Otakar Volejník

“One morning we had stopped at motorway services, and we were just making breakfast, when this car with a French licence plate pulled up. We had no idea what was going on. They drew some tanks in the sand. And when we had made it to the campsite, we found out that we had been invaded by Soviet Russia. At the campsite, they immediately gave us– We had young children, so they offered us to stay at the hotel. We turned the offer down as we’d already pitched our tent, but they gave us food for free, petrol vouchers, and Yugoslav dinars…”

“The time came for us to undergo security clearance, where they put pressure on me to join the Pioneers and become their youth leader. Apparently, since I had been a Scout youth leader before, why couldn’t I do it for the Pioneers… I refused to, and likewise, I expressed my disapproval of the Soviet occupation. This must have been the reason why I was demoted to a position two ranks down and I was banned from teaching at the vocational school. After the demotion, I had to leave the job and find a new one.”

“Well foremost of all, good friends - and new friends that I met in Scouting. And then I think that it did in fact lead me a bit to independent thinking and all - which I could test during military service - that we weren’t quite as clumsy as some of those who came there without anything... We were more independent. We were capable of living in a group. I think that Scouting was a good preparation for life.”

“There were two trucks standing in front of the town hall that had to be cleared away. So we drove there, except in the meantime the German soldiers had gathered into formation and there was another column of those carts and soldiers. And as we’re coming up to the town hall - because the roads were all cut up, it was impossible to use any of them, just the main road was open - so we saw the people from the houses push back into the corridors. So we looked round, and Germans behind us, man, they were ‘spraying’ it with their subs. The road was broken up between the town hall and the music school. We stopped there with our car, me and one other jumped out, and the third one, the driver, he was delayed - he wanted to pull the key out of the ignition, but the Germans had caught us up by then, so he got a couple of knocks on the gob, they took his keys, and we didn’t stop until behind the barricades, and we were glad. We ‘had our pants full’ pretty much, because we didn’t know what all might have happened. Later towards the evening, Russian tanks arrived and everything was okay.”

“It took me a lot of time. I took me a lot of time, but I pretty much don’t regret it, because it came back on the other side: We gave those kids something! So pretty much, it didn’t take anything from me, if you think of it really.”

“Because our troop was made up of older Scouts, we were 18 years old at the time, we bought some green cloth at Technolen, our father sowed us uniforms in his tailoring workshop, and in June we were already off to Ležáky (a village demonstratively wiped out by Nazis during WW2 - transl.), where we helped with the organisation and the construction of the site there. We lived in the village nearby and walked there daily. We kept watch during the night, we were given rifles with real ammo. We were checked on in the night, and our watch received a commendation - it’s hanging in our Scout house.”

“When I was Scouting, then one good deed a day, that was expected. To lead a wise life, to behave well. That was, I think, somehow more appealing then. Nowadays the children aren’t made for that I guess. I was Scouting before the war, in those emotional times which managed to leave their mark on us: the love of one’s country, homeland, which isn’t really a big thing nowadays. We were also brought up a bit with compulsory military service on mind, we had that sort of discipline.”