Hana Staňková

"A police van arrived and the cops asked for our IDs. They browsed through them and kept them, didn't give them back. They crammed us into the van and drove us up the road. There's a chateau or what; I don't recall, haven't been there since. It was the police station. They searched everything. We had to unpack everything. They told us two elderlies had complained about us making a disturbance, filming and laying the wreath. The local citizens didn't like us raggedy people around. The cops put us in the offices in pairs so we could not share what we said. There were open drawers with batons and guns, and official records. They asked us where we came from, what we did, what that fishing line was for and so on. They were angry because we didn't say anything political. We spent there from about one o'clock in the afternoon until eight in the evening."

"It was noon, no one around. We bought some eats and walked the square. The arcades are there, but we walked down the middle. By the National Committee office, we saw a plaque in memory of US soldiers, both killed and surviving, for liberating Domažlice. We said, no way, we'd never seen that before. Even though we knew that the Americans had liberated western Bohemia, they kept telling us... We thought it would be nice to put a wreath there. We pooled cash and one of us went to a garden shop and bought the wreath with that cash. We hung it on there. We placed our military packs (originally from US Army) below and the boys snapped a picture. One of us nicknamed Čína (we all had our nicknames) also filmed it. He would film us and the places we'd been to, so he filmed this as well. Then we went to the park to sit on a bench, eat our buns, and then maybe go sightseeing around Domažlice and leave."

"I got into it at work. There was a friend of mine who used to go on hikes, and he suggested I go with them. I had almost no equipment. I borrowed a military pack from a friend, it was called a calfskin. I had a green coat at home, I just wore what I had. We went to Brdy in January, that was my first hike. Foresters used to build huts with an upstairs floor storing hay for wild animals. That's where we would sleep, but we only stayed one night. Then I became one of them and went more often. And I got better equipment, of course."