František Chlup

“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.”

“We, the boys, were wondering what it might be… Somebody said ‘it’s a kind of a rocket,’ or ‘they are flares for guns,’ and what not… Of course, I took one of the boxes home and I immediately started working on it in the workshop. I put down my backpack and bag and I reached for matches… I ignited it and it started doing ‘psssssss’ nicely. That’s a rocket, a rocket for sure, that’s great, I will go tell the boys right away… We always met in the evenings under the chestnut tree in the centre of the village. I decided I would try one more. But meanwhile it had rained, and the stuff was wet.,. I tried a second one, and I set it on fire, and nothing happened. I peeked inside – it was about that long – and it was only about half full. I thus took a pair of nippers, the type you use to pull out nails, I broke it in the middle to open it, and I grabbed a match and I held it close to it… And then I didn’t remember anything else, for a while. The blast was so strong that the steel nippers had scratches from the inside. When I came to myself, I had my nose soaked in a basin with Lysol, because the blast shattered the house and dad probably knew immediately what was going on. They ran there, and they found me lying there in blood.”