Jiří Hýř

"I came to work in the morning and we were told by the supervisor, 'Take the tractors, the two-wheelers and dismantle all the road signs!' So we drove around all day, dismantling signs and putting them on the truck. I had a giant banner across the middle of the combine at that time. And when I think back, I had a deer permit back then, so I had a hunting rifle with me all the time. It didn't occur to me that anybody would mind, but they would drive maybe a hundred or two hundred yards down the road from us. So when you think of all the things that could have happened... They might have got it wrong. So the Poles were the best. They always stopped us and asked, 'Where is the Russian army?'And then they went the other way and said, 'We can't find them.'"

"Well, it's just, we had four guys staying in the room and we had one guy who thought it would be a good idea to go and convince them. It was not far from us, we were staying in a student hostel in Podolí and this was in Pankrác, on náměstií Hrdinů. They had a headquarters in a building there. They were guarding it. Four of us went there, two of them were talking to some Russian guy, and my friend and I had the stupid idea to take down the red flag over the entrance. We thought we had it well read, so we took it down. But they had a sentry on the roof of the building next door. He fired, and that's when the patrol came back. Basically, I can say it's my own fault, because it never occurred to me that someone might shoot at us with live ammo. So I wasn't running for my life. I ran, and I can tell you, I was only ten or fifteen yards short of a sharp turn that would have put me out of sight, and I got it. I had a gash in my left shin, and it shot the bone under my hip joint that far. The second shot grazed my pelvis on my right side. A lady who was walking on another sidewalk with me was injured, she was innocent. But the soldier with the machine gun was firing from the waist."