Bohuslav Strejc

“There was a terrible din everywhere, I just gaped at the sky. Then I picked up speed and ran through the park to the ‘Hermit’. In those days it was a hole in the rock, where a hermit had lived before. They’d built a wall about one metre thick in front of the hole as a shelter for the entrance. I literally flew inside. The hermitage was full of people! I squeezed myself through to somewhere in the middle, and no sooner had I regained my feet a bit, there was a dreadful blast. I’ll never forget that. It was like when you take a bucket of water and splash it against the wall. Everyone inside fell flat on the ground in an instant.”

“The Russian bombers attacked while we were digging the trenches. I was working with one soldier. When the first wave of bombers has passed, all we did was to jump into the trench. Luckily, we both fell to the same side and huddled in the corner. Suddenly there was a deafening explosion, and all was dark. We were buried. We were hugely lucky that there were two of us in the trench, and so we managed to dig ourselves out of the dirt somehow after a while. That was really by the skin of our teeth, so to say. And that’s where I found this joker [card].”