"When we went on a trip, we were stopped, how come... We're altar boys. We didn't have any Boy Scout symbol, nothing. We're altar boys. We even went to Svata Hora. The chaplain taught us how to sing at home and we sang the Hail Mary. The only place to sing it was on the Holy Mountain in Pribram. So we went there by bicycle. I had a teacher, one Osvald Rybníček, and he lent me a bicycle for every trip. He knew that we were altar boys, but also scouts."
"It was a trip from us from Uhříněves. Only a certain number of people were invited. We had everything arranged. President Beneš was already here in Czechoslovakia, in Prague, and he came to visit Moravia in Opava. We went there as scouts, the whole troop. We made a roadblock on the sidewalk and the street there, we made a queue so that people couldn't run to him. President Benes walked past us like that and greeted everybody. And Mrs. Benes. I saw these two beautifully and had the privilege of talking to them."
"I enlisted, served two years, and still, I liked the war. Even the Boy Scouts made me like it. Because they started signing up officers with working-class backgrounds. When I got to the army, to the draft, and I enlisted, instead of going after the girls, I went to the officers' school in Moravia. Unfortunately, I graduated, and when I was promoted to lance corporal aspirant and was to take the exams for the military academy, I was fired because my parents and I were politically unreliable, so it was not recommended that I go to officer's school and become an officer."
Jindřich Matoušek was born on 22 July 1926. In 1932 he became an altar boy. The Uhříněves chaplain soon founded a scout troop, which consisted mostly of altar boys. During the Second World War, despite being banned, they secretly scouted. After the Bürgerschüle he trained as an electrician. At the end of the war he witnessed an attack by American dredgers on a column of German refugees in Uhříněves. In 1945 he met President Edvard Beneš in Hodonín. After two years of basic military service, he wanted to become a professional soldier, but the regime deemed him politically unreliable and he could not study at the military academy. During communism, he continued to meet with former scouts. He participated in the revival of Junák during the Prague Spring. After the revolution he continued his scouting activities. In 2021 he was still involved in Troop 35 of the Old Scouts. He died on 26 September 2022.
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!
