"In the year of '44, there lived in the village of Hřešice next to Pozdeň two youngsters with their mother. They had a sizeable farm. When the boys went to work on the field in the morning, a Russian soldier approached them. He claimed to be an officer, and he had a parachute. They dug the parachute into the field and took him home. Without their mother's knowledge, they built him a bunker in one shed, so that - if the Germans came - it would be possible to wall him in. Apparently, the Germans detected him when he was radioing.
We saw a plane fly over Pozdeň Valley, and then one Sunday afternoon, as we were on the pitch playing football, we saw German soldiers driving to Hřešice. By coincidence, the Bichrt boys were planning on going to the cinema in Mšec that afternoon. They looked down the hill and saw the Germans approach the village. Before fleeing, they walled in the Russian captain; then they dashed off along the ditch, their first destination being Řípec Hill, above Královice - they were afraid to enter the forests. The Germans filled Hřešice, everyone had to assemble at the chapel by the village square. The ill were brought out with bed and all if necessary. The placed two machine guns on the square and pointed them at Mrs Bichrtová. They wanted her to reveal to them the whereabouts of the Russian paratrooper. According to the brothers, she knew nothing. They probably took Mrs Bichrtová to Terezín, where they say she died."
"In the year of '45, in March, the Vlasovites arrived and took the valley. I heard a noise in the night like a horse's tread, I looked out on the street and those were the Vlasovites. I called out that soldiers were coming, and Dad jumped up. We found out they spoke Russian, Ukrainian. They occupied the village, that was the edge, the flanking group, because the main army, the tanks, went through Strašecí. We had two majors lodging with us. One of them was ill, he had spasms from his stomach, ulcers probably. Dad called in Doctor Lelek from Slaný. He had a look at him and said he'd need an operation. He didn't want an operation. Some Germans came to visit him from the barracks to discuss something with him. What that was, I don't know of course. The Germans left, apparently they had made an agreement, that the Vlasovites wouldn't go against the Germans and vice-versa. It's true that they told my father, when he asked how long they'd be here, they said, word for word, that they had to be in Prague by the Fifth of May. So they must have known something about the Prague uprising..."
"One morning, the gendarmes arrived. I was still lying in bed, but I heard them tell Dad: 'It's okay, Vennie, it's okay, he left.' The Russian [the paratrooper in hiding - ed.] climbed out of his hiding place two or three days later, he was armed and with grenades and a radio. When the gendarmes saw him clamber out of the shed, they turned away, put their hands in the air and let him go. I saw him once, when the Russians were already here, he was washing himself in the pond, naked. Vláďa, I think he was younger, he shot himself in bed. I remember his funeral. He couldn't take the loss of his mother. The other one, Miloš, he lived with us, he married a lady from Slaný. In the end a band of communists wrote on his gates: Here lives a kulak. He'd saved a Russian officer, and they made him into a kulak. What happened to him after that, I don't know. The estate probably passed on to the co-op. He had a daughter, I remember her, she worked in our 'Tractor Stat'. We glued these kind of belts, so she worked there. They lived in Slaný afterwards."
Václav Hrdlička was born on the 31st of December 1930 in Pozdeň, near Slaný. He went to the local elementary school, in the years 1941 to 1943 he was a pupil of the primary school in Mšec. He learnt blacksmithing from his father. As a boy, he was an indirect witness of the arrests made during the Heydrich Retaliation [a Nazi punishment campaign for the killing of Bohemian Reichsprotektor Heydrich - transl.], and of other events in and around Pozdeň throughout World War II. He remembers a Russian paratrooper hiding with a family in Hřešice, and the tragic consequences of the act. In 1947 to 1949 he studied at a technical school, and after graduating, he was employed in what was then the Stalinworks [Stalinovy závody] in Litvínov. He was conscripted in 1951 and moved to Tábor. In 1954 he took up employment at the Technical Tractor Station [Strojní traktorová stanice] in Slaný, where he remained until 1986. He then taught at the Slaný school for agriculture for four years, going into retirement in 1990. He married in 1955, in 1926 he moved with his family to Slaný. Václav Hrdlička‘s memories focus on the period of World War II.
