“Another fairy tale was about Scouts who took a two-hump camel from Úvaly to the zoo. Miloš Forman writes about it, about the story of a camel that was grazing in the fields and the local people caught him and gave him a horse’s halter and they were thinking how to get him to the zoo. They chose the Scouts for the task. Roman Bubák and Vladimír Kučera and I thus became a three-person team that was riding the camel to Prague. In Žižkov we were supposed to hand over the camel to the team from Prague, but nobody came there, because the suburbs of Prague ended in Ohrada, and we thus had to walk with the camel through Prague, between all the trams and cars, all the way to the zoo. It would take longer to tell all of it, but I used this story for entertainment during evenings in the Prague woodcraft school.”
“In May 1945 we Scouts assembled in one army squad which served to defend the town Úvaly, and we had a Scout patrol there. We were incorporated in the so-called Revolutionary Guards, which were called RG. They were derisively called LG – looting guards. Our task was mainly to take care of the German captives and of German citizens who held in detention at that time. Since Úvaly is located in the middle of deep forests between Klánovice, Šestajovice, Cibřina and Říčany, there were German army bases in these forests, and we were transporting artillery grenades, mines and bombs away from there. It was quite dangerous. The driver of the car which was taking the ammunition away refused to go with us, because he was afraid it would explode. We were just sitting right next to it. We were also bringing the German captives to work in the fields, which had to be put into order, because the fields had been damaged in May when the Red Army passed over them when they liberated us. The German soldiers were thus working in the fields. That was the first time that I witnessed the death of German soldiers as well as Germans murdering Czech people. This RG brigade’s activity actually began with barricades, which had been built in Úvaly to protect it from Schörner’s German army, which had its staff in Poděbrady, and to protect it from his tank army, because the tank corps and battalions were concentrated south of Prague close to Zbraslav and they wanted to pass through Prague to the west. In that case, massive fighting would ensue, and this was to be prevented by the barricades. As a fifteen-year-old, I was throwing train cars down from a bridge, for instance, so that the tanks would not be able to pass under the bridge. Unfortunately, Germans caught several Czech people from Úvaly and they murdered them in the forest. Unfortunately we also witnessed the Russians who were shooting these German captives in a remote place in the woods and making sure they were dead by giving them one more shot to the head.”
“It was called group STD test. STD stood for sexually transmitted diseases and after 1954 we had to undergo examination in the place where we were. They arrived there and we had to give blood samples. Some nurses arrived to the construction site of the Krušberk water reservoir to take our blood samples to test whether we had sexually transmitted diseases. Every young man had to undergo this examination. The way they were doing it was that they took blood samples from the workers, engineers, assistants like us, and so on. Unfortunately the nurses didn’t have enough needles, and they were thus using used needles for taking blood from us. I contracted infectious hepatitis there. I thus spent my university studies on a diet with hepatitis, and my eating habits were poor as a result, which eventually helped me because I didn’t have to go for the army service for this reason. But fortunately during the medical examination for the last army draft when I was in the fifth year of my studies, the doctor in the draft committee happened to be my older schoolmate from grammar school, and he advised me: ‘Vladimír, don’t waste this chance, they are interested in you, you would not have to be drafted to a regular army unit and serve with a rifle, but they would send you to the Military Engineering Institute.’ So I accepted this, because it meant that I avoided the military training with firearms and all that, and with the exception of the first month, I also got to live at home instead of in the barracks in Prague. Therefore I have no experience with living in army barracks or with shooting. There was always somebody who liked to take my cartridges in order to have a shot from his rifle. I was afraid of it, because we all then had to clean the rifle barrels. I didn’t have to clean it because my rifle was always clean. I only had to wipe it with some oil and that was it.”
Vladimír Kolomý, aka Maják (“Lighthouse”) by his Scout name, was born March 18, 1930 in a Catholic family in Úvaly. His Scout and student life was soon after interrupted by the war. At the end of the war he and his friends joined the Revolutionary Guards and they were taking care of German prisoners of war, carrying mines out of forests and pastures or building barricades against the soldiers of Schörner’s German army. In 1947, which was also the year of the World Scout Jamboree in Paris, Maják participated in the woodcraft school in Sázava. Later he decided to focus on the woodcraft school more intensely, and he served as its instructor for many years. After the communist coup d’état Vladimír successfully graduated from secondary school in spite of problems with the new political regime and he began his studies at the Czech Technical University (ČVUT) at the faculty of civil engineering, which became his life-long profession.
Maják is an exemplary Scout, who not only adhered to the values of Scouting throughout his entire life, but who was also active within the Scout organization whenever the regime permitted it. In the 1960s he established the 38th and 41st troops Ječná, which still exist (currently under the Prague unit which is likewise called Maják). Maják is now a member of the unit Šipka (“Arrow”) in Prague-Dejvice, and he organizes get-togethers with friends from school and from the Scout organization. With his wife Dagmar, who is also a Scout, they have been passionate about culture all their lives. As a young man, Maják was an actor in the amateur theatre in Úvaly. He recently became a great-grandfather for the second time. Vladimír Kolomý - Maják passed away on October, the 23rd, 2022.
Maják in the Scout camp in 1970. From the left: nurse Mirek, Akéla, Maják, Vladislav Jech (Kamzík), Eda Marek (Hroznýš), Helena Trnková, his wife Dagmar, nurse, cook, Eva Jechová
Maják in the Scout camp in 1970. From the left: nurse Mirek, Akéla, Maják, Vladislav Jech (Kamzík), Eda Marek (Hroznýš), Helena Trnková, his wife Dagmar, nurse, cook, Eva Jechová
