Vítězslav Velc

“On the way back we were all really tired, and it happened that the convoy stopped. I called to the traffic op, how long they reckoned we’d stay here. They said it’d certainly take a while, that we can take a nap, no problem. When it’ll be our turn, they’ll bang on the armour to wake us up. I fell asleep, and suddenly I hear bashing and wake up. I look out and there’s no one standing in front of us any more, a clear road. The traffic op called out: ‘I’ve been bashing on your car for ages, and I can’t wake you up. They’ve left ages ago.’ So I shook the driver to wake him up too, and I told him: ‘Go, for goodness’ sake, go. They’re long gone.’ We were given a 30 km/h speed limit, but to catch them up, we ramped the speed up to 35 or 40 km/h. We hoped we’d catch them up after some time. But there was nothing, a clear road ahead of us. But looking through the periscope I could see a long convoy behind us. And then suddenly we were overtaken by a GAZ [four-wheeler]. A Rupert jumped out. He was taking a risk. The OT is fast, but it doesn’t brake well. We stopped. He jumped up to our OT and bashed the plating with a wrench of some kind. I thought: This doesn’t look good. I opened the hatch and pulled myself out. I asked: ‘What’s up?’ The officer shouted: ‘Corporal, what kind of idiot are you? You’re leading the whole Strašice convoy somewhere completely different.’ Different how? The traffic ops sent us here.’ ‘There’ll be no discussion. Do you have any idea how we’re going to turn the whole convoy round and go back again?’ ‘Hm, I have no idea how you’ll do it.’ The whole convoy turned round on a field. We ploughed it up nice and proper.”

“In August 1968 we were visiting relatives, my granddad’s sisters, in Vienna. It wasn’t difficult to travel to Austria at the time; we didn’t get any foreign exchange, but that didn’t matter. When I woke up in the morning of 21 August, an eight-year-old boy, I found my parents and aunts glued to the television. I thought they were watching some war movie. I watched Wenceslas Square, tanks burning. Those are well-known pictures, how the Czechs set their fuel tanks on fire. And I just didn’t get why they shot at the museum on Wenceslas Square. There were shots of dead bodies covered by flags. My father decided we had to returned to Bohemia without a moment’s delay because we had relatives there, namely my grandparents. At first, my aunts took our car key, saying they wouldn’t let us go off into a war. But after my father insisted, they gave us back the key. It was interesting at the borders because we were the only ones to drive back from Austria. The Austrian customs officer even tried to persuade us that there was no use in going to Czechoslovakia, and he pointed out two tanks that were standing on the Czechoslovak side of the border with their guns aimed at Austria. They Czech customs officer also asked us if we’re serious about going back. When we nodded, he opened up the boom gate and let us through to where our customs officers were accompanied by Russian soldiers.”