Jan Meixner

„One morning we got up and the commander said, "Hitler died." So we fired a final salute to him. We got into trucks and went to Upper Austria to be captured by the Americans, to avoid being captured by the Russians. Everyone was afraid of the Russians.”

"When we were released from the hospital, they told us we had to report to the nearest station. So our non-commissioned officer went to report us at one station and there were SS men. And the SS man asked, "How long have you been hanging around here?" The officer told him it was two or three days as we couldn't find the place. And the SS man replied, "If you were of our SS unit, I would have shot you dead immediately!" The SS men were this evil.”

„We retreated through Hungary and there we went up a hill. It was spring and the ground was slippery. So one horse fell on me. I couldn't get back on my feet, my ankle was broken. They took me by ambulance to Nový Dvůr near Hodonín. There was a temporary hospital set up in the former school.”

„When we were retreating, one group always went ahead and looked for a place where we could hide the horses and other things. Once we didn't make it when the enemy planes arrived. The pilots saw us, they came back in a moment and hit everything. We tied our horses down in a forest and ran to hide up the hill, where we were safe. But the horses suffered badly and some of them died.”