František Šmajcl

“They gave us back just two things we bought from grants, a rowing boat and some sort of a cart. And we had this last bonfire and our leader would give a speech, telling us that under such circumstances our troop could no longer function and so he had to resign. And we agreed with him. After that, he spoke with us, the older boys, for quite some time and in the end he made us promise that we would be pushing the cart further as soon as it would be possible.”

“As I was part of Arscout, and Fíza, who had been its leading figure here in Budějovice, had been writing this history of Boy Scout forest schools. And because of that – as he died in February 1989, so he didn't live to see the revolution, and we managed to hide his archive – I was sent to this conference on forest schools in Brno as his successor. That was on January 6th 1990. Břetislav Škaroupka Šrám led the conference. I hold him in high regard, as he had been organizing this illegal gathering called Work Meeting Pig (Pracovní setkání prase) frequented by dozens of Boy Scouts, officially an instructional workshop backed by the local tourist clubs. So it was decided that the conference would take place in Brno, and the mood was just great, as everywhere back then. He was the main organiser and everything went just fine, such a great event, the hall was full, until this express train from Prague (Praha) arrived. As in it came the former forest schools secretary, so the deputy chief Přemek Hauser got up and instead of working together they began to argue, as Skaroupka had been accused of having no right to organize the conference.”