Jan Svoboda

"We were on a training exercise in 1968. I suffered a knee injury. So before the Russians came in, I was in hospital in Olomouc, and then I was transferred to Jihlava. When the 'friends', the Warsaw Pact troops, came in, I was already in the infirmary in Jihlava. Our regiment drove tanks from the training area in Libavá to Jihlava. The guys told me how they met them. Right on the way out, they met the Poles. Going tanks against tanks, head on, they were waiting to see what happens. Suddenly it was like ants running away from the tanks. The Poles left their tanks and ours drove past them. The commander shouted, they stopped and looked at their weapons. The commander shouted and they went on. I guess the Polish army didn't feel like fighting."

"When I became an apprentice, I had nothing to do in my free time, so I started taking music lessons on the clarinet. When I came to the high school in 1963, I was looking for a place to play the clarinet, a dance orchestra. I was looking into opportunities, and suddenly a boy, Olda Pivnička, came to me and said that he had been given the task as an official to start an orchestra, a big band in Nová Huť. The authorities wanted it to be under control, that's why they did this with factory clubs. He asked me if I wanted to play the saxophone. Well, why not; I did. Since I didn't play the saxophone, they lent me one from the local music school. I went to rehearsals, they had a guitar player who wasn't very good. I said I could learn it in a fortnight. So I was playing the guitar in 14 days. Those were the best years of my life. Hard music. Chuck Berry, Richards, Bill Haley, Presley, Beatles, Rolling Stones. This kind of stuff, hard rock. We were good at learning, we didn't have to learn much. And those were the best years I ever had."