"Full of enthusiasm, I went swimming in the Šumava in the cold water and got pneumonia. It must have been quite severe pneumonia. The doctor from Strašín told my parents that I probably wouldn't survive. And an American military doctor came to give me penicillin, and I would be fine. But penicillin, we didn't even know what it was. The doctor said he could not agree to its administration, only on the reverse of the parents. The parents arrived, or they were already there on vacation, and my father signed the reverse saying that they could give me penicillin, but he wanted them to give it to me in the hospital. The American doctor took me in a military ambulance to Strakonice to the hospital. But the doctor there said they wouldn't inject me with any penicillin. Father insisted. And so the doctor finally agreed to the father's responsibility. But he insisted that the American doctor was to give it to me because they wouldn't do it. So the American doctor injected me with penicillin. Although I still had a fever at two o'clock in the afternoon and was hardly aware of myself, by six o'clock in the evening, I was already without any fever. And in two to three days, I was released from the hospital, and I went home again in a jeep. The American soldiers came for me again. That's my memory of the US military.'
"I remember how I once ministered at the funeral of a lady from Strašín. I don't remember her name anymore. There was a funeral service in the church. The coffin was in the middle when suddenly someone ran into the church and said: 'The Americans are coming from Kašperské Hory!' We stopped the ceremony, and in those ministers' clothes, we ran down to the intersection from Kašperské Hory and the road towards Sušice. And we went to welcome the Americans. Unfortunately, the coffin with the lady was left abandoned in the church. Even the parish priest went to welcome the Americans. And the Americans moved into my grandfather's restaurant, or more like a country pub. Of course, first, they had to escort the German women and children, then part of the German army, which also began settling there. And the American army moved into the pub. I was happy. I was nine years old. The Americans drove me in jeeps. The Americans brought me chocolate. I don't know how I understood them, they didn't know Czech, but somehow we got along."
"Grandpa liked me a lot but didn't cuddle with me too much. I had to work a lot. He was a fisherman, and he went trout fishing. In Šumava, the streams were full of trout. As a boy not even nine years old, he taught me how to catch trout. That was when the Americans were already there. I always had to go with him. When I knew how to do it a little, he said: 'Dig for earthworms, go to the stream, and bring home some trout for dinner.' I was a boy and had to go about four kilometers to the stream where he rented it. I fished with worms or fished for horsetails and brought home six or seven trout for dinner. Grandfather said: 'You see, you did well! I thought you would bring two trout. And you have seven, or maybe eight!' That was my grandfather. His mustache was curled upwards. I let mine grow too. He grew it in the legions to protest that he did not want to fight in the Austrian army. I grew a beard as a protest in 1968 when the Russians came."
Miloslav Bartoš was born on 10 December 1936 in Chomutov. After the town was assimilated into the Sudetenland and joined Germany, he moved to Prague with his parents. Both father and mother worked as clerks at the post office in Prague-Libno. He spent the last year of the war with his grandparents in Strašín in Šumava. The village was liberated by American soldiers, who then lived in his grandfather‘s inn for several months. After the war, he returned to Prague. When he discovered he would not receive a recommendation at school for grammar school because he did not have a working-class background, he went to the office of the then-communist president Klement Gottwald, wearing a pioneer scarf, to complain. Although the president did not accept him, he invited his father to Prague Castle. They finally accepted him to the grammar school in Polička na Vysočině. After graduation, he studied at the Faculty of Civil Engineering of the Czech Technical University (ČVUT) in Prague. In 1956, he participated in Majáles, which had an opposition character. After his studies, he went to Ostrava, where he got a job in the regional project office of Stavoprojekt. Among other things, he worked on a housing project in the Poruba part. During the Velvet Revolution in November 1989, he co-founded the Civil Forum in Ostrava-Poruba. After the fall of totalitarianism, he was elected mayor of Poruba. He founded and led a cell of the Civic Democratic Party in Ostrava-Poruba. He served as the mayor of the Ostrava district for almost ten years. In 2022 he lived in Ostrava-Poruba.
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
