Antonín Zelenka

“The mine shaft was up on the hill, and when we came out, we could see the river valley spread out below. When you climb out from underground and see such a beautiful landscape - that’s something amazing. One time I stood there looking about after my shift, it was afternoon, and suddenly I saw a plane fly in. Not above us, but along the river in the valley - a Messerschmitt. It was about a year since the time I had flown Messerschmitts myself. And there I was, a prisoner just come out of the uranium mine, and I saw a Messerschmitt flying down below. It must have been one of my classmates because no one else flew Messerschmitts at the time.”

“We learnt air tactics. How to fly in threes, in fours, in twos. Colour codes and the names of planes. The pilots from England taught us all that the way they had actually experienced it in combat. How they’d escorted bombers, how they’d protected them, and so on. They taught us all that. So we’d know how to dodge, how to attack. The base rule for combat was to never fly straight for too long. Keep manoeuvring. And to always be aware of what was going on behind you. To see behind you. And friendship. That was another principle.”

“We also had some rude things in the leaflets. Is it all right if I use some rude words? Yes? So for instance: Gottwald’s wife was called Marta, she weighed about a hundred kilos, and there was a song: ‘Hoy, goosies, hoy, Gottwald gives us joy.’ And we added the line: ‘Hundred-tower Prague is glum, Marta has a big fat bum.’ Those were the kind of things we had prepared for those leaflets.”