Miroslav Košťál

"The trip was very interesting for me as a kid because we crossed the Green Line. We left Roztoky, and we could still see bombs on the road in the curves above the boatyard. We came to Holoubkov and there was a big barrier on the edge of the woods and a Russian border patrol. My father and the other gendarme - his name was Pytloun, I remember the name; it's interesting - had written official papers saying they were investigating and put all the stamps on they could find. The Russians couldn't read the Latin alphabet, it wasn't Cyrillic, but the stamps were there, so they let them go. In the middle of the forest there was another checkpoint, they also pondered for a while and then let us go. And by the cemetery in Svojkovice, a machine gun was pointed at us and so was a Russian and others ran out. They were hidding behind the cemetery wall, and again a barrier across the road. And again, they thought, the stamps were there, so they let us go. The road goes straight on now, but there was a curve then and still a bit of forest. You couldn't see past the woods. When we drove out of the forest, the first village was Borek, it's part of Rokycany nowadays. Just outside Borek, next to the last house, there was a fence halfway down the road, about half a metre high, coloured, and the other half of the road had a barrier. It was a flagpole with a weight on it. A soldier was sitting in the middle on a little stool with a helmet that said MP, Military Police. I don't remember if he was black or half black, but when we stopped and pulled out our papers, he just waved his hand. He pulled the string, the barrier sprung up, and we were in the American zone."

"My dad got involved, and since he was in a gendarme uniform, he said, 'I'll take care of it! You get out!' He arranged with the German that they would surrender and give up their weapons, and he took them away. There was a small factory, I don't know now, a hall. 'Stay here and don't walk out.' They immediately handed the weapons from the Germans out to the people around. Then they advanced somewhere near the Dejvice post office. I don't know where the post office was at the time, but he was there with another man who claimed he was an officer of the Czech army. They went around the corner and came across five Germans, and started shooting at each other and they shot all the Germans. But the Germans shot his colleague in the foot. My father took him somewhere for treatment. It was raining hard and Dad was all wet, so he went from Dejvice back to Roztoky with a group. There was a message for him to stay in Roztoky and report on duty to eliminate Germans there. He returned to Roztoky in the evening, soaking wet. The next day, he was at work in Roztoky, gathering Germans somewhere; in the school, I think, instead of the German barracks that were there. They collected German civilian families and took them in to protect them from an angry crowd."

"They hid in the house. We knew they were there but the house was gone; it got three hits in the first wave. They searched there, but when they dug into the basement they didn't find anybody in. So he (father) went to Roudnice where they were taking the wounded, but he didn't find anybody there, so he went to Slaný, but he didn't find anybody there either, so he went back to Kralupy and searched again. And then they found them on the staircase. She never made it to the cellar. The raid was on Thursday and this was Saturday. On Sunday, we went there with a truck to bring her in, but they kept saying to wait until all the victims are there. Then an alarm sounded again and people were running out of town screaming, 'Get out of here!' We hurriedly loaded her onto the truck and drove back here to Roztoky. As we were coming from Přílepy to the crossroads to Únětice, there was an air raid on Prague's Vysočany. We saw anti-aircraft gun shrapnels bursting in the sky. We already knew that shrapnel could hurt... sometimes the shards landed in our backyard in Roztoky... so we stopped the car, ran out and hid under the eaves of the field scale house that was there. From there, we watched the full raid on Vysočany. It was like we were on a lookout tower."

"There were women on that train and they wouldn't let the women out. They only let the men out and the women stayed in the cars. Us boys were all over the place to pass things, to hand things over, to take care of things. There were people down who said the women should be given something too. But, how do we give get it to them. So, me and Jirka Šmídl we said, 'We can climb up there.' We used to climb up the cars and steal coal at night when there was nothing to fire in the stove. They said, 'Well, climb up there, we'll give it to you!' We climbed up there, it took a bit of work to get up there, and they handed us two huge bags of boiled potatoes. We dragged the sacks up to the cars, but the women started jumping off the train, threw themselves on the sacks and started fighting over it. That was dangerous, and we had to run away. If they hadn't fought, we could have gotten more in there."