"Then during the war, until the end of the war, Russian prisoners of war came to us. So there were fourteen or fifteen of them in the evening when they gathered there. And there was one refugee, a Pole, who used to come to us permanently. He was eighteen. He lived a short life then, because the Russians didn't like him, so they murdered him in the forest. He stopped coming to us. My mother gave him a coat so he wouldn't be cold in the forest. My mother liked him very much because he was the same age as my brother. He was Polish, I don't know exactly where he came from. His parents had a big farm. He said, 'Franta, you'll come with me after the war.' But unfortunately, the poor man didn't get it. The Russians murdered him. It was such a coincidence. I used to go mushroom picking, and when I walked by one of the slums, I smelled a smell. I thought, 'Shit, there's something here.' So I went and they buried him and his feet were showing. So I went home and I told them, and my parents called the police right away. There were two Germans on the job who went to dig him up, the Pole. He was already decomposing. Now they invited me over because they wanted to see if I could tell who he was. I recognized him by the coat my mother gave me. They left him that nice coat and he is buried with that coat in Újezd. They used to put these people there. So the undertaker buried him against the wall." - "How old were you then?" - "What year was I in school? In the municipal school, I was ten or eleven. Ten years old."
"So I lived through a lot during that war. Then the Gestapo came to school, showing revolvers: 'Does Dad have this? Do my parents have it at home?' He brought the revolver from home. My brother used it for guerrilla warfare back then. He was still with them during the war. He had the revolver. I remember when the Revolution was going on, he carried it on his hip like a bandit. I want to point that out. During the war, we had high-frequency power lines, and they had to throw wires on those wires to break the power lines. I watched that as a kid. There was this rock and there was this line underneath it, And my brother threw it on. When he threw it on the wires, it made a huge fire and the wires broke. That's the kind of experience I had."
"The credo was drive, drive, drive. Then, of course, I got a car in the army. Then this commander of mine gave me the task of going to the ministry by car. I was fortunate enough to go to the ministry by car, a passenger car. And there it was again, 'Sign this, sign this, you're going to school. You'll get an apartment in Prague.' But it was to move there again. I used to go around with all the fat cats to different exercises. I'll tell you the experience. Doupov, there was a big military area. That's where I used to go with those officers. They said, 'Wait for us here, we're having a drill.' I usually went with the referees from the ministry. Now I was standing there, suddenly banging on the window: 'What are you doing here? Leave now! I said, 'I have to wait here.' 'No, no, no, leave immediately or you'll blow up.' So I had to leave with the car. I drove about a kilometre and suddenly I look, a huge bang and a church blows up in the distance. I remember it like today, first the tower went up and then it all came down. That's what it was like. Then I went to Sumava a lot with those officers. On the border, I mean on the line, it was a line then. You walked this way and on the other side was Germany. I got there as a soldier with that car, but not otherwise.
Then I did a lot of driving in Prague. Then I got to Želejov. That was so much fun back then. They left me with my wife till morning. They went to Sedmihorky, they had a meeting in the spa. They came for me in the evening, there was a big party there, so my wife and I went there."
Ride, ride, ride, I didn’t care about anything else
Jan Horáček was born on 17 May 1933 in Želejov in the Bohemian Paradise. He grew up in semi-solitude on a farm where the family farmed. During the war, people listening to radio broadcasts from London gathered at Horáček’s house, and his older brother joined the partisans. Jan worked on several state farms. In 1950 he joined the Communist Party. A year later he entered compulsory military service. He became a driver and continued to do this job after his return to civilian life. He wanted to become an airman, but because of a diagnosed congenital lung defect, he ended up becoming an army driver. He considered a career as a professional soldier, but at his wife’s request he went into civilian life. The family settled in Turnov. He started as a driver at the Rohozec brewery, where he worked until his retirement.