"'You speak German, you've lived there for so many years, so tell them!' I remembered from training in Germany that they were used to military drills. So I climbed out with a capsule gun, which could be bought at any toy store, and fired at them very loudly so that they would be on guard, and then I told them that they were captured. So we got another fifty rifles from them, which was extremely useful for us. It turned out that these mostly older soldiers were from Vienna. So I was able to talk to them quite friendly about Vienna. "
"Finally, our Minister of Defense Rastislav Štefánik visited our legionaries, and arranged for everyone to be taken home to Prague. My father was one of the first to return in 1919. He finished his studies, married my mother and they lived in Unhošť at the beginning of their marriage, because she taught there. "
"I joined Dvojka in 1940s. At Christmas, I got this nickname from "Jestrab", because I guarded the section songbook and I could not miss any singing. He noticed this and gave me the nickname Song. The year 1940 was a turning point for scouting, because on October 28, all scouting activities in our republic were banned. For Jestrab, Dvojka was like his child and he could not exist without her. For us, it had the great advantage that we managed to get through this together, despite the horrors of the war. "
Jan Pavlásek was born on October 27, 1923 in Dejvice, Prague, to a protestant family of diplomat and legionary Vladimír Pavlásek. Thanks to his stay at the embassies in Germany and Austria, Jan had excellent German. From 1931 he was a staunch scout, nicknamed Song in the section. During the Second World War, despite the ban on scouting, he helped Jaroslav Foglar lead the Prague Deuce. In October 1942, he was called to Germany for forced labor - he served with firefighters in Hamburg, and during 1943 he experienced Allied bombing there. In the spring of 1945, he joined the Prague Uprising and subsequently served in the Revolutionary Guards. He graduated from gymnasium in Prague and the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine in Brno. In 1950 he married and settled in Bystřice nad Pernštejnem, where he devoted himself to veterinary work. At the same time, he continued to lead the youth in the sense of the scout educational method. In 1970, he lost his wife Jaroslava due to an illness. He spent 43 years with his second wife Miluše. During the resumption of scouting in Bystřice nad P., he was elected the leading old scout on 14 December 1989. In 2016, he received the highest scout award, the Bronze Medal of St. Jiří. Jan Pavlásek died on February 20th, 2022.
