"Personally, I was more or less... I was a squad leader, because before that I graduated from the NCO school in Aš. After graduation, I joined the border, the area was called Na Patě, where the restricted zone started, where people were allowed to go only on the basis of a pass. And there we checked the buses and all the people who went into the restricted zone. On the border itself, I was mostly doing border control, checking the stones for violations. Practically strung wires with 15,000 volts running through them. If somebody came in, that was the end of it. Mostly we'd pick up game that had been burned to a crisp. The service was pretty heavy. If I served on the line, for example, in the winter at night we had four and four hours, that is, four hours from that eight to twelve, then back to the company and from two o'clock again until morning. Practically in the winter we were lying on the ground frozen and the next patrol that came in had to tear us apart. If we moved, then it was bitterly cold. Otherwise, we only had one detention there. That was when some intruder from Germany came there. He had the task of destroying the chemical plant in Sokolov in some way."
Miroslav Netolický was born on 25 October 1933 in Záboří nad Labem. He remembers his wartime childhood, for example, he experienced raids by low level bombers on the railway line. He graduated from a business academy. He wanted to get his high school diploma so that he could become a pilot, but due to a visual impairment he was unable to do so. Eventually he joined Tatra Kolín. He did his basic military service in 1954-1956 with the Border Guard in the Cheb region. At that time he also joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ). However, in 1968 he supported the revival process and during the normalisation checks he lost his membership in the Communist Party and his job. After the Velvet Revolution he became mayor of Záboří nad Labem, a position he held for two terms. Miroslav Netolický died in January 2023.
