Radislav Wagner

“We were meeting the norm up to more than two hundred percent. You know, the drivers fought for us. They didn’t want the civilians, they wanted us, because they knew they made real loads with us. They were also rated according to how much coal they drove away calculating per kilometers. Based on that kind of our work, I earned nice money for those times. My salary was around twenty thousand crowns, what was a huge amount of money back then. So I used to get ten thousand on hand and ten thousand on my bankbook, what wasn’t of the same value, though. Due to this fact, many men didn’t like us there. Many used to go to the pub and there the nickname Black Barons originated. When we came to a restaurant, those waiters knew us, since we had black shoulder boards. They knew who we were, and all the soldiers had to wait until we were being served first. The military guys were mad at us. You know, Olomouc was the military headquarters back then, such military centre.”

“Back then, my mom had already three children. The little ones were Dušan, Miro, Svatka and Jožo, who was on his way. Well, somehow she ended up without money and my father hadn’t realized that. She didn’t have any means for living and it was only me earning money as the PTP worker. Every month I used to send her thousand crowns I earned. Then the year 1953 came and the monetary reform caused that the money at our bankbook were reduced in ratio 1:50. So even though having there thousands of crowns before, there wasn’t much left afterwards. When I completed the military service, it sufficed me to buy my wife a sewing machine. It was all I labored for over two years in mines as the PTP worker. They paid us always, but then the salaries became very low and the military levies remained. So at the end we earned much less than at the beginning. We weren’t such cavaliers anymore.”