"We used to go to the river, and when the Americans came, they would walk along the river and shoot the fish in the water with a carbine. And if they hit one, we would always swim over there and bring them the fish. Then the Russians came, and they had a different technique, and they started throwing grenades. Unfortunately, some little soldier, either he was drunk or... And he, when he was throwing it at the fish, that one grenade tore him up. There was a grave with a red star for a long time, a little monument nera Martinek. He was buried there for a long time and then the remains were taken to the forest cemetery where all the Russians were buried. They had tent camps all around and we used to go there. They had a lot of horses there, so we used to go to those Russians to ride our horses, and they let us. And one incident was in Lázeňka, where we were staying, we heard shooting there. One Russian soldier got drunk and saw a fireman in uniform. He, being drunk, somehow pointed at him and started shouting that he was a German and started shooting at him. Of course, as he was drunk, he luckily missed him. He [the fireman] ran away, called somebody and the Russian military police came there. They beat this poor guy [the Russian soldier] so badly...! They beat him up in a terrible way. The whole pavement was covered in blood and he lay there moaning for about two days. People tried to get him something to drink... But he was so beaten up! Then he recovered a little, so he left. But they beat him up in a terrible way."
"It was commanded by a captain named Kermit Bernard. He arrived there, but when he saw Schörner's army rolling in from Tábor, he contacted the headquarters in Strakonice. This took place on the 6th of May. He described the situation, and they told him to disarm the Písek garrison and send German soldiers to Strakonice on foot, and to withdraw himself beyond the city limits, and that reinforcements would arrive the next day. The next day, on the morning of the 7th of May, the Americans arrived and occupied the whole of Písek and began to disarm the Germans and got as far as the Podolský Bridge on the Vltava River, the westernmost [sic! meant easternmost] place they could get to. Meanwhile, on the 12th, the Russians arrived and Písek was a city of two armies. Everything was working perfectly, they were friendly to each other then because they were allies. Unfortunately, it hasn't lasted to this day, but it worked then. It wasn't until about the 23rd that the Americans withdrew behind the demarcation line, which was in Hradiště, in Písek, on the Zátavský Bridge. And then Písek was taken over by the Russians."
"I remember the first air raids we experienced there. That's when the tenants of the whole house we were living in had to go to the basement. And right behind that house, in Slovany, there was a field. There was flak, German anti-aircraft guns. First of all, there was noise from the bombing, and the flak made a terrible noise, it was firing all the time. They didn't shoot anything down, but it was a terrible noise and the house was shaking. Not far from us, a residential area in Slovany was bombed, because there was a Škoda factory down there, and somehow they misdirected it and sent bombs to the residential area instead of the Škoda factory. And that scared my father terribly and he moved us to Písek."
Martin Lis was born on 6 January 1935 in Prague. His father worked for the railway and the family moved frequently. In the second half of the 1930s, the Lis family lived in Košice, which they had to leave involuntarily after the so-called First Vienna Arbitration - when in November 1938 parts of the territory of today‘s Slovakia and the former Subcarpathian Rus were taken over by Hungary. They moved to Plzeň, where, however, they repeatedly experienced bombing. Fearing for their own safety, the family moved to Písek during the war. There they experienced the arrival of the liberating American and Soviet armies, after which they returned to Pilsen. In the 1950s Martin Lis studied veterinary medicine in Brno and subsequently took up a job at a research institute in Uhříněves. He further extended his education and in the 1960s he defended his degree of Candidate of Science (CSc.). In the summer of 1968 he went on holiday to Italy with his wife and two children. After the August invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops, they did not return home. The family settled in Montreal, Canada, where Martin Lis worked in research institutes. In 1973 he received his Ph.D. degree. In 2002, the Lis family returned to the Czech Republic, already retired. In 2022 Martin Lis was living in Kluky, a village in South Bohemia.
