Antonín Brázdil

"During the coup, we didn't work for two days. We didn't know what was going to happen, if there was going to be a war or what. There were tanks everywhere. The tank repair shop was surrounded by Russian tanks, plus the artillery pointed their gun carriages right at the plant. It didn't feel good. A Russian lieutenant came to the gatehouse. There was a heavy armored gate that moved electrically, and the commander had a tank that was in for a repair and was in reserve parked within the gate widthwise, so the entrance was impassable. But the Russians found a way in. They drove a tank into the concrete fence, knocked it down, and they were in."

"We woke up to an old lady running down the street shouting, 'People, wake up, there's a war on!' I thought the lady was crazy. I didn't have the TV or radio on, I didn't know anything. And they (the Warsaw Pact soldiers) had already come from Poland to us, via Těšín and Ostrava. I turned on the television and they told us to wait for a special report. By then, I was thinking that maybe it wasn't the lady who had gone crazy. I listened to the news and didn't get to sleep again. My wife started staggering and said we should go to the maternity ward. We got dressed and went out. It was about four in the morning when we left the house. It was impossible to cross the road. There were APCs roaring all around us."