Ladislav Dlabal

"We had political training in the military service. I did not attend any political training. It was led by a sergeant, a terribly passionate communist. He was probably shorter than me, so he didn't even force me to do it, maybe once or twice. I remember one time he called us together and told us, it was in the fall, that there was a pamphlet called Several Sentences and that we should be careful if we went on vacation, that we shouldn't sign it, that it was disgusting thing. We are a state of workers and peasants, and that ought to remain the same forever. There is a group of people here who are trying to break this state, and one of them is Václav Havel. Finally, after telling us about it for an hour, he imprudently asked if there is anyone who thinks that Václav Havel is right and that there is something to those Few Sentences. I don't know why he asked that. A fellow soldier was sitting next to me, his name was Smetana, he was from somewhere in Milevsko. He asked me: 'So, shall we get up?' I was sure that I would get up, so we both got up."

"When there was a velvet revolution, I was in the army. It was interesting for me there, because you met a whole range of people from Czechoslovakia. It was a bit of a culture shock for me. I remember that I was at the reception department and there was a guy from Slovakia and he couldn't sign down; he could only make three crosses. He said he was a shepard. I really don't know if he went to school or not, or if he was in the first or second year. Or the people who were from Slovakia and spoke Ruthenian, that was also very interesting. I remember him saying: 'There's frozen water flowing here.' It was so strange who you could meet. I also remember that boys from Slovak villages asked me: 'And you don't have any goats in Prague?' I say: 'No, we have no goats.' - 'Not even sheep? You don't have sheep?' I say we don't. 'That's not possible.' They couldn't understand it at all. They looked at me as if I was from another world."