Josef Krupica

"So when he woke me up, I went outside and there were planes flying, it wasn't very common in our country to fly at night. They were flying at night, real emergency, because we kept four planes there, they were on emergency, the first two had, I think the norm was four minutes and they had to be in the air. They were up all night and they were whirring, they were started up. Cabin warmed up, everything hooked up, gensets to it, as the siren went off the guys took off. They were disconnecting everything from it and the pilot came in and he was flying. That was nice... They did it at full throttle, as much as they could, and at night when it was... it was dark, the flame was flying out of it, so it was an experience. The ground was just shaking. And in the morning it started to become light, and so the Russian planes were already landing on the airfield at Mošnov, they were scared at first. Then first some cars came there and they cleaned the airfield so we wouldn't have anything there. Because in Čáslav they had some equipment pulled onto the airfield and they came with the planes and they couldn't land, so then they came to Mošnov too, because they let them land there. And then in the afternoon, well, they were flying in. Then the cars were coming soon afterwards, and in the afternoon there was a lecture in the cinema hall, I would say, some kind of bullshit. About how the Russians couldn't be given anything, that they couldn't take off from Mošnov because the planes couldn't take off on their own without ground support."

"So I went to the park, but it was eight o'clock, it was almost dark, but it was still light. And I phone and a guy answered it, the guard who was there, because I was already an old hand and I wasn't going to sit at a table. So I was lying there on the couch, there was only one anyway, and the guys had to move around. And they said that the company guard wanted me, so I had to take the phone and he said: 'The Russian army is gathering on the Polish border,' or the Soviet army, they couldn't say... the Soviet army. It looks like they're going to go across the border into the Czech Republic.' I said, 'Good, well.' They said, get ready for it, well, what can you get ready for if there's nothing? So I put it down and I tell the guys, some of them from the company, and they say he is drinking and he's always drunk when he's on duty. So I lay down again, so it wouldn't be easy, so I fell asleep right away. And suddenly at night a strong hand is shaking me, I open my eyes and it's the battalion commander, Colonel Pojezný. I'm sure he'd already heard it, and they were great friends even in that first moment, the officers, they literally and to the letter didn't know which leg to stand on, because they didn't know, actually they really didn't know what was going to happen. So he woke me up and told me that I'd better not sleep anymore, that I'd better keep an eye on the guys there, because they were all recruits, the guards there, and they, the idiots, let the cars go, that were going for them, for the officers, and they couldn't wake me up, they left me alone, even though they knew they woudl be there in a few minutes."