Ing. Jan Startl

"Ivan Havel was a classmate of mine and he was from the same boating club as me. We went down the Vltava River, the Červenské streams, they don't exist anymore, so we were both promoted to be helmsmen there. We each had our own squad, one was the Roháčs, one was the Ledňács. There, Ivan and I experienced that on those Red Currents there was such bad weather, I don't want to say, but it rained for three days and three nights. We were already the leaders of that team. We had tents, of course, and the equipment was that we had ewers and we had to make tea in the morning to at least get some warmth. The food was porridge, it was oatmeal. Apart from the fact that we slept under one tent, we weren't allowed to touch the tarpaulin because otherwise it would leak and rain and be damp. Anyway, it was quite a challenge. But then the sun came out and it was nice and we finished the river. We were pretty much together with this Ivan guy. But on a previous camp, Ivan's brother, who was Václav. He was older, he was two years older. He was still friends with one Lojza, with whom they always did such extraordinary things. They were kind of extraordinary and we looked at them with admiration. But they were also like scouts. I mean, we couldn't call it a Scout troop then. Back then, it was like we were a troop, but we did all the things that Scouts should have as habits."

"I lived on Charles Square, and what happened there was that in February of the year forty-five there was a bombing of Prague, and the air raid was conducted as a direction from Smichov across the Vltava and through Charles Square, so Charles Square also received some bombs, some hits. And next to us was a house in Mala Stepanska, which was destroyed almost completely. It blew out our windows and the inside part, so on the 15th of February we walked from there to Voznice near Dobris, where we spent the end of the war. And the bombing, that's a terrible thing. That's what I remember, although, I mean, that's all I remember from my childhood, because it was such a powerful experience... We didn't know if we were going to survive and what else was going to fall on us and be destroyed. I know that in that Charles Square afterwards, when we came there later, after some two or three years, it was still in ruins rather than a playground and rather than a park. I know that between Černý pivovar and Emauzy and Žitná Street and Ječná Street, there was this house number thirty where I lived, so there were some trees and under one of those trees there was supposedly a shelter where a bomb fell close by, and those who were hidden in that shelter didn't survive. I was trying to find out what happened to the shelter there, if it was discovered, if it was dug up in any way, that sort of thing. But I suppose it was that the shelter was destroyed and the people who were there died. How it was there immediately after the air raid, I don't know. But I do know that when we went back there after about two years to the same place, number thirty Charles Square, it still didn't match the park at all. It was more like an unfenced enclosure, in a rather bad condition. In a way, it had interesting moments for us guys in that we could do anything there and nobody could tell us that we were going to destroy something because it was already destroyed."