František Chmelař

It happened that at night someone was knocking on the window. So dad went there in a hurry, and they, the partisans, who merged and moved towards those villages, because it was the war of 1937 in the years and 1938. So they were preparing for the approaching front and building foresters in the forests of Bohdalov in the gardens, wherever possible. So even the food was buried, for example, in pits, in chests lined with straw. And those who visited those cottages, as they were called, so they were simply always afraid when someone knocked, so they agreed that knocking three times meant a partisan.

”I was born on November 5, 1939, in the family of a peasant in Chroustov, registration number 33. And there I spent my entire youth. And then I only went to school there for one year, then the general school in Chroustov was canceled and I went to Bohdalov. It was a bit of a snag in the winter because the road was covered in snow, and some winters it snowed down really heavily and we walked in the fields. And we also happened to go in groups, of course. We came to Bohdalov and we didn't have the smallest boy anywhere and we had to go back to find him. That was one thing. After that, when a car swept through the road, it was in school in Bohdalov, so we rode a sleigh in the winter and someone was driving skates in front. He put on skates because there was no traffic in Chroustov-Bohdalov road. They only rode there with horses for milk in the morning.”