibilities. Or maybe someone at the ministry of interior had said: ‘So we’ll have officers with military education. That could be useful.’ Because it didn’t cost them a thing. And we were dumbstruck.”

“We lived in the school in Kraskov, and the people who had [the partisans] coming to them asked us to guard in the night. You can imagine.” (Q: “How many of you were there from Hradec Králové? A whole detachment?”) “A whole detachment. Me and one boy came to one lady, and there I saw something amazing. They had lights shining, I don’t know if it was gas or what, and she was making [gas] mantles. We came there and she said: ‘Well come on, come, so I don’t have to be afraid.’ One word led to the next, and so we said: ‘Missus, we’re so frightened that they might come here. What should we do?’ She said: ‘Don’t worry, they don’t usually come [a second time] where they’ve already been.’ Which wasn’t true. Later on we realised that she probably must have told them we would be there, so they wouldn’t come.”

“When I think back on the occupation, then of course as young boys we lifted ourselves in our desks and tried to catch a glimpse of what was making the noise, the tanks and so on. Our class teacher Mr Procházka came in, sat down - I can see him even now, we aged years in a single moment when we saw our teacher cry - he leaned on his arms like this and he didn’t even open the attendance book. Then we saw he was crying awfully. It’s nothing strange for a man, even men can cry, as you know. But with him it was somehow special, he was a distinguished gentleman. When he recollected himself, he said: ‘Sit down, students. You will see so many of them you’ll get sick of it.’ I remember those words to this day.”