Ján Hanes

“We didn´t have the live ammunition with us, but we packed it. It was all loaded in wooden boxes, in one V3S truck that was being guarded night and day. There were automats with ball cartridges. So we kind of made up our minds the war was about to begin. In Poland, there is a sea, so the Americans could have come. There were various speculations. Added to that, there was great threatening with penalties because of offenses. Everything had to be obeyed to 100%. Watch closely so that no one walked through. We were simply afraid. We didn´t know, what´s going to happen. Before this, we only used to shoot at the firing range.”

“They kept saying, we´d go home. They used to talk about it for four – five days. Finally we got to that point and we had to put everything into original conditions. As soon as we pulled out the V3S trucks, we had to fill the holes as well as dried earthclosets up. We tried to even it out so that nothing was seen there. That´s when I knew we were going away. We were cleaning it for two days, filling in the holes and waiting until evening, when we left. On our way we arrived to some other exercising ground, where we slept over, and continued to go home during the next day. We arrived to the garrison, to carpark in Terezín, during the daylight. The cars were pulled under the car ports, everything was put away and we walked to our barracks.”