MUDr. Jiří Blecha

"I once went to look at the flying field like this and it seemed to me that they were no longer flying. So, I went after one of the guys who were towing the planes to the hangar. And suddenly at the last moment I saw that I was going against an airplane that was attached, of course, behind the truck that was towing it. And I flew into the outboard tank on the wing. It knocked me off the pioneer and I felt like I was bleeding terribly. And then I smelled the blood and I found out that it was this fuel called elerix. Fortunately, I was unharmed. I perforated the outboard tank of that plane by my knee. The whole thing ended up with me being called in by the commander of the regiment that was there at that airfield at the time. And when I got there, he said to me: 'So I hear, doctor, that you're going to cancel our combat equipment. But don't worry about it, we had a jalopy and all that was left was the outboard tank.'"

"I went to a French kindergarten in Prague and we had a teacher, I think she was French. She was wearing this velvet dress once and towards the end of the war she went to open a window and suddenly there was a bang and the teacher fell into the room dead. So that's one of those memories of the war. Then I remember being with my relatives in Vinohrady. This was probably towards the end, the beginning of '45. There was a big bombardment on Prague. And my mother came for me with a baby carriage and took me home to Plavecký Street, which is by the Iron Bridge in Prague, in that baby carriage. And in the meantime, Prague was bombed. There were fires everywhere and it was very unpleasant and we went very quickly, or I did in the carriage, down home."

"My grandfather later became a professor of pathology, microbiology and hygiene in Lviv. During the World War I, when there was a great cholera epidemic and Lviv was besieged, he worked there, of course, and received the Order of Franz Joseph from the Emperor. He was a health councillor and my mother was born in that Lviv. My grandfather later after the end of the war, of course, moved to Bohemia, to Brno, where he became the first dean of the medical faculty, today's Masaryk University. And in the following year, the rector. Then he was entrusted with the great task of building the State Institute of Health in Prague, which he did. And that institute today is called the Institute of Serums and Vaccines. My grandfather secured exceptionally good salaries for his employees. Unfortunately, the tuberculosis continued and my grandfather eventually died of it in 1928."