Bohumil Kožela

"And after the admission test, an officer, a political worker, came to us and asked us how we liked it and what we were going to do and that they would choose someone for the NCO school, and because we had industrial training, they chose us for the NCO school in Pezinok. And so I just casually asked that they promised us that we would go to Dukla to play hockey somewhere, if there was a Dukla that was being founded somewhere. And he asked me, 'Please, where are you from?' And I said, 'Well, I come from Uherský Ostroh and the person in question was an officer from the Old Town. Suddenly there was a spark between this officer and me, and geez, we used to play Ostroh together! Well, let me see. And within a fortnight there was a transfer to the non-commissioned officers' school, and within another fortnight two soldiers came from Zvolen, Slovakia, where Dukla Zvolen was founded, to play hockey. And we changed from green uniforms to blue uniforms and we went to Zvolen and there I spent two years in Dukla Zvolen actually playing hockey. So I actually saved myself for hockey, otherwise I would have been in Bratislava in the field, guarding against the imperialists."

"And in our school, [Rudolf Plajner] got into the mechanical engineering school by chance. And because we didn't have a class teacher, he was our class teacher. I have such a special memory of him, because I had a knee injury while playing hockey here, and my leg was in a cast and I didn't go to school, I was in a dormitory. And I have to say, much to my horror, somebody knocked on the door of the dormitory in our room and the door opened and in walked an engineer, Dr. Rudolf Plajner, my classmate. He came to talk to me about how I was, how I felt, why I wasn't going to class, to school. That was a big surprise, because in all this time I don't remember a class teacher coming to see me at the boarding school."