Václav Chabr

"The landlady who lived downstairs at the entrance came running in and said, 'Mrs. Chabrova, Mrs. Chabrova! The Americans have been asking for you, and they're armed!' My mother [was] terrified, and my father was too. And mother said to him: 'Well, you see! Again because of your business!' So Dad hid in the closet because he thought, 'They won't look for me there.' So he hid behind his clothes in the closet. Well, that's when the Americans came in. Actually, two of them had rifles and one of them didn't. The one without the rifle says to my mother, 'Are you Součková?' In Czech. And my mother says, 'No, I'm Chabrova, but I'm born Součková.' And he says, 'I'm Bohus Souček from Chicago!' And my mother knew she had relatives there. So they said hello, big hello. Mother invited them in, and he - his name was Bohumil, Bohusek, he was a teacher in Chicago - he said, 'And where's your husband?' So mother called and dad was in the closet. He didn't know what was going on, so he didn't want to come out of the closet. So then they pulled him out with the help of the Americans."

"And [Dad] said he was scared because he was a terrible Nazi. That once he came - this was a couple of years before the war, when nationalism was on the rise even here in the Sudetenland - he was chased off the pitch, that he wouldn't play football anymore, that it would be a purely German manifesto. They were three brothers. But he was very polite and told him what he was doing there, he told him, 'Are you a partisan?' And Dad said, 'No, I'm not, but we're guarding the bridge here, to see if it's mined.' And he said, 'Is it mined?' Dad said, 'No, it's not.' He quickly asked about his wife, a certain Hilda, and dad said: 'Well, I don't know. She still lives in the village, but I've already moved to Pilsen.' Dad asked about his brothers. One of them had been burned in a tank in Kharkov and the other one was missing. He called him Willy again, [that was] the name of the commander. Well, and he said, 'Come on.' They got into the KDF, into the jeep. Dad still said that the driver refused to go over the bridge, so Willy got behind the wheel. They crossed the bridge with Dad and [brother-in-law], and that was like they wanted to make sure that the bridge wasn't undermined."

"Just before the end of the war - the Americans were already here in Pilsen - my mother, my sister and I were in Podmokly with her parents. My father came to visit us or to pick us up, I don't remember, and some brave patriots said to my father: 'Franta, join us, the partisans!' A few days before the end of the war... And they sent him and my mother's brother, or his brother-in-law, to guard the bridge over the Berounka River. And if the Germans hadn't mined it. Schörner's army was retreating there by the Berounka, heavily armed. They [the soldiers] were not going to surrender and wanted to be taken prisoner by the Americans. My father was lying there in the meadow with my brother-in-law, guarding the bridge, when somebody kicked my father in the ... I'll tell it like he told me: 'Somebody kicked my ass all of a sudden.' So he turned around and there were two Germans standing over them with rifles, so right away: 'Hände hoch!' And they led them down to the river where they were already standing with the cars. This was the vanguard, who was just wondering also if the bridge had been mined again by the partisans, if they could cross it. My father, because he grew up in the Sudetenland, naturally spoke perfect German. Actually, it wasn't German, it was Egerlandisch, as it was spoken in the Sudetenland. And as they stood there, he listened to what they were saying. And they said they were waiting for the commander to come. Well, a commander came and they stood there with their hands raised. And all of a sudden the commander that came says to my dad, 'Bist du das Francl?' And my dad looks at him and [says], 'Ja!' And he was his friend from the village..."