PhDr. Lieutenant Colonel (ret.) Josef Falář CSc.

"On April 21, Tango 27 was attacked, where the entire battalion was in the process of rotating. So the old members of the Czechoslovak battalion were handing over posts and Tango - these were right on the border of Croatia and Serbian Republic Krajina and stood on hills where you could see both sides. Tango 27 was attacked by four shells, one landed on a flat wall and had a flat scatter of shrapnel and scalped Igor Rigo, who was there on the last stand and was one of those who were handing over the tango to the new members of our battalion. Right after four days it was the very first death in our battalion. Igor had his dog there, he had negotiated all the documents from the vet that he could bring him from the [Czech] republic, which the others could not, unfortunately the dog stayed in the mission and Igor left in a coffin to Bratislava. Those who left, left. Two remained there to continue serving and I worked with them in the third company in Urbina for at least another half a year. They were unable to do any service for fourteen days. They were given the option of staying in the mission or going home. They stayed and I worked with them."

"On 21 August I was supposed to take an exam at the Faculty of Physical Education and Sport in sports psychology with Mirek Vaněk. I don't know exactly what subject was supposed to be. I was living in Budějovice, and in the morning around five o'clock I took the fast train to Prague. When I got on the train, I had a small Panasonic radio with me, I had it on in the train and I heard the news that our republic had been occupied by the armies of the Warsaw Pact. My fellow passengers asked me to go into the corridor and they all were listening to the news with me. When we arrived in Prague, we were not allowed to go to the main station, the train stopped in Vršovice. We all had to get off and they wouldn't let us go into the centre of Prague. I had arranged the exam at the faculty in Malá Strana, and I walked all the way from the Vršovice station and had the opportunity to watch the hustle that was going on. The trams were blocked, there were barricades in some places. When I got to Malá Strana to Mirek... now I say Mirek, I worked with him all the time at the Dukla [club] and from the time the commission for the psychology of sport existed, we were at first name terms, that's why I call him Mirek Vaněk, God grant him eternal glory, because he is already among the dead... He said to me, I won't test you today. I didn't take the exam, even though I was ready. I decided to go to my school to see what it was like. When I got to the school, which is the current Ministry of Defence in the street Na Valech, the command of the whole operation had already moved in. I reported at the gate as a student, and when I got to the classroom, where we each had drawers, textbooks, personal belongings, slippers, and it was all scattered around the classrooms and the corridors. I didn't find much. I had had military boots and clothes there that I didn't usually take to Budějovice. Then when this was over, we reported the losses, so I reported the clothes lost. We had no weapons. It was similar with our exam certificates, so probably nothing was preserved. Even though I had passed exams from that two-year post-graduate study in every discipline of psychology - from social, occupational, social, educational, etc."

"(Josef) Hasil, the King of Šumava, was active there, he came from Vlachovo Březí. There were three Kings of Šumava. There was one from Volary, one from Železná Ruda and allegedly another one from Krumlov. This one [Hasil] came from Vlachovo Březí. I had a chance to notice his activities somehow. I learned that as he was taking the runaways across the border, they were housed in the bell tower of the Volary church. One day we were walking home from school, I used to go across the square, and there was a pool of blood on the pavement. Allegedly, Hasil had shot an officer from the guard or the barracks there. And there were shootings at the [border] wire fence or where he was leading them across in the New Valley along the Golden Trail, which had been a salt route that went through Volary. There was a hospital for serious injuries in Prachatice and Dad witnessed two border guards die in his ambulance while he was transporting them. After a gunfight with the ones that Hasil had been leading across. As I learned, the relatives of these border guards wanted to have memorials there, and they were not allowed to have memorials there. But the ones who were shot while crossing to the West were of course celebrated or transported to the other side to Austria and Germany." - "How did you or your dad, who had direct contact with that, feel about them leading people across the border there? Were you afraid of that?" - "We were afraid of Hasil. Then as a kid I learned that he had really shot an officer right in the Volary square, so we talked about it at school as pupils."

"When the war was over, there was the west front and the east one. Some of the German soldiers were going over to the American army, they were withdrawing from Budějovice and Vimperk towards Sušice and Plzeň, to the part which, according to the demarcation line, was set for the American army. Basically, they were fleeing to the western front. The whole company arrived in Zdíkovec, they set up three howitzers above Zdíkovec and said that within three hours the citizens of Zdíkovec must provide accommodation for the whole company. My mum, my little brother and I took our rucksacks and went to Račov. Dad, as a fireman, and all the men stayed in Zdíkovec. I describe this in my childhood war memories." - "You were saying goodbye to your father and you didn't know what was going to happen?" - "No, when we got to Račov to Dad's sister Katy's house, we waited to hear the artillery cannonade or [see] burning Zdíkovec, over the hill. The Germans threatened to shoot the men unless someone provided accommodation. All the women and children left Zdíkovec and the men, mostly firemen, stayed there. They were all firemen." - "Your dad too?" - "Sure. Dad was a fireman too, and then in Volary, when there was a big drought in 1947 and the forest was burning near the Soumarský Bridge, he would go there all week to put out fire. That was after the war, but this story happened at the end of the war. We were waiting, and the next morning we heard nothing, and Dad came to us in Račov and told us how the whole three-hour ultimatum had ended. We were happy to see him." - "So the Germans left of their own accord?" - "When the men were preparing the accommodation for them, Dad also prepared our flat at the shop, and in the end four American soldiers, who liberated Zdíkovec, were living there. He came to us and said that after about two hours the Germans had received orders from the command that they had to clear everything out and immediately continue on their way west to the American army. So men were disarming these soldiers and there was a pile of machine guns in the firehouse, they left everything there and left. That was the end of the ultimatum and it was a happy ending. When we came back to Zdíkovec, where we lived across the street from the firehouse, I saw the pile of weapons as a nine-year-old boy. The German soldiers - that was brave of them - they didn't use the weapons, they surrendered without any pressure and preferred to go over to the American army without weapons."