Ivan Stehlík

"I hadn't thought about whether there would be a demonstration. I was driving past the train station in Brno, past the Grand [hotel Grandhotel – trans.], between 6 and 7 o'clock, and I was stopped by the militia. Red light, militia. They stopped the car, opened the door, I was driving with a friend - they threw us roughly into the back seat. They sat in my car. I had a Škoda and a Prague license plate. They said: 'That's a messenger from Prague!' Which was nonsense! And they drove me to Náměstí Svobody [main square in Brno – trans.] to Běhounská Street. There was a double row, a corridor, with twenty militiamen on each side with batons. They threw us both in there. After the first blow, we went down on the ground and they beat us with the batons for those twenty metres. I was lucky that Franta Mašlaň, a former hockey player who was on duty at the time, was there and said: 'Look, this is Ivan Stehlík, he plays hockey here, leave him alone!' And someone, I don't know how, took the keys, I don't know where, and they took me home. The next morning, I went to practice, and coincidentally the team was taking pictures, so Dr. Houbal was there - he was our hockey doctor - he examined me and said: ‘Look, you have a concussion, don't practice and go home.'"

"I remember the entry of the troops. We were on a training camp in Gottwaldov, in a hotel somewhere. And at five o'clock in the morning, Ruda Potsch was running through the corridors, banging on the door and shouting: 'Boys, get up, we're under attack!' We had our eyes wide open, we never experienced anything like that... So we went to the stadium, packed up our hockey stuff, loaded it into the cars and drove to Brno. Already at the crossroads there were Russian soldiers, tanks. We went to see Náměstí Svobody [main square in Brno – trans.] in Brno, and people were already gathering there. We were afraid. There were some things that the tanks had run over someone somewhere... There were some casualties and we were afraid. If somebody shouted something somewhere, the Russians had loaded guns, so they could have shoot them, you know... There was fear."