“Sometime in April 1945, each family in the Stachovsko, Zdíkovsko and Vacovsko region – which Rohanov was a part of – was told to build a shelter in the forest. It was because of the spreading rumors about the advancing armies that were supposed to march through the area soon. The shelter was basically just a hole in the ground in the nearby forest. I helped digging it myself. It was concealed by a few planks and some earth. It was a place where the family could possibly hide if there was a need. It was by no means a comfortable accommodation where you could stay for a long time. Even today, when I go for a walk in the forests around Rohanov, I still find a pit here and there and I try to recall which pit belonged to which Rohanov family. The pit of our family was isolated from the others, we were on our own. My dad was pleased that ours was close to the well. We were close to water, so that we might have easily replenished our reserves. That was maybe the reason why he dug it at that spot. In Rohanov, there were eighty-two house numbers, which means that there were eighty-two pits in the surrounding forests. There’s also a funny story that goes with it. Mrs. Hadravová was in anticipation of a child which was supposed to be born at the turn of April and May. Friends of Mr. Hadrava made fun of him, they told him that he should make the pit bigger for the midwife to be able to turn around in it. Their little girl was born on 26 or 27 April, thus it was really born just in those critical days. These shelters weren’t eventually used, however. Even though one day there was a rumor that we’d have to go and hide in the shelters, the situation quickly calmed down. Then we learned that the Americans were already on the Staše and soon they would be in Javorníky.”
“The American soldiers brought about ten German prisoners on their car. The\ allowed them to jump down of the deck of the car and one U.S. soldier was guarding them. We, boys and girls, and some other people from Rohanov watched on. And this is what happened. The American soldier pulled out a pack of cigarettes of his pocket on the leg and offered a cigarette to each one of those German prisoners. Most of them took a cigarette in their mouth and the American would light it up. This deed aroused great indignation in Rohanov. After we had seen this we thought about how it was possible that German soldiers were given cigarettes? It was very hard to bear for the adult population of Rohanov and there were even some remorse about giving flowers to the Americans.”
"Those of us who stayed in Nýrsko in the pédéeška (Officer Cadet School) were divided into companies – the Železnorudsko company and the battalions of the Nýrsko company. For about three weeks, I was stationed in Zadní chalupy – it was the 4th border-guard company. That was my first time at the border. One morning when I was on patrol – it was dawning – I realized that right where we were sitting, there grew primroses and daffodils and they were grown over with currants and gooseberries. I realized that actually I was sitting in a garden of one of the houses of a displaced former German village. The village was no longer there - this was all that was left of it, a ruin here and there and some building foundations. And the wooden barracks of the 4th border-guard company."
“At the end of the war there were frequent air raids by low-flying squadrons of fighter planes, the so-called “hloubkaři”. We watched the squadrons of aircraft flying above our heads, dropping tinfoil, probably in order to interfere with the radar. From the ground it looked like it was snowing. At night, you could hear the roar and thunder from the bombarded Bavarian cities. Those hloubkaři had such light aircrafts. They flew low, sometimes we even saw the American or English pilot. They would sometimes fly above Rohanov through the valley and we actually saw him not from below, but from above. They mainly monitored the traffic on the roads, the German columns, or any vehicle which was carrying ammunition. They bombed Klatovy train station and the village of Mirotice, which lies behind Strakonice. They were also responsible for the shooting of a truck driver from Podvítovčí. It was the milk man and he used to transport the milk in 25-liter cans in a truck. Every morning, he brought milk from Vacovsko, perhaps even to Stachovsko and Zdíkovsko, to Strakonice, where the milk was processed in a factory. The pilots noticed him in Kleny, which is a place between Mladíkov and Vacov. They fired a couple of flares to make him stop. But he did not stop in Vacov, nor in Přečín, not even in Chvalšovice. That hloubkař was still on his heels and he finally shot him to pieces outside of Chvalšovice. It was at the end of April 1945.”
“One team defended Roklan cabin and the second one was storming it. I was in charge of that exercise being the corporal. Lieutenant Walter was watching the exercise from a distance and advising us. 'You've got to go through that little window’. There were such two smaller windows up to the west. So I tried to get into the cabin through that window, even though I knew that from time to time someone was shooting with blank cartridges from it. The machine guns got a narrower gun barrel in order for them to have recoil. So I pushed myself into the window and luckily I held my old machine gun with the long cylinder in front of my face. The boy who defended the cabin opened fire just in front of my face. I fell out of the window and screamed: 'I can’t see anything!' My face was planted with tiny splinters from the blank cartridge, only my eyes and the nose was saved by my machine gun. I opened my eyes, of course, they were full of tears, and I did see! Lieutenant Walter ended the exercise immediately and since then we hadn’t practiced that simulation again.”
František Mandák was born on October 19, 1936, in Rohanov in Šumava (the Bohemian Forest) in the family of a cottager and a dandy - a mason, who usually spent most of the year away from home with a bunch of other masons, usually in Germany, where he earned money for the livelihood of his family. Since 1942, František went to school in nearby Vacov. In addition to the usual boyhood joys and worries he also experienced some unpleasant moments, such as his encounter with the fanaticized German youth or the rehearsal of the ‚sieg heil‘ directly in the classroom. Furthermore, he recalls several dramatic events that happened later on in the war and also the stay of U.S. troops in Vacov and Javorník. František didn‘t become a farmer or a mason, but a teacher. In 1956, he entered military service in the Border Guard. He spent the longest part of his service at the 19th border-guard company at Roklan forest cottage where he experienced very hard service in harsh conditions. After completing his military service, he worked for most of his later life as a teacher in Zdíkov in Šumava. He‘s interested in the history of his region and he‘s also the author of several articles and books on the subject.
