Master Sergeant (ret.) Jindřich Souček

"People were standing in front of their houses, rejoicing at the end of the war, and without the sirens blaring, American planes flew in and started dropping bombs. Mainly the older, inhabited parts of Mladá Boleslav were hit; the textile factory, which was not in operation and was used as a warehouse, down in Ptak, how was called that part of Boleslav. Then the iron bridge that led to Čejetice was hit, and especially the Skoda factory was hit, that was called ASAP at that time, the most important thing was to destroy the factory."

"I recognized the American planes and knew they were flying during the war, so they dropped the fuel tank attachment there as well. It had an American flag on it, Vasek Domalipů, he was about four years older, so it fell behind their house, and he probably already knew it from somewhere. He brought it home, and his dad forked him, 'Vasek, take it away! Before it knocks our house down.' So I know it was American planes that flew during the war, they had a regular route there. And there's a big difference between Russian and American planes. The American ones had a short front fuselage, very glassy and round. And they were four-engine. And the Russian planes, which I would then confirm and I would find on the camera and I also saw it on television in a documentary, they were twin-engine planes, and they had pointed long fronts."

"I was lying on the sofa with my leg cut off. Slavek Čermák came with someone else, I don't remember who that was anymore. I thought, 'So my partners came to see me.' And they said, 'We're here to tell you that we've expelled you from the party.' I've had my id taken away before, that I was against the occupation, then it went on for a while. So they came to tell me I'd been expelled from the party. I thought they came to visit me as friends. But they gave me the greatest joy they could give me in my life. I'm in peace."

"And suddenly mouse typhus came. The whole school had mouse typhus. There was a hospital next door, so we were lying there. So I didn't lie there because I happened to be on duty at the car park, down there, somewhere else. We didn't leave the service, we chipped in, and this guy went to buy rum, so we all... We stayed there and were on duty for three weeks all the time. Calcium hypochlorite everywhere, everything closed. Mouse typhus manifested itself in the stomach, soldiers had fevers, diarrhea. It was from the mice and the rats because there was a bag of flour or lentils and they put iron on it. The mice went for it, the mouse was killed, and the blood flowed into the bags. Like I said, we had enough."

"I've seen things... There was the county office, the town hall tower, the cops, there were old houses across the street, those were destroyed, and this one was unscathed. Down on Ptak, that was the main road to Debr, where the bombs fell on the old factory, there was a warehouse, the factory wasn't working. There were yellow shoes, stored for soldiers, and plaid fabrics, packets of them. Half of Boleslav then walked in plaid shirts, it became obvious who was there, that they took it. They hit the Jizera bridge in Čejtice. That was it. And there was a credit union in the New Town, a sumptuous and large house. They hit an old building just outside the credit union. If there weren't people there, it'd be a good thing they got hit, they'd still have to be demolished and everything would disappear. There were a lot of casualties, it was an air raid without warning. Suddenly planes came in, bombs were falling. No one knew anything in advance, that was the worst, no warning. When people were at lunch, it fell."

"Well, as my mother stopped me, I stayed there and Mrs. Kmentova was approaching us from the right. We've heard before that the sound of heavy aircraft is coming from the west, and that there are more, that it’s more than one. After a while, we saw five or six planes come in. It was the same one we had seen earlier. This was clear from the front plates, it had glazed front round parts. We waved to them, they flew low, we thought, 'Oh, yes, those are the guys that were flying up there.' So we waved to them, 'Hey, guys!' They started to split up, the grouping of six planes began to spread wide. There was only one left in the field of view that flew straight. When it came to Boleslav, I saw something gleaming in the sun, something falling from underneath. Suddenly, a big detonation, explosion, a big plume of smoke. Mrs Kmentova grabbed her head and began to shout: 'Belvedere is on fire, there is our Bozena!' Her sister lived there, the Doskars was their name. Mrs. Kment was all... And another detonation, more smoke over Boleslav. So mom grabbed us, another detonation, we ran from Boleslav to the other side. We reached the end of the village, and there's a row of apple trees behind the last house. And from there, we heard there was a plane coming. But it wasn't a heavy plane, it was smaller. Mom hurried into the ditch. We lay in a ditch, and a biplane appeared low above the apple tree."