Jaroslav Rajsigl

"What comes to my mind? That the war is a sod. My message is that people should love each other and not fight. Because if somebody wages war, the war then keeps haunting him until he dies. After I had returned to France, I was waking in the middle of the night for a long time. It took me a long time to be able to sleep normally. You cannot wonder that some American guy, who has been in Vietnam, has problems, or that our guys, who have been in Afghanistan, are haunted by the war."

"I got there, and there were soldiers from the Border Patrol. (...) A lieutenant came and took all my documents. He asks me: ´Are you hungry?´ It was noon. (...). We got into a Tudor car and they drove me to Karlovy Vary. (...) Another guy came there, and they took me to Sadská. There was some other guy: ´Undress completely.´ He looked into my ass. They checked everything. The Secret Police men were coming there for two weeks."

"The guys accompanied me to the railway station. It was sometime in July 1955, I don’t remember exactly when." Interviewer: "What was your main reason for return? You wanted to see your parents?" – "That was just one of them. Having spent five years in the war turns you into a lunatic. Another reason was civilian life, the longing for home."

"A drunken communist yelled at me, too: ´You murderer of Vietnamese children!´ He lives not far from here. (...) Now people call me sergeant. There are many Rajsigls in the town, it’s a common surname here. Which of the Rajsigls? The sergeant."