"We had a big transformer failure and [the State Security] kept saying it was sabotage. But in the meantime, there were the events of August and also the great heat. And the transformers were so overheated that one blew up. Well, half of Kroměříž and the whole district was in darkness for about a day before we put it into operation. So, they came to investigate the sabotage. They dug through the papers to find out how it happened, how it was switched off and on. So, we - we installers - came out victorious."
"He was coming onto our roll-call, as we used to say - on the bully place. We lined up and first they disarmed us. They literally disarmed us. They collected everything. Our rookies surrounded us with rifles, and the minister of defence [Lomský] read an order: 'The basic military service of the year of so-and-so is extended by one year.' Well, and that was a tragedy. Some of the guys there were already married, I was about to get married too, because my girlfriend was already expecting. And now what?" - "And were you quiet, or did anyone have any reaction to that?" - "There was shouting and fuss, so we sat there until the evening. Then they herded us into the quarters and left us to contemplate. They stopped sending us to the guards. We were just there like jerks and that was even more stressful."
"On the fourth, when they blew up the bridges, so that the natives, the men, would not prevent them - as happened in Břest [all the men from Břest were driven to the church in Skaštice], so at our place, it was not known, afterwards I did inflame it, there was also this: one [probably Bedřich Gardovský] describes that men from 16 years of age and up were taken by military patrols towards Hulín. Gardavský describes this. I wrote to him and said: 'My dear sir, I was a little boy, but I remember them. They were taken to Bílany, guarded by the pond all day and locked up in a pub for the night. They were as they were driven out, they had no food and nothing. The Germans allowed that bread and water could be taken there, but only the kids could go there. So, we went there as children with jug among the men and gave it to them. Then night came and they got befell [order – trans.]. And overnight there wasn't one German.'"
Antonín Hořčica was born on 24 January 1934 in Bílany near Kroměříž in Haná to Antonín and Františka, née Stančíková. The family with five children lived in a small house in the local part of Bědakov. The father worked at the sawmill in Hlinsko pod Hostýnem and the mother helped in Bílany at a farm. During the World War II, Antonín attended a German school in Kroměříž. Brother Jaroslav forced to labour. Antonín was interested in the written texts from an early age. Together with a friend as children, they enthusiastically played theatre for their peers at home. Later in adulthood, he became a chronicler of Bílany and wrote a memoir of the fire brigades in the Kroměříž region as well as his own memoirs. Antonín’s educational opportunities were influenced by his father’s expulsion from the Communist Party in 1952 after he spoke out against the establishment of a unified agricultural cooperative (JZD) in Bílany. Antonín therefore was apprenticed as an electrotechnician of power equipment at the Východomoravské elektrárny in Přerov (later ČEZ) and started a one-year coal job at the Barbora mine in Ostrava. He spent the following compulsory military service in the Anti-aircraft warfare (PVO) in Brno. Due to the ongoing Hungarian uprising in the autumn of 1956, his military service was extended by three months. He got married and worked most of his life as an electrician in substations. From 1952 he was a member of the Volunteer Fire Brigade and from 1971 to 1976 he was involved in municipal politics. Since 1990 he has been the chronicler of Bílany. In recent years, he gave talks to children and the public about the history of Bílany. Antonín Hořčica died on February 14, 2022.
