Jaroslav Schön

“And as the main part of fighters flew over, we were saying: ‘They will wail that the danger has passed in a while and we will go home.‘ But suddenly a horrible roar could be heard. Out of nowhere, horrible rumble and noise could be heard from the left, from the direction of Kozlovice and the hospital. We looked in that direction and four or six huge four-engine bombers were flying from that direction. And they were flying directly towards us - [me], Břéťa Klíma and Tomáš Říčánek. And grandma was standing at the door because the rumble could already be heard. And as we heard and saw them, we immediately headed home. I said that I was lucky. The doors of the basement closed and explosions and shots began. A bomb fell opposite to us next to Hrazdil´s house and next to Mr. Běhal´s blacksmith's workshop. The bomb exploded at Hrazdil´s and then it started to fall down. Trávník, Kozlovská Street and down there. Koliby at the pond and it all fell down.

“It was not a planned bombing of Přerov but an alternative one. But it was not a planned alternative bombing because they wanted to drop bombs on the station. It was a big railway junction. A lot of German trains and a lot of German soldiers changed there. Or on the Optikotechna company where gun sights and rifle scopes were made. But it happened like this. The Germans pulled an internationally forbidden trick and that was that when the emergency was announced, the Germans - and the young men, Lojza Derka and the whole gang who spread it - they unfolded red crosses on the roof. The hospital had a red cross and Optika as well. So, they wanted to drop bombs [on the Optikotechna company] but they saw red crosses there so they dropped them elsewhere. They dropped them a little bit lower and it fell around the Bečva river on [the village of] Vsacko. So, it was, we cannot say a mistake, but they did not want to drop it because there were two signs of hospitals and they, the navigators did not have it in their plans.”

“We did not see them, we only heard a machine gun shooting over Přerov, Vinary and Troubky... And we saw pieces of aircraft or parachutes. We saw something falling from the clouds. That is what we saw. Then they wailed the end, everything fell down somewhere and we then discovered what had fallen where. I took my grandmother´s bicycle and Břéťa Klíma had a bicycle, Fanda Ošťádal... We all took our bikes and rode them at first on the hill to Vinary where a shot down American fighter pilot was on a Lightning. Those were the two-body armed reconnaissance planes. It was shot down there. We reached the place by bikes. We saw that he had already got off the plane and that the Germans were escorting him on the way. He was giving them cigarettes, they were talking and smoking. We saw him and it was OK - we went to the village of Troubky by bike. The main fighters fell down there. It was huge there, the majority of them died but four of them survived. Two were hurt and the Germans captured them and took them to hospital. And that Tom Qalman and [Edmund] Kasold, the two of them escaped from the Germans and fled to Hostýnské hills.”