Jaromír Prach

“Interesting things had been happening there. For instance, there was Honza Tomer who later emigrated, and he was a great adventurer. He was able to find a box of air shells dug out by the chicken. He dismantled them, spilled out the gunpowder and made paths of it, which he then set on fire. For us, that was great adventure. Down in the gorges we were able to find real hand grenades, no kidding. He would find grenades and go dismantle them in the cellar. We only waited for an explosion and Venca coming out with his hands torn… I didn’t like to take part in such things, however. I was rather into the magazines and Foglar’s books. It put a spell on me. Then came this beautiful year 1956. Obviously, we had all read he Rychlé šípy comics – even my brother and my friends, we were lending it to each other. My brother then said: ‘What if we also created a club like Rychlé šípy?’ I was very excited about it. We were the first two members, then Jarda Skružný joined, later Venca Kobes, Míra Kasala… And so there were five of us like in Rychlé šípy.”

“We went to the Sázava river where we came to a campfire. There, we cooked dinner and in the morning, as we were waking up, there was some crazy boy who called himself Sheriff Pedro. He began kicking us and saying: ‘Get up, bears, get up – the Russians have invaded us!’ We replied: ‘Pedro, shut up! Please, don’t do such comedy here.’ He said: ‘Really! No kidding, the Russians have invaded us!’ Now, as we saw all the other boys packing up – there were multiple camps – we packed up as well and began leaving for home. At one point, we arrived to a cottage area where we could hear the emotional voices. In the radio, they spoke about a shootout at the Czechoslovak Radio building, about people dying… The cottage people were listening to the radio, also packing up and leaving. We were left dumbfounded. I was there in my military uniform, so I told a guy: ‘You know what?’ – he had a sort of a fire brigade suit – ‘Give me this suit and take my green one. I have to go to my unit in case something was happening there.’ I was practically at a vacation there. On the way home, we were really meeting Russian tanks passing by. We had to take a detour all the way around Tábor. I only came with one friend who joined me; all the others insisted they’d go through Prague, wanting to see what was happening. I told them: ‘Guys, don’t be stupid, don’t go there – you can hear that there’s a shootout.’ – ‘No, no, we want to see for ourselves!’”