"So they arrived, they were Poles, there in Mýto, and they started asking questions. They were not allowed into the barracks area, so the chief of staff and the regimental commander started to organize the defense of the barracks. Into what window a machine gun would come, into which window something else. 'And that's where the cannon comes in!' We waited on, again, nothing happened, those Poles... Were they Poles? Yes, they were. They settled there in the nearby forest. It was called America, so they settled there in that forest, America, and again we didn't know about them for a long time."
"There, I still had the opportunity to say that I was wrong, that today it is clear that we needed the help. And the assessment of that vetting committee would have been positive, absolutely. I would have been reprimanded, at most, or nothing. I'd definitely keep on serving in the army. Whereas I got into a crossfire with the counterintelligence guy there, saying, 'The regimental commander didn't see anything, you sir, comrade, comrade major, you must have seen the neutrality posters on every tree. Neutrality. Go home! And such different ones, did you see that?' He didn't. The regimental commander didn't see it. The chief of counterintelligence, he didn't see anything like that in the barracks. Nothing like that happened. A year ago, like a year ago, the politruks [political commissars that marched with the army] had a statue brought in, like a Russian soldier with a machine gun. And they put a rope around his neck and tied him to the branch of a chestnut tree. I couldn't remember what trees there were. A branch of a chestnut tree, and underneath that, they had a table brought with a resolution that they had passed somewhere in the political department. And the soldiers went in line with a mess tin, and first, they signed the resolution. And then they proceeded on, and then they got food in the mess tin. 'Well, you remember that, don't you?' No, nobody remembered."
"So the time finally came, and I looked for civilian employment. I wasn't allowed to be in charge of anything. So I didn't insist on that either. At Karosa? No way. When they found out I was expelled, they wouldn't have anything like that here. To spoil the morale of the other workers. So, finally, the chairman of the JZD [Unified Agricultural Cooperative] came in and said he needed a man there, especially for civil defense and work safety and such. So I accepted it. They added the catering department. They named me the head of the catering department. I was the manager there! What the head cook needed, I brought. I drove a Barkas. Well, unfortunately, I wasn't cleared in that civil defense because it was a function that had to be cleared by some civil defense staff or something... in the district. And it was subject to some kind of party nomenclature. 'Don't worry about it,' the chairman used to tell me. 'They said if I didn't have the staff to do it, I would do it myself.' And the diploma, some kind of credentials paper, the chairman had that written in his name, but I was the one doing it."
Ctirad Doubek was born on 15 May 1937 in Vysoké Mýto. His mother worked as a cook in Josef Sodomka‘s factory. His father, whom he never knew, was one of the soldiers of the Vysoké Mýto garrison, allegedly of Jewish origin. During his childhood, the family lived in the house of the painter Jan Juška, with whom he learned to paint, and this hobby accompanied him throughout his life. He graduated from a military high school and became a professional soldier, and after his advanced training, he joined the 251st Anti-Aircraft Regiment in Vysoké Mýto as commander of the command battery. During this period, a file was created in his name by the Military Counterintelligence. During the August 1968 occupation, Polish military forces arrived at Vysoké Mýto with several dozen tanks, blocked the barracks, and after a field camp was built, an incident occurred between them and members of the command battery. After the acceptance of the treaty on the temporary stay of Soviet troops on the territory of Czechoslovakia, the Vysoké Mýto soldiers had to move out in a few days and hand over the barracks to the Soviets. Captain Ctirad Doubek had to appear before the assessment commissions, and after their decision, he was expelled from the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and dismissed from the army. Until 1989, he worked at the Unified Agricultural Cooperative in Tisová. After the fall of the communist regime, the army restored his rank, promoted him, and accepted him back into service in Vysoké Mýto. He became a member of the Military Association of the Rehabilitated. In 2022, he lived in Tisová.
