“The most important program was competing for the ‘beavers’ – the merit badges - of loneliness, courage and silence. For instance, Eduard Verner was gathering the beavers for several years and he was still unable to complete the beaver of silence. When he had only about two hours left until the end of the test, an American jeep just happened to pass by and other Scouts, like Jaroslav Hanus, were trying to upset him and they told him that it was a Škoda car and not a Jeep, until Eda could not stand it any longer and he exclaimed: ‘You idiots, I have to know it!’ And he failed the test again.”
“The Boy Scout leader Kamil Mařík was summoned to the district committee after February 1948 and they told him that Scouting was being banned. Kamil Mařík replied that he had already experienced one ban on Scouting, by the Gestapo, and he got slapped over his face for that and Scouting was thus banned. And Gustav Uchytil, who was in charge of security there, he was from Nová Včelnice, and he slapped him, too, and told him: ‘You are banned, too.’ And when we restored Junák after 1968, Kamil Mařík brought the chronicle, the safe box and the flag and he said: ‘With the Germans, I had had to hand over the money to them, but Uchytil did not demand money from me, I only got slapped over my face and we became banned.’”
“When I was hospitalized in the internal medicine ward, I was lying in the intensive care unit and the head doctor, who knew that I was an athlete, told me: ‘Well, Mr. Míchal, I would not expect to see you here.’ And I said: ‘Doctor, I will not die here, don’t worry about me.’ He said: ‘How can you know?’ I replied: ‘Because my grandpa lived longer than my father and he slowly died of a work injury.’ The doctor started laughing and he asked me: ‘To die slowly of a work injury?’ That was because grandpa worked with bees in the Unified Agricultural Cooperative, and he fell down there and he got pneumonia. And the head doctor said: ‘And he died.’ I said: ‘No, that would have been a work injury. But he planned to surpass his father’s age by one year. And so he recovered and a year later, after he had lived one year longer than his own father, as he promised, a year later he contracted influenza and that’s why he died. This means to die slowly, because his body became so weak, that’s what I meant by saying that he died slowly of a work injury. As I say, if I lived the same age as my great-grandfather, I would be content.’”
Josef Míchal was born on July 20, 1939 in Jindřichův Hradec as the eldest son in the family of Mr. and Mrs. Míchal. He spent his childhood in Nová Včelnice (called Nový Etink at that time) where he also experienced the end of the war. After the war in 1947 he joined a Boy Scout troop and in 1948 he participated in the last summer camp under Komorník near Strmilov. His father was a member of the Czechoslovak National Socialist Party and after February 1948 he was briefly imprisoned for political reasons. This had an impact on Josef’s life as well, because his unfavourable personal-political profile brought about significant limitations for him. As a young man he competed in boxing, representing the Club Slavoj České Budějovice. Apart from that, he was also active in ice hockey, at first as a player and later as a coach of the ice hockey team in Nová Včelnice that he led to victory in the regional league. He spent a large portion of his life working as a car repairman, specializing in car body production, and apart from that he also worked in agriculture and as a miner in uranium mines. During the Prague Spring in 1968 he took part in the events related to the restoration of Junák (Czech Boy Scout organization - transl.’s note) in Nová Včelnice. In 1989 he became a member of the Civic Forum and he joined the political life in his village. At this time he also actively supported the village’s efforts to be recognized as a town, and they attained this status in 1998. Josef also cooperated on the restoration of Junák in Nová Včelnice after 1989 as a member of an Old Scout troop. At present he is retired. Josef Míchal died on 13 March 2018.
