"I had to take the silence test twice. When I reported for my first attempt, I was looking forward to it very much, because we had a campfire planned for that evening, and the wake up call the following day would not be at seven, but at eight. That's great, I thought, I will get up and I will already be able to speak, thanks to the time change. I kept silent throughout the whole day. I didn’t say a word during the campfire when the others were singing and playing skits. Then we went to sleep in the evening and I was walking toward my tent. There were six tents, I slept in the first one, and Pomněnka and Beruška were next to me. As I was getting to the tent, Pomněnka said to me: ´Good night, Nohy.´ I wished her good night as if nothing happened. And so I had to start over. But I have passed my second attempt. After that I passed the test of hunger at the first try. This camp was our last opportunity to pass the test of Three Eagle Feathers, because the leaders already knew that we wouldn’t be allowed to continue and that this was our last camp. We still thought that we would go on, but at that time it was already obvious that we won't be able to. And so I passed the Three Feathers there. It was no fun, as I was only twelve. In the last test, I took my piece of tent canvas, blanket, food, that's the most important thing, and water, and I set out. When I reached the place where I wanted to prepare my meal and open the tin, I found out that I had forgotten the tin opener in the camp. Luckily I had my knife with me, and I opened it with the knife. We had to guard the camp. We had to be around the camp all the time. From 10 p.m. till 6. a.m. we were guarded. There were more of us watching the camp, and we were told not to go too far from the camp and to come back if we heard a whistle in case something happened. When I returned to the camp, I thought that I would have to retake this self-reliance test, because they were just disassembling the camp and I didn’t know if they wanted me or not. Then we all went home."
"When the founding convention of the Scouts was in the news on television on December 2nd 1989, my mom called me: ´Eva, are you watching TV?´ I told her: ´No.´ - ´Turn it on then.´ I reported to Hrášek in that very moment. My parents knew that I had always been a Scout, even when I had not been allowed to."
"I was in Hrášek’s home, we were having a St. Nicolas Day party, and we were giving cards with the fleur-de-lis symbol to each other, with all our names signed on them. Then I became sick. I was thirteen or fourteen, and I had quinsy and high fever and a doctor came to see me. At that time, it was common for doctors to make house calls. I had the card next to me, and the doctor looked at it and asked: ´What is it?´ At that time you couldn’t know who you were dealing with. I would have told him what it was, and my mom thus replied instead of me: ´She probably found it somewhere.´ That was because no one knew what might happen. The time we lived in was like that."
Eva Tvrzníková, née Křiváčková, aka Nohy under her Girl Scout name, was born September 15, 1957. She learnt the bookseller‘s trade and she has been working in a bookshop nearly for her entire life. Her parents introduced her to Scouting in 1968 and she began attending the 3rd Girl Guides troop in the 4th Scout unit in Ústí nad Labem. She participated in her first Scout camp in 1969, where she also took her Scout oath. In 1970, during her second camp, she passed the Three Eagle Feathers test. After the ban on Scouting in 1970, the vast majority of the members of her scout troop continued their activities in a hiking club, but Eva‘s parents did not allow her to join it and she had to start attending Pioneer (an official regime-approved youth organization - transl.‘s note) instead. In 1989 she was one of the first to be involved in the restoration of the Scout organization in Ústí nad Labem. She became a leader of a girls‘ troop, leading Girl Guides as well as Brownies. She worked on her Scouting education and apart from passing the candidate and leader‘s examinations she also participated in the first run of the Old Scout Woodcraft School in 1998. In 2002 she was involved in designing the candidate course called Netopýr (Bat). In 2007 and 2011 she was a guest to the world jamborees in London and Sweden and she continues to live as an active Scout.
