Jaroslav Roučka

“Well, we saw an ugly event in Volyně. We were above Volyně and we saw an air raid on a train station by fighter planes carrying light bombs and flying very near to the earth. They dropped a bomb on the train and it went up in a cloud of black smoke. We saw pieces of wood flying around in the air. Then we went down the hill to look at the station and that was something. It must have been a refugee train, loaded with Germans fleeing from Hungary in fear of the Red Army. It was a mess. Corpses dotting the ground, there were dead people everywhere. The doctors that treated the wounded resembled more butchers. People were lying around unconscious and the railway tracks were bent towards the sky like a sled.”

“A drunken soldier went to the parsonage with a gun. He pointed the gun at the parson. Then he somehow ran away and walked to the other side of Čkyně. He came to somebody’s house and pointed his gun at him as well. The incidents had already been reported to the military police. The guy living in that house had somehow escaped him and by the time the police came to the house, he was just running out the door. As it was already dark, the policeman thought the soldier was escaping and shot him in the arm. It was a clean shot through and they took that guy on a Harley to a military field hospital in Vimperk where he was treated. That guy actually profited from it as he was paid damages for the injury. It was a poor fellow.”