("There weren't any controllers because nobody knew...?") "There were controllers but they didn't know what a swarm of Russians was coming. Nobody did. Nobody knew, only the government knew that." ("And they just started landing...") "They started landing en bloc as fast as they could. They're used to that from Russian airports. They're used to landing wherever they can. Well, there's those runways; when the plane lands, there's different runways and approach runways and stuff. They don't need a long runway with the Antonov. So it's hard to... They're gonna hit the runway and stop soon. So, given the length of the runway, they could just land, you could almost say, one after another. Most importantly, they can land on the grass as well, and a lot of them ended up there because... There were as many controllers as ever, but suddenly they heard Russian in their headsets. They didn't establish connection. They didn't know, nobody really knew."
"The peak of it was Maruška's funeral they guarded the place and didn't let anyone in, just the family. See, Maruška... she was studying in university and was taking a tram from Klárov, going to hand in her thesis. Since she was wearing this triband, like people did back then, a soldier gestured to her to take it off. She just didn't react or maybe made a little smirk. And he just shot her and left her there as she was. He just walked up to the tank - there were tanks there too - and had his snack, just like that. So, of course, some people ran there and called an ambulance and they took her to Pod Petřínem Hospital. But unfortunately, there was no help for her."
"One of my colleagues told me they were recruiting people for glider training at the Točná airfield near Prague, just outside Modřany. Since I had the opportunity to fly a glider with this colleague once and it blew me away, I thought, 'Well, if they're doing training, I'll give it a try.' So I became a glider pilot in no time... and then we went on to get motor aircraft licences. It's amazing because, one, you make amazing colleagues and you stay lifelong friends wherever you are in the world, and two, you gain so much perspective over all the injustices happening on the ground. You rely on yourself up there and have time to think without being disturbed by other stuff. So, because I was so good at it - and I was really good... For example, flying a glider, the motor airplane lifts the glider up to, say, a thousand meters altitude - and then you deal with the clouds and distance and what not. While some colleagues landed before the tugs did, I flew maybe fifty kilometres away, or I'd hang in the air for five hours. I was just terrific at it because I had this feel for it. Everybody let me do it when they saw my interest in it."
She was born in Prague on 9 June 1947. Since childhood she has been involved in sports. She did not attend Pionýr or the communist Czechoslovak Youth Union and was not admitted to university for political reasons in the mid-1960s. Despite working in relatively high-profile positions - first at the Čechofracht shipping and international forwarding company, then selling airline tickets for Czechoslovak Airlines - she consistently managed to refuse ‘offers’ to join the Communist Party. She trained to fly sports aircraft and was, in her own words, probably the only Czechoslovak who obtained a pilot’s licence at that time without being a CPC member. She experienced 21 August 1968 at the airfield in Točná while taking part in a training camp. She and the others successfully camouflaged the airfield so that the Soviet soldiers would not find it. Her memories of the invasion are dramatic; fellow aeroclub member Marie Charousková was shot by a Soviet soldier on 26 August. Jaroslava Mendlová also described the chaotic situation at Ruzyně and the events at CSA, where she took a two-year unpaid leave for having stopped all traffic. Soon after the invasion, she left for Switzerland via Vienna and, thanks to her foreign language skills, found a job as a hotel receptionist. After a few months, however, she returned to Czechoslovakia because of her parents. She got married in 1971. She changed jobs from ČSA to the SSM Youth Travel Agency, which enabled her to attend the Youth Festival in Cuba in 1978. She worked at various travel agencies later on. She lived in Prague in 2023.
Presentation of the book Ten okamžik - Můj osmašedesátý (That Moment - My '68) at the World Book Fair Prague 2018 (JM in the middle, Tereza Brdečková on the left)
Presentation of the book Ten okamžik - Můj osmašedesátý (That Moment - My '68) at the World Book Fair Prague 2018 (JM in the middle, Tereza Brdečková on the left)
Presentation of the book Ten okamžik - Můj osmašedesátý (That Moment - My '68) at the World Book Fair Prague 2018 (JM in the middle, Tereza Brdečková on the left)
Presentation of the book Ten okamžik - Můj osmašedesátý (That Moment - My '68) at the World Book Fair Prague 2018 (JM in the middle, Tereza Brdečková on the left)
