Baseball, chocolate sweets, chewing gum and cigarette butts

František Mandák attended primary school in Vacov and in May 1945, he witnessed the arrival of the liberating American troops that were housed at a local school. “I remember that they would play baseball with bats in front of the school building and they also played rugby with an oval ball. We were watched them and it was the first time we saw somebody play rugby and baseball.” František Mandák also recalls that the U.S. soldiers would toss sweets to the children. “The American soldiers would toss a chocolate bar or a chewing gum to the crowd of children. Everybody tried to snatch something. Our teachers then told us that we were supposed to behave with more dignity as we represented the Czech nation. We were advised not to take part in these ‘games’.” However, for the children from school the sweets from the U.S. soldiers weren’t the only prey. “They would also throw away cigarette butts that we called ‘čiky’. They would often only smoke half of the cigarette and throw the rest of it away. We, of course, collected the cigarette butts and smoked them. At the time, I was in third grade and I was nine years old. I'd never smoked until then but then I did. There were some older guys at school and we all smoked together. These butts were brought home to the fathers and uncles who used the tobacco leftovers to roll cigarettes. We were praised when we managed to bring home a lot of cigarette butts”, says František Mandák.