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Zdeněk Mrkvička was born on 22 February 1930 in Čejetice near Strakonice as the only child of Zdeněk and Maria Mrkvička. The parents ran a pub in Čejetice and also had a farm. The witness’s father was a former Russian legionnaire. He traveled all over Russia with the Czechoslovak legions, reaching Czechoslovakia via the southern route through the Suez Canal and Trieste after 1918. Over the Second World War, German soldiers guarding the nearby railway line lived on their farm. After the war, American soldiers stayed with them for almost a year. On 17 July 1945, he met General George S. Patton, who was partaking in the ceremonial parade of the American garrison in Strakonice. After graduating from secondary engineering school in Písek, he joined the armory in Strakonice. In the 1950s, the communists nationalized the parents’ pub and transferred their farm to the local agricultural cooperative (JZD). In connection with this, the communists fired Zdenek Mrkvička from the armory in Strakonice and forced him to join the JZD as a pig feeder, which he refused. He left for his wife to Písek, where he found a job at the Kovosvit factory and worked there until his retirement. In 2022, he lived with his wife in Dubí Hora near Písek.
