Marie Daňková

"So we packed up, we left the goose and the goslings in Mrs. Veselá's place in Práchovna. She was so good, the goose survived. The goslings were eaten by foxes. And with the cow, the goat – and Dad also carried everything we were dragging with us on a wheelbarrow. So we traveled to the Šmelcovna, but we didn't get there right away. Somewhere in the forest, in front of the cottages, there were several settlements in the forest. The first to be settled were the Fric family, in that forest on a low slope like this. Fric family, Jaroš the miller, from Dubové, opposite us. So he built a kind of dugout out of pine needles, or I don't know how to say it. What do you call it... a kind of paneled one... He chopped it up with pine needles, he made a kind of hut. And we were there for two nights. And because it was terribly cold, the weather was so horrible. It was raining and cold, so we saw that it was impossible, because we had only a few clothes on. blanket with us or something like that, nothing more. And so my mother remembered that cousin, that distant cousin from Javůrek. She was from ... Urbánková, if you look up that name then ... Well, she was married in that Šmelcovna, so we took refuge there, where we stayed for another week.

"We were in the Šmelcovna, that was the very end, I remember that. You could clearly see that it was going to be the end because they were overshooting. The Germans were somewhere above Maršovice, there in that area, and the Russians were on the other side of Javůrka, Hvozdec, there. Well, and there were shootings - and for the reason that the Russians knew that they were sewing from that side. There was a road, I don't know whether it was passable or not. A bigger road. The Russians came to that Šmelcovna - no, I got that mixed up. First, a group of such Germans came from that hill from Maršov, about twenty-five of them, and they settled there, just in that Panský house. And the Russians came again from the other side and there they clashed, shot the Germans - and by mistake the first one who ran into the village, the ones who were on the hill shot their own. The Russians shot a Russian soldier, and then we went to see him. I was ten years old, and I had a friend who was there for a week, and we went through everything, into that Panský House, where there were three dead Germans. That's the memory of the end of the war."