"When it started, I think it was Thursday. The first bombs fell on Rožnov. There were already dead that first day. That was a big shooting. Next door at the neighbors, there were Russians coming down the hill above Tylovice and living there. We had a big cottage, but the cellar, as it used to be in the old Wallachian houses, was outside the cottage. It was in the garden, next to the neighbours. We had a cottage by the road and a barn and cattle. My mother was very afraid to go there. The cow had a calf. So I used to go and milk the cow. The cottage was riddled with bullets because it was in the middle of the range of the cannons, we were all in the cellar. And one day I was carrying a pitcher of milk to the cellar and a grenade fell next to the neighbour's shed that was next to the cellar. It shattered everything. I fell down the stairs into that cellar and I couldn't hear day or night. I was deaf. Then, after some time my hearing returned. When I went to see a war movie and something exploded, I went deaf again in the theater."
"I have a memory of that because we lived by the road and there was a big barn. A convoy came to Tylovice with wounded horses. There was an infirmary for horses. It was terrible, the scars full of pus. Because we had that barn, the commander stabled his horses in it. He was a beautiful man. All the women were crazy about him. He was half Czech, half German. And the horses. They took one away, and the officer rode the other, a beautiful white one. His name was Odin. They were loose in the barn and we were afraid of them. Then the liberation was coming and they had to take the horses away. I think they went to Hranice. The officer came to say goodbye to us. He begged us to forgive the Germans,saying that we should hold on and live well. That was such a nice memory. But it was horrible to look at those dead horses. Well, people be damned. But why should the horses, the animals, suffer?"
"Just before the liberation, my grandfather, an old man, went to the field to hide from the war, from the Germans and the Russians. He got there and there was a Russian army coming up. He came back at night all scared because they were shooting. Then we went there after the liberation, to that field of ours. It was full of bullets, flint. The Tylo boys picked it up. Of course, they weren't allowed. You could see that there were big fights in front of Roznov between Hážovice and Ostry. You could see the war everywhere."
Ludmila Petřvalská was born on August 20, 1925 in Tylovice near Rožnov pod Radhoštěm. Her father, Jan Vašek, was the manager of the Rožnov‘s Sokol, where she lived with him. After the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Nazi Germany, Sokol leaders were arrested, the Sokol movement was banned and her father lost his job. During the war, the family farmed in Tylovice, where they had a small homestead. The German army set up a shelter for wounded horses in their barn. During the liberation of Rožnov pod Radhoštěm, a grenade exploded next to Ludmila and since then she has had problems with her hearing. From a young age, she was a member of the Wallachian dance group. On 26 August 1945, she had a wedding with her dance partner Jan Petřvalský. The wedding was a big event, it took place on the occasion of the consecration of the church in the Rožnov open-air museum and it was also part of the liberation celebrations. The wedding celebration involved a performance of Wallachian traditions for the spectators, five thousand of whom came to Rožnov. Afterwards Ludmila worked all her life in the textile factory Loana. Her husband Jan Petřvalský was the chairman of the local national committee in Tylovice in the 1950s.
