"Baden-Powel began with Jamborees in 1907. These international Scout gatherings, called Jamboree, are being held since 1920. The first one was in 1920 in England. Since that time, they have been organized in various countries of the world. This year, there was already the 22nd meeting in southern Sweden. As a young boy I was lucky to participate in 1947, when I was fourteen, in the great world Jamboree in France. That was our largest excursion, counting 500 boys from Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia. We spent four weeks in France and for one week we were invited by the French Scouts to travel to the Vosges Mountains and to Normandy, where the Allies landed at the end of the war."
"I attended the grammar school in Poděbrady, called King Jiří of Poděbrady Boarding School, which was organized by the principles of scouting. The school was located in the Poděbrady chateau. Each class was led in the same way as one Boy Scout troop, divided into several patrols according to the Boy Scout model. One of my fellow brothers there was the well-known film director Miloš Forman. He came from Čáslav, and he was an orphan who had lost both his parents. He was in the same troop with me for about a month. It was an all-boys' school built on the English model."
MVDr. Jiří Soukup was born November 6, 1933 in Městec Králové, where he attended elementary school. In 1943-1951 he studied grammar school in Nový Bydžov. After graduation he continued with the university study of veterinary medicine in Brno. He completed his studies in 1956. Since that time he has been living in Slaný, where he moved after accepting a job placement offered by the Ministry of Agriculture. At that time, his older brother, also a veterinary, had already been living in Slaný for four years. Jiří Soukup still lives in Slaný. In 1945 he joined the Boy Scout troop in Městec Králové for the first time. He was a member till August 1950, when the local organization was absorbed by the Pioneer (Czech communist youth organization - transl.´s note). He renewed his Scout membership for a short time in 1968 in Slaný. The Scout organization was disbanded again in September 1970, and he could thus continue in his work only after 1989, when he took on the leadership of Old Scouts in Slaný after the death of his brother Vladimír. He became a reporter of Junák for Old Scouts in the district organization, and he has attended several international Scout gatherings. He died in 2022.
