Mgr. František Mandák

“At the end of the war there were frequent air raids by low-flying squadrons of fighter planes, the so-called “hloubkaři”. We watched the squadrons of aircraft flying above our heads, dropping tinfoil, probably in order to interfere with the radar. From the ground it looked like it was snowing. At night, you could hear the roar and thunder from the bombarded Bavarian cities. Those hloubkaři had such light aircrafts. They flew low, sometimes we even saw the American or English pilot. They would sometimes fly above Rohanov through the valley and we actually saw him not from below, but from above. They mainly monitored the traffic on the roads, the German columns, or any vehicle which was carrying ammunition. They bombed Klatovy train station and the village of Mirotice, which lies behind Strakonice. They were also responsible for the shooting of a truck driver from Podvítovčí. It was the milk man and he used to transport the milk in 25-liter cans in a truck. Every morning, he brought milk from Vacovsko, perhaps even to Stachovsko and Zdíkovsko, to Strakonice, where the milk was processed in a factory. The pilots noticed him in Kleny, which is a place between Mladíkov and Vacov. They fired a couple of flares to make him stop. But he did not stop in Vacov, nor in Přečín, not even in Chvalšovice. That hloubkař was still on his heels and he finally shot him to pieces outside of Chvalšovice. It was at the end of April 1945.”

“One team defended Roklan cabin and the second one was storming it. I was in charge of that exercise being the corporal. Lieutenant Walter was watching the exercise from a distance and advising us. 'You've got to go through that little window’. There were such two smaller windows up to the west. So I tried to get into the cabin through that window, even though I knew that from time to time someone was shooting with blank cartridges from it. The machine guns got a narrower gun barrel in order for them to have recoil. So I pushed myself into the window and luckily I held my old machine gun with the long cylinder in front of my face. The boy who defended the cabin opened fire just in front of my face. I fell out of the window and screamed: 'I can’t see anything!' My face was planted with tiny splinters from the blank cartridge, only my eyes and the nose was saved by my machine gun. I opened my eyes, of course, they were full of tears, and I did see! Lieutenant Walter ended the exercise immediately and since then we hadn’t practiced that simulation again.”

"Those of us who stayed in Nýrsko in the pédéeška (Officer Cadet School) were divided into companies – the Železnorudsko company and the battalions of the Nýrsko company. For about three weeks, I was stationed in Zadní chalupy – it was the 4th border-guard company. That was my first time at the border. One morning when I was on patrol – it was dawning – I realized that right where we were sitting, there grew primroses and daffodils and they were grown over with currants and gooseberries. I realized that actually I was sitting in a garden of one of the houses of a displaced former German village. The village was no longer there - this was all that was left of it, a ruin here and there and some building foundations. And the wooden barracks of the 4th border-guard company."

“The American soldiers brought about ten German prisoners on their car. The\ allowed them to jump down of the deck of the car and one U.S. soldier was guarding them. We, boys and girls, and some other people from Rohanov watched on. And this is what happened. The American soldier pulled out a pack of cigarettes of his pocket on the leg and offered a cigarette to each one of those German prisoners. Most of them took a cigarette in their mouth and the American would light it up. This deed aroused great indignation in Rohanov. After we had seen this we thought about how it was possible that German soldiers were given cigarettes? It was very hard to bear for the adult population of Rohanov and there were even some remorse about giving flowers to the Americans.”