Karel Vlček

"When they ran out of petrol or diesel or a horse when they couldn't, they let it go or they sat with the others and let them all go, that's how they were fleeing. And a lot of us were keen on it, that's what we used to talk about, the boys, everybody had a gun at home, signal guns, that was the craze, bayonet, rockets, every boy had a gun. So there was ammunition in it, I remember I found a tin in one of these cars, about five or ten pounds, it was jerky, beef jerky. I was worried at first if it was poisoned. My mother made soup out of it for about ten years, and she put a spoonful of it and boiled it up... beef soup. And I found my dad a box of cigars. A completely sealed box, I cut it open, we each had a dagger, and there were cigars. Daddy smoked a pipe and thin cigars, so this time he had cigars. We used to collect ammunition in those cars on Na Rovinách, we always put that in a pile, we put some branches on it, and we made a trail out of gunpowder, and we lit it on fire, and when it came to the pile, it started banging, there were grenades, all kinds of things. And we were hiding, we thought that nothing could happen to anybody, and nothing happened to anybody. Only after that, there were military repair shops and there were military vehicles, we used to go in there too, there were a lot of bullets there too, and there were bullets, they were called dum-dum. A normal bullet has powder in the cartridge and it shoots a bullet, and in this bullet there are other fuses and explosives. And we didn't know that. My friends and I were in one of the transporters and there were two others in the other one, and they were trying to pry it open because we wanted the gunpowder, so they were prying it, well, so did we, but we didn't get hurt, but it exploded in their hands and they were both killed."

"There were also conscriptions of horses to the front. There was a big town market here, today it's called the Town Gardens. It was set up for that, there were these long railings, metal railings, and there were rings, and they tied the horses to that. There was a scale, there was a well, and then there were regular markets, horse markets, and then the Germans started doing it for themselves, and the way they did it was that the farmer was notified that he had to come with his horse, they found out who had how many horses and what kind of horses they had, and they had to come. And there was a German officer there, and they had the jodhpurs, the boots, and with the normal conscription, the boys were always assisting, we didn't even go to school because it was a fun for us, but these had to come in front of the soldiers, and the soldiers would look at the horse, hooves, teeth, vet it was, apparently, and if the horse met the requirements for military service, they'd immediately burn a brand on the back of the horse, and they'd pay for it on the spot, I remember they paid the farmers on the spot, or they'd take them to the station and take it away in wagons. Some of the farmers were crying, it wasn't a pretty sight either."