Alois Bouda

“On the next day I almost got into trouble. I went to demonstrate on Banskobytrická Street. It is the street near the Presidential Palace, leading around the garden towards the Government Office. We marched that way and shouted slogans like: Dubček, Svoboda, that´s our freedom! That of course, could not change anything, although, as thinking about it now, it really made no sense. Well, and I demonstrated. As we were walking, suddenly there appeared four or five kneeling soldiers with Kalashnikov rifles pointing at us. I heard shooting and quickly ran into the closest door. I wasn´t alone, there were many of us. However, at once a man rushed in and screamed: ʻRun upstairs, because they are coming and shooting into the hallways!ʼ We were running upstairs and as there was a glass wall next to the stairway, all of a sudden it rattled and three bullets perforated the wall next to me. One soldier was shooting from a side road on the stairway. I don´t know what happened later as on the next day we got on a car and ran away.”

“We were living at the 1st May Square and I remember like today that on October 28, or around this date, a minibus came and we travelled to Spain to a concert tour with a band, and with the Tradicionál club. My wife was looking out of the window and shouting to us: ʻTake care!ʼ.ʻDon´t worry, we will. And maybe when we come back it will be free here already!ʼ I answered. I remember the beauty, we had a concert in the conservatory hall in Bilbao, when our Bolshevik government headed with Adamec resigned. During the break, I had such a small short-wave radio with me and I listened to it down in the dressing room. When I found out the news, I ran out and as the second half of the concert was about to begin, I wrote an English note about resigning of the communist government and read it aloud: And from now on, Czechoslovakia is a free country. And a huge applause followed.”

“In November or beginning of December in 1944 I was almost twelve years old; I went to school and I was looking forward to it. But at half past nine we had to go home already – there was an air raid warning. We were running home, when I suddenly heard a terrible bang and it threw me maybe even five meters away. A bomb. And that exploded about three hundred meters away from me. If you ever saw those war films, where the bombings are illustrated, that sound is completely opposite. When the whistle is aimed down, it is behind you already. That´s how whistle bombshells, which fly over your head and explode. It was indeed such hissing sound and a horrible bang. One of the bombshells fell also into our yard. If I had walked app. ten meters higher, we wouldn´t be sitting and speaking here today as I would be dead. We were hidden in a cellar, we had sand sacks all around the cellar window, although, it would not help. I even took a picture of the hole in our yard the bomb had made.”