Jan Michálek

"But I also spent a certain part on that line [the border], I was there for a month and I said to myself, there were always some guys with the older guy I went with who said, 'Hey, if you see something, shoot, if you don't shoot, they'll shoot you'.So it was a different schooling for me, a complete school of life, because I served in the northernmost tip, in Rumburk, the village of Liščí. There it was called Liščí, on the map, on some maps it's not, but on some detailed ones it is. Next to that was the village of Lobendava, in which there were wonderful, really wonderful, huge farmhouses. It was all abandoned, where the Germans had been, because they were Bohemian-Germans, just like in the southern border area or here, for example, in Jihlava, they were also Bohemian-Germans. But it was a terrible sight there, when the patrol was checking, we were obliged to go through those barracks to see if there was anybody there, although there was no chance for anybody to get there, because the border zone reached many kilometres from the normal traffic, so actually it was impossible for anybody to get to the line. Still, they were crossing here and there, that was clear, but in those barracks it was like people had just left. There were blankets, there was everything, but everything was ruined, smashed from those predecessors of ours, those soldiers, and also, I would say, from the looting guards, the Czech ones, who thought, I'll go to the borderlands, and what anyone could steal, they stole it, stole it as if for themselves. They took something to the nearby villages, including cattle and everything. And it was so sad."