Václav Pavlíček

"There were SS [Jagdkommando] members in the neighboring village of Držková and they went to check. There was a baker, Štefka, and there were two partisans with him who were negotiating some kind of bread delivery or something. They legitimized them and one of the partisans shot the officer. The soldier ran away. My father and I were in the field, which was on a hill, and we heard the shooting. Dad immediately called out to lie down, we were about 500 metres from the road. The German grabbed the Forman and hid behind the car and ran to the garrison. Apparently to have proof of the fight, he shot at everything he saw around. There was a man walking up the hill, so he shot at him. He just shot at anything that moved. Then the Germans came into the village, set up a machine gun in the middle of the village and shot all over the village. Apparently they had to document the fight to the commander. It was probably their excuse. When one man went out on the road to see what was going on, he was swept away by a machine gun."

"What really stuck in my memory was that bomber crash. I think we were threshing at the time. We had the thresher running when it suddenly stopped and the sky turned cloudy. Above the clouds, we heard machine gun fire, and suddenly, a burning bomber emerged from the clouds, spiraling down toward our cottage. It was falling in a spin, circling as it came down. It crashed about 500 meters away, on a hill. Because of the spinning, it hit the hillside — but it exploded in the air, and I think one of the wings with two engines came off and landed on the edge of the village. Visually, it looked like it was going to hit our house, so my younger brother and I ran. When it exploded, metal sheets flew through the air like cigarette papers — but when they hit the ground, it was thud, thud, really loud bangs. We ran all the way to Teplice, and when we came back, there was an SS unit stationed in Držková to fight the partisans. There were a lot of scattered machine gun rounds and I think some guns too, and the SS men were collecting them. And while the plane was still falling, we saw three airmen descending under parachutes beneath the clouds. And interestingly — I don’t know for sure, but it looked like it — a Messerschmitt fighter was flying at them, and we could hear machine gun fire. Suddenly, the fighter burst into flames and crashed behind Sobolica, near Slušovice."