Eva Tvrzníková

"I was in Hrášek’s home, we were having a St. Nicolas Day party, and we were giving cards with the fleur-de-lis symbol to each other, with all our names signed on them. Then I became sick. I was thirteen or fourteen, and I had quinsy and high fever and a doctor came to see me. At that time, it was common for doctors to make house calls. I had the card next to me, and the doctor looked at it and asked: ´What is it?´ At that time you couldn’t know who you were dealing with. I would have told him what it was, and my mom thus replied instead of me: ´She probably found it somewhere.´ That was because no one knew what might happen. The time we lived in was like that."

"I had to take the silence test twice. When I reported for my first attempt, I was looking forward to it very much, because we had a campfire planned for that evening, and the wake up call the following day would not be at seven, but at eight. That's great, I thought, I will get up and I will already be able to speak, thanks to the time change. I kept silent throughout the whole day. I didn’t say a word during the campfire when the others were singing and playing skits. Then we went to sleep in the evening and I was walking toward my tent. There were six tents, I slept in the first one, and Pomněnka and Beruška were next to me. As I was getting to the tent, Pomněnka said to me: ´Good night, Nohy.´ I wished her good night as if nothing happened. And so I had to start over. But I have passed my second attempt. After that I passed the test of hunger at the first try. This camp was our last opportunity to pass the test of Three Eagle Feathers, because the leaders already knew that we wouldn’t be allowed to continue and that this was our last camp. We still thought that we would go on, but at that time it was already obvious that we won't be able to. And so I passed the Three Feathers there. It was no fun, as I was only twelve. In the last test, I took my piece of tent canvas, blanket, food, that's the most important thing, and water, and I set out. When I reached the place where I wanted to prepare my meal and open the tin, I found out that I had forgotten the tin opener in the camp. Luckily I had my knife with me, and I opened it with the knife. We had to guard the camp. We had to be around the camp all the time. From 10 p.m. till 6. a.m. we were guarded. There were more of us watching the camp, and we were told not to go too far from the camp and to come back if we heard a whistle in case something happened. When I returned to the camp, I thought that I would have to retake this self-reliance test, because they were just disassembling the camp and I didn’t know if they wanted me or not. Then we all went home."