The low-flying fighters

When František Mandák was nine years old, he experienced the end of the war in his native region. Even though there was no major fighting going on in the area, the people lived in permanent tension because of the air raids of the allied fighter planes that would fly at low altitudes and attack small ground targets. “We would often watch these planes. They would fly in squadrons. They were dropping pieces of tin foil from board, probably to disturb the radar. It was as if it was snowing. At night, we could hear the thundering from the bombing of the Bavarian cities across the border. These were light aircraft and the pilots were able to fly them very low. Sometimes, we could even see the pilot sitting in the airplane. For instance when they were flying through the Rohan valley, we were actually looking at the plane from above so we could see him. They were mostly interested in what was going on the roads. They were after the German convoys, in particular ammunition transports. They blew the train station to pieces in Klatovy, but also the village of Mirotice lying behind Strakonice,” remembers František Mandák. He adds that in April 1945, one fighter shot to pieces the milkman and his truck near Chvalšovice. “He had a truck with which he collected the 25-kilo milk cans from the area. Every morning, he would take the milk from the whole Vacovsko area to the milk-processing plant in Strakonice. The fighter planes spotted him in Kleny. They shot flares at him indicating he should stop. But he wouldn’t stop, neither in Vacov, nor in Chvalšovice. The fighter kept chasing him and eventually he shot him to pieces outside of Chvalšovice,” he recalled.