František Chlup

“Inside the room there was light like in the day. Red blaze… I remember that dad shook my mom to wake her up and he told her: ‘Don’t be afraid, there is a fire somewhere, and it’s close.’ The door from the room led to the kitchen, and the kitchen window opened into the yard. He jumped out of the bed, and he opened the door and there was so much light in the kitchen that it looked like during the day. The barn was already on fire. The fire was huge. I remember that we had a cleaning machine which we used when we made hay, and it had an iron framework; the gate already sizzled in fire, ‘ssssss,’ and the machine that stood behind the gate looked like a burning frame. Everything was already crumbling down.”

“There was a steep slope leading to the river and a railing… One German fainted there and he fell down. The unit walked in rows of three and there could be some twenty-four soldiers who were retreating, and the Cossacks were riding around them on horses. Two men picked him up and they tried to carry him – but just for about five metres, and then they threw him over the railing out of the road. He was alive, well, he had been, and he needed first aid. But as he moved he rolled down over the rocks; the slope was about as high as the ceiling here, and the rocks were quite big, and he rolled down to the river. There was not much water, but his arm fell into the water like this... He was breathing. The second or third Cossack stopped and he tied his horse’s reins to the railing and he jumped down on the rocks and he kicked the German. His body turned over. We were standing behind the railing and watching bubbles coming out of the water… He drowned. I don’t know if his family learnt that he had died there… He was a soldier, a young boy, and he certainly had not started the war. In moments like this I realize how nasty the war is.”