Vítězslav Sochůrek

"I started out first with the military traffic regulators, dropping the first one off about a mile past the gate at the crossroads, one or two, I think, one at a time. I went round the crossroads like that, going up to somewhere near Tabor and then around, Tabor, Bechyně, because then there was a trouble just outside Bechyně, I would unload them and pick them up again. The tanks went out, there was an emergency at that time, the enemy on the Polish side, that Wałęsa was raging there or whoever. I was going back, I drove many kilometres to pick them up. At the crossroads by the bridge, he was lying there on the ground, I thought, 'He's frozen...' He wasn't frozen, he was drunk, he was good. We picked them back up one by one, I remember I had to load them all up. The tanks were going different ways. I had a commander with me, he was a lampooner. We got back, we unloaded them at the unit, it was, high five, one in the morning and that I had to go get bread. It was freezing like crazy, I still went to some bakery to get bread, I remember the bread froze on the bucket. I covered it with a camouflage tarp, but I was so exhausted because I was still driving. I had a blackout on the way back, I had a vivid dream, I was dozing off, and he was like, 'What's up, what's up?' I stomped on it, we drove a bit more, it wouldn't brake, it was icy. 'I ran him over!' - 'Who?' I dreamt a man had gone in and I ran him over. So I went back to look, and it was just a dream, I was completely dazed 'I have to sleep.' He let me sleep for a quarter of an hour, and then he told me we had to come back with bread. That's the kind of experience I have. Then they brought a tank from this training or this... to our unit. It was dirty and muddy. What we learned then was that there was a creek not far from Bechyně, the creek went under a curve, the tank got skidded there, turned and fell down the turret, turned into the creek. It was a muddy stream, such mud. Four of the crew were there, there was one enlisted soldier and three base guys and they weren't able to pull them out. One said he needed a wrecker and he needed at least two. One got there and they were waiting for the other one. And he said, 'No, pull him out!' They were knocking on them, knocking on each other there. They ripped the rope and didn't get them out, didn't wait for the other one, he arrived not twenty minutes after. They froze there and drowned. And the tank was at our unit. They sent him to us because he was from somewhere in Písek or Tabor, so that they wouldn't have him with them, because the soldiers would probably riot pretty badly, taking their personal things out of the tank, well, purple shit. I also know that when the tanks were running, I talked to the military traffic regulator for a while. A delayed tank was passing by, and I was standing on the curb. The driver hit the gas, and on the cobblestone road, the tank skidded and headed straight for me with its tracks. And when I tell you, it was just ten centimeters, and I could have lost my legs... Because I was standing on the curb and the tank hit the curb, there were four cuts on the curb. The curb was plowed like crazy. And if the curb hadn't been there, you know, and I was standing far enough away, he took it, it shot off, the tracks just took and hit the curb. And he drove away. I was slapping my feet and I said, 'You girls survived!' Really, when I saw the tank somewhere, I just calmed down. That was unfortunate."

"So, from this company, the old hands came to watch us. Finding out who was going where. 'Where are you from, are you from Prague?' - 'I'm from Liberec.' - 'Good for you.' Because the Hungarians had a bunch of old hands, about forty of them, and the Hungarians had twenty. And the old hands from Prague were choking them hard. They didn't speak Czech, so every night after Rudé právo, the newspaper, and they had to read Czech. They were from Nové Zámky somewhere and they didn't speak Czech. Maybe today they're glad that the old hands, they were mostly Prague people, taught them Czech. There were Hungarian intellectuals among them, there was one blond Furuglia, I still remember him, blond Hungarian, I thought: 'Hungarian is black as a log.' some of them had really low IQs, but there were intellectuals among them. And they were good at stewing, they were already looking at us. 'And you'll bring me Sunday and Saturday at the weekend, you'll go for Christmas, you'll bring me tea or cocoa in the ewer.' They were choosing who would serve who. And they were unpleasant, and most of all they had it in them, the annoyance from those Pragueers who were stifling them hard and humiliating them. But they taught them Czech, they forced them. Ninety percent of them learned it. That was the first. 'Where are you from? Where are you from?!' If it's not from Prague, it's good, we won't slap you in the face."

"Or the experience again. A tank was coming from the town again, and again in the curve, that was our observation post, a tank full of bricks. I don't know which day exactly. Then we learned that it might have been a tank that knocked down the arcade by the town hall. Because one soldier came out, the tank wasn't going very fast, it had a visor blocked with stones and bricks. He climbed out and threw bricks backwards onto the beautiful road as he drove to get to the periscope to clear it. He was climbing on the tank while driving, they didn't stop, he had to clean it for the driver while driving, I saw with my own eyes how he was throwing rubble and bricks behind him."

"We were in a curve, looking at the tanks that were driving, some of the guys pulled out slingshots and shot at them, well naive, they shot at them with slingshots." - "Like rocks or crampons?" - "Rocks, what they found where, absolutely ridiculous. Someone said, 'If he'd come out and sprinkled this place, we'd be dead.' There were mounds like that, now it's overgrown, it's woods. But it wasn't there and you could see pretty well around the bend. One of the greatest experiences I had there was driving a ZIL [Soviet military truck] from Rochlice, that is, towards the centre, in the opposite direction was a tank. That was probably originally an Englishman, he was going on the left. He was actually going Russian on Russian, we were standing over it, and as they were building Zdeněk Nejedlý's concrete block, the whole side is built with beautiful granite stones. It's a beautiful wall, it's still there today. And this ZIL saw that the tank couldn't get away, so he pulled it to the right, there was a wider sidewalk. He rammed it into the wall, it went from half a metre to three metres, a beautiful hundred metre wall in a curve. He rammed the ZIL into it and the tank rammed into his door. The tank kept going on the left side, destroyed a beautiful concrete road, suddenly got rear-ended. And the ZIL, it died, it was rammed into the wall, it couldn't open in the wall. And on the other side they dented his door, it was warped and he couldn't get out. Me and the guys, there were seven of us up there, we watched for about five minutes, and nothing. All of a sudden he opened the roof lid and climbed out. Where did it come from, there were twenty-five people, maybe thirty people, all of a sudden they surrounded him and wanted to beat him up. I'd estimate him to be about sixteen years old, a scrawny, bushy-eared kid. And this gentleman from Shlikovka, who used to go there to garden, in boots, he was an old front man, and he was fluent in Russian. We approached, and I saw that they had surrounded the soldier, that they were going to lynch him. He must have been there alone. It was a two-man ride, but he was alone. And the front man: 'What are you doing here, do you know who you are?' And he tells us that he doesn't know where he is, that they told him that we were ambushed, that there are collaborators here, that they want to occupy us and that they are saving us. So that's what they were lied to. I remember that well. I know that in the end nobody did anything to him."