Vojtěch Klusoň

“There were two barracks in Vysoké Mýto. Apparently, they didn’t have storage rooms there. One time, there was an empty cellar in the brewery, the lager cellar, so they dumped about a wagon of potatoes there. They always brought something there, stored it away, and then came for regular supply runs from the barracks. They had carrots and beetroot there as well. The soldiers would be loading and unloading it all day, and they wouldn’t give them anything to eat. They had clinker there, it was used for heating, so they’d put the potatoes into the warm clinker and then eat them. Their officer was an aggressive, arrogant sort. I personally saw him hit a soldier in the face, he would beat them up, mash them. They just stood, looked, kept quiet. They behaved horribly to them. They wore boots and toe-rags, no socks, they had an army coat with a white collar, not even a shirt. The potatoes were already rotting, and as they carried them, their uniforms got stained, it was a terrible stench of rotten potatoes. And they’d load up those rotten potatoes in their drenched uniforms and take them to Mýto. They couldn’t even take them in a different vehicle.”