Ing. Jindřich Homolka

“My first unforgettable experience was when I saw two Russian soldiers, I mean those Cossacks, in front of the house. One of them was holding an alarm clock and, most probably out of drunkenness or maybe they were fighting over the clock, one of them shot the other one. Later, as an adult, I realised that war is probably something terrible, when people lose the notion of how valuable a human life is. People who came from so far away and experienced so many dangerous situations, and in the end they don’t even mind losing their life because of an ordinary alarm clock.”

“I remember my experience. I had this watching spot on the balcony. And I even had a telescope, a tripod and a slingshot, like boys usually have. And without any siren sounding, I saw that from north of Brno there were five jets flying. And when they approached and turned around I found out that they were English jets with that English sign, they were Spitfires. They even flew so low and close that I saw the pilot. And they were the so-called “kotlaři”, that was what people called them, because they would destroy everything along the railway and try to paralyse the Germans’ railway transport system. And when there was a train on the railroad and they detected it, they would shoot through the locomotive in short bursts of fire and put it out of order.”

“Somebody banged on the door. My mother went to look who was there and there was a German soldier. He had a coil on his back and he was collecting phone lines. The German army was retreating towards Brno. He knocked on the door and said politely that he needed some rest and asked if we had a free bed at home. My mother was probably afraid of Soviet soldiers later finding him in our home sleeping in our bed, that wouldn’t be great, so she told him: “Ein bet kein at our home.” And he gave us a salute and left, without trying to get inside using violence. Of course he could have. So that was interesting.”