Vladimír Hudousek

"My dad was growing garlic and onions, and by one morning, he had the garlic gone. So he went to the barracks and wanted to see the commander. They took him to the commander, so he told him, and the commander [replied]: 'That's a scum, that's a scum! The only thing possible to do is to beat them. Stick!' So Dad took a stick and actually beat one of them up. There was a flood. There was so much water in the creek after the rain, and he was rolling down the hillside drunk. He rolled all the way to the creek, and he wasn't afraid, and he got in the water - and the water took him down. He could have drowned. And he climbed over the stream, and an old man was standing there with a stick, saying, 'Get back!' And he didn't go, so he banged him over his back with the stick, and the Russian jumped into the water, and he would rather drown than stay there with the old man who was beating him. Dad said, 'The commander said to beat them, so I'm beating them.' The next day, some officer came and looked, 'Oh, yeah, the garlic's gone,' and he left. And the next morning, the onions were gone. Then the old man said it was no use going there. What am I going to do there? And he didn't go there anymore."

"Well, the Russians weren't here; they came later in the autumn. But they did come - the Poles were pouring in. They just ambushed the border policemen, probably locked them up somewhere. They didn't do anything to them; they just locked them up somewhere, and the tanks and transports from Poland rolled in. And I was an idiot, too. One tends to be such a hero. So we were turning over their signs, their signposts, and he was going, and he didn't know where. And I was showing him to drive to hell. And he was trying to run me over, the [bleep] with the transporter. I was glad I got away. And then I was like, man, you've got kids and you're fooling around."