Vlastislav Musil

"Lažany was famous, there was a strict and brutal hierarchy in the military service. It was about ten kilometres from Chomutov, where most of the brass hats lived. After the order at four o'clock, the area was cleared, and the veterans took over the reins. There were cases, I remember, Private Martinec, he was a little bit more simple-minded, brought a chainsaw from the abandonment camp, because he was a lumberjack, and with it he would visit the young soldiers' quarters, and in their sleep, with the saw outstretched, they would threaten to cut off their heads. Under the influence of alcohol, several of the crafters there urged the young soldiers to go dig their own grave. There were harsh penalties for this, the Martinec guy got a civilian bash, about a year in prison. Then there was a trio who had a specialty again, they called it catching blood, that they invited the young soldiers after curfew to come to the washroom with an eschus. And they always broke their noses and they had to catch the blood and drink it, so they got [jail] too. So I can tell you it was pretty rough. I was always there looking for a hiding place to retreat to so that somehow I wouldn't be in the sights of some old hand. I'm talking about the unit I was in for the first six months. The young soldiers provided a canteen for the old hands. This meant that they had to go to the kitchen and beg some food there so that the old hands would arrive, or run with a field full of empty bottles to the nearest pub in Lažany, about a kilometre away, and come back again with a field full of beer at a given time, which was precisely limited. It all started with the admission procedure, which consisted of the young soldiers coming to the canteen, the old hands calling the cooks, and the cooks putting on, for example, dumplings with sauce and forcing the young soldiers to eat, and constantly adding more. And those who couldn't, they went to vomit, saying that they'd come back, and to make their digestion better, they'd knock their quills, using a belt, they'd cut them across the ass. So it was a bit of an attraction. Saigon, it was that you came to the room where you had your bed, your nightstand, period, and nothing. And when you came in, none of that was there, everything was in a pile. Beds strewn about, cupboards open, everything thrown on the floor. In those days, all the stuff in the closet had to be cut into 21-inch piles."

"When word got out at school, it was about 21 January, that the Union of Secondary School Students and Apprentices, the equivalent of the Czechoslovak Youth Union, brought together young people who were trying to identify with the ideals of apolitical youth... So they organised a march to Prague to honour the memory of Jan Palach. So I responded to that call. I was not alone, but from the whole high school, which had about 350 pupils, there were four of us who went. But one thing I can say is that I have never regretted it, and that ethos, that raising of those hopes, has remained with me all my life. There was a strong atmosphere along the way, people joining us, giving us money, supporting us when we went out to eat, not paying anything, carrying banners, carrying slogans and strong emotions. So we got to Prague and in Prague it was again very well organised, we were contacted by university students, we had our dormitories, the Větrník. We were given food vouchers and told where we could eat. The meeting for the funeral at Haštalské náměstí was at nine o'clock in the morning. I can tell you one thing, it was such a mass of people that I had never seen before. I also didn't see the coffin, nor Palach, nor anyone, because it was a procession that went for several kilometres. Only from the amplifiers did I hear a speech, Vilibald Bezdíček, the Minister of Education at that time, gave a speech, in quotation marks a fiery speech. And we were going home by train, and I spent the return journey in such a vacuum. I was completely... Well, I wasn't even able to formulate my thoughts because it was such a great experience for me that it took me about two days to recover."

"The next upheaval was the death of Jan Palach. In that atmosphere it was a shock and, I would say, an appeal to people to start fighting the establishment again in some way. Symptomatically, immediately after the announcement of Jan Palach's death, university students installed a catafalque at the plague column in Brno's Liberty Square, which the SS tried to remove. So a corridor of students was created to prevent this, not only during the day, but also at night. There were enough university students there, my brother was among those who were physically involved, that they prevented the police from dismantling it. Of course, people were swarming, and the cops didn't do much in the daytime, so to speak, because a spark might jump over and there might be trouble, maybe even bloodshed, so at night they rigged up a truck to move it to some vacant place, which the college students managed to prevent, and they defended the catafalque."