Karel Dlabola

"They closed off West Berlin, they made the famous Berlin Wall, which you couldn't walk over, and suddenly during the holidays, when I was about to start school, a draft order came. Those who were supposed to go home from the army in the autumn stayed there. We came there as the first year. And I joined at the western border, Bor near Tachov, which was right at the border line at that time, and I was there until Christmas, when things loosened up a little bit, the third year went home, and I got to Marianske Lazne, and that's where I finished the war. I was supposed to go to NCO school first, I didn't want to go there, I left. Because I had an accident once on skis, torn ligaments in my knee, so I got examined at the Military Hospital in Pilsen and they said there was something wrong with me, and I got partial relief on that paper. I was working as a warehouseman in an automobile warehouse. I counted tires. Then it turned out that I didn't have any of the shots that I should have had. I was a bad soldier. That was the kind of war I had." - "How long were you there?" - "I was there more than two years. I came in the first of September, but I didn't go home until October. It was twenty-five months. We were called up early because of the Berlin crisis."

"Then I remember they made a cover down in the basement. There were bunk beds. When the revolution broke out, us the kids were herded down into the cellar and it was awfully nice, we could fool around as much as we wanted, and our parents were very nice to us because they were glad we didn't ask what was going on and that we were enjoying ourselves. Then I heard that my dad said at home, 'It's already started, I'm going to check it out' and he left and came back three days later. I didn't even notice my dad wasn't there, it was so cheerful. It wasn't until I was an adult that I realised what it must have been like for that mum. I was six, about to go to school, and my sister was three. And Dad was gone. He was putting up barricades. The May Revolution of 1945 just eluded us. We were on Pilsen Avenue, and the Americans were expected from the west, and the Germans were trying to get out of Prague a little different way, to the west, but not directly past us."