Jaromír Krejčíř

“We were walking through the village and they came from the neighboring village and they told us: ‘There are cartridges and grenades in the basement of the rectory, lets go there!’ When it got dark, we got in there. And as soon as we got down there, the teacher and one more man stopped by. They kept talking and we could not get out. Only after they had left, we took the grenades with us. I had about five of them in my pockets. We parted and each of us went home. I hid them outside in an alley under some bushes. And when we walked to school together in the morning, I took one of the grenades when we were behind the village – one stout boy used to go to school with us – and I told him: ‘See, I got grenades here. Throw one of them.’ When he shouted watch out, I’m throwing it, we dived into a ditch. He pulled out the safety pin, threw the grenade, and he lay down and it exploded, and we went to school. But the worst thing was, as I later thought about it, that one of my friends pulled out the grenade while we walked back from school. That meant that he had to have it in his bag in school.”

“It took about two days before it stopped flying over us. And it was in the afternoon and there was a bang and the place shook with us. My dad went to lift the trapdoor of the basement, but there was a hole above the door which led to the attic, and roof tiles from the roof had fallen through that hole on the trapdoor. Although dad was strong, he was not able to lift it. And so we were sitting there and we heard footsteps after a while. Our neighbours were on the roof and they threw away some of the roof tiles in order to be able to reach us. They were able to come. They started putting down the fire and all the neighbours from the right and left side came there. They were pumping water until the fire was put down.”