Konstantin Karger

“For instance, I had to go with some message to [Horní] Studénky or here in Bušín or in Písařov. Always in the dark of night, of course, and I was a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old boy. But the Písařov group never let me go home by myself. They always gave me two or three armed escorts. I was always frightened of what would happen if we met any gendarmes. But it never did. The gendarmes were mostly older blokes, and they avoided the dark and weren’t active.”

“We were planting potatoes in the field. It was early spring. Dad had borrowed a horse and stayed on the field, and Mum and I rode home on the horse. When we arrived, we suddenly saw Karel Cikryt dash out from the Cikryts’ place and run up along the path, with three blokes some fifty, seventy metres behind him, yelling: ‘Halt! Hände hoch!’, as in, hands up. And Karel rushed up to the path there, turned towards them and shouted: ‘Kiss my ass!’ We had to stop because they were shooting at him across the road. But none of them hit him, and he soon disappeared into the forest.”