War was just an adventurous game for us for a long time.
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Ludvík Vala was born in Břeclav on 20 December 1935 as the youngest of three children. His father Vladislav worked as a labourer and guided people across the border to Austria between the wars; his mother Františka took care of the household. In September 1938 he witnessed the mobilisation of the Czechoslovak army; soldiers settled in a bunker not far from their house, where Ludvík visited them. In 1939, he joined a preschool where a German teacher, called Tante Heli, was in charge. Later in school, he was a classmate to children in a higher class, as there were not enough teachers. He remembers the air raids on Breclav and the liberation of nearby Lanžhot by the Red Army, during which they hid in a neighbour’s cellar. After the war he went to Junák boy scouts but quit when the communists turned the organisation into the Pioneers. He completed a business academy and worked as a clerk. In 1959 he married and had three children. In August 1968, he witnessed a tank convoy passing through Břeclav, utterly destroying the local roads. He still lives in Břeclav – Poštorná in the house where he was born.
