Marie Macková

"We were very good at distinguishing what a pioneer camp was and what the hidden scouts were. You could see that beautifully at those camps. We used to take their water first to see if it was safe, then we used to check the samples in the kitchen and things like that and the kitchen and if they had a chance to have a warm bath once a week. And it was a beautiful camp, I can't remember where, and I said, 'Well, the opportunity for the boys to wash in warm water?' And the leader was wearing an Indian shirt, these Indian clothes, he had a ladybug here, he had a ladybug in his hair like this. And he looked at me and he said, 'Well, here, here's our tub.' And they had a tin tub dumped in the woods. 'We'll heat the water here on the fire.' Well, I would have liked to see that, but okay, he convinced me. And I said, 'Well, aren't you putting a screen there or something?' And he looked at me and he said, 'Oh, miss, we're a boys' camp!' And that was it. And then there was one camp that was never inspected. And because I was young, I thought, 'Well, that's an interesting one,' so I chose it. We weren't being checked, which camp we were checking, otherwise it was very convenient. We had a driver! When we used to go around those camps, nowadays just a company vehicle and you go and nobody talks to you, but we had a driver! So I went with a driver to check on a camp somewhere near Sázava. And my colleague says, 'Well, you can't get there, there's no road, they're throwing the stuff off the train to build the camp there.' I say: 'That makes it even more interesting!' So I told the driver to stop here, that I'll walk there. And I walked a few kilometres through the woods to that camp, and I got a blister on my foot. And I got to the camp and I said, 'I'm from the health office.' And this kid came running up and yelled, 'Sokol, the health inspector is here!' And they said, 'How did she get here?!' And I said, 'Do you have a first aid kit?' 'Yes, we do.' 'Would you patch up my blister?' So they patched up my blister and said, 'Would you like some potato soup?' I said, 'I would!' Well, it was all right, wasn't it."

"But I remember in the morning, my dad had a holiday and someone rang the bell at five o'clock. Daddy leaned out of his bedroom window - Daddy was the director of Pragoděv at the time, so he had quite a lot of responsibility - and someone shouted at him: 'You have to go to the factory, we're occupied!' And it took a while to believe that we were occupied, because for a while it looked as if someone was playing a joke on us. Then Daddy was in the factory continuously for about three days and Mummy looked after us. I remember we were sitting on the couch in the kitchen, knees under our chins, shaking, listening to the radio, crying. We lived in the centre, so there were tanks driving around today's Wenceslas Square. Now we were waiting to see when one would fall through, because it was all undermined, it was an unpleasant moment."