Milena Raisová

"And so Schörner's army was at Hradec Králové. And they decided or were ordered to go to Prague, and to level Prague from the eighth to the ninth. And the Schörner's army went along our Náchodská Street, so to Prague. Well, they came to our last house, they rode bicycles as a kind of vanguard, they were such young boys and they had such armoured fists. It was a kind of a pole, and at the end was a ball, and that was a weapon. And when they got to our house, they met the motorcycle there in front of our house. And he was shouting, 'Achtung! Achtung!' And he was shouting, 'Im Prag, Armee.' And he was shouting to the whole village, 'Armee', to this whole street. Suddenly everybody got scared, the wheels started turning, somebody dropped his armoured fist in the rush. That's when the house literally shook."

"I remember one thing from the war, when we were also ordered or had to bring some clothes for the German soldiers who were at the front. Well, like sweaters and coats and things like that. Well, we didn't have anything like that at home, and so my mother cut off some socks and made some kind of something out of it so that they would pull it over their hands so they wouldn't get it wet. I thought it was awfully poor and she said... For shame... I thought I was going to go to that school with it, so I protested and said I wouldn't go then. Well, for the first and last time in my life, dad slapped me because he told me I had to. We as kids couldn't understand that, that our parents would get hit for that. Because it was considered sabotage not to do something like that. So we all had to bring something like that to those soldiers at school sometimes. But anyway... Everything has an end, so the war had an end."

"And what did Chvaly look like? An empty road. No cars, nobody owned a car. If one car passed in a day, maybe even a week... And it was completely empty. But what cars were driving - and I always watched this, I remember we would stand on a stool or a chair to see it from the window - we were about three years old at the time, and horses would go by. At Xaverov, Baron Špaček had a postal service, and he had many horses stabled there. Early in the morning, about ten of them, maybe more—I couldn’t count back then - would head towards Prague, delivering the mail. And in the evening, they’d always return home. We, as little kids, always looked forward to seeing them, those horses... They were so beautiful. And even the wagon… There was the coachman. Oh, it was such a sight! And they’d always return to Xaverov for the night to rest, only to set out again the next day."