František Lesák

“I’ll mention Masaryk, one specific event. We were, it was warm, sometime in June, and now suddenly we were playing there, and there were seagulls in the Šárecký Stream. In short, we were catching them – catching, you can imagine, if they pecked you, that’d go right through. So while we were looking, we suddenly heard a voice, we heard a horse, that it’d stopped. And we heard: ‘Well, children, how are you, what are you doing?’ – ‘Well, sir, if you want, we can give you a lobster that we caught.’ And he said: ‘And what of your dad and mum? Do they have work?’ And we said: ‘Well, they’re employed, both of them.’ And he said: ‘That’s good.’ I remember that like it was today. ‘It’s good that they have work. Be good and listen to your parents.’ And off he went. Why did he ride through there? He found us there another two times or so. Because there was the manor house in Veleslavín, and his wife was being treated there.”

“[Q: Where you on the barricades?] No, I wasn’t on the barricades; like I was saying I had these courses here and I was a pharmacist, so I started a sickbay in Prague in Břevnov, on Kutnauer Square. And on the left, I liked that, there was a big family residence, and it had two garages next to each other. I’ll go back a bit. It was a Saturday, and I went off to sort something out in Pankrác. So I went to Pankrác. Already when I was passing through in the tram in the morning, around seven or eight o’clock, and when I was passing through Wenceslaw Square, that’s where it began, there were little flags everywhere, hanging from the windows, but Baťa had a flag going all the way down to the ground, and the biggest and best hotel in Prague at the time, they also had one down to the ground. Well, so I got this infirmary up and running, so I had it equipped pretty quickly, and there were three, four girls there. One was a real nurse and the others were volunteers. So I wrote them what I needed, and I hadn’t even noticed, but the nurse crossed the road and there was a pharmacy right opposite. I was astounded by what all they sent me. They sent me absolutely everything; I did a course for it, some 40 or 60 hours in all, so they sent me hemostats. And just imagine, obstetrical forceps as well. I said I hoped those wouldn’t be necessary, but no matter.”