September 1, 1962, I had to report to Prague’s main train station for military transport to the city of Tabor. Every Czech male 19 years old was drafted for 2 years military service. The exceptions were males attending a university – they attended ROTC-like program in the university and after university was completed they were drafted for 6 month military service.

When I was visiting Prague in 2018, I went to the Archive of Secret Police Files and obtained access to their online files, accessible via ebadatelna.cz web site. Not all files are there, but to my surprise I found the file on Jan Kotva, my friend. He was recruited by Czech army counterintelligence 3 month after we were drafted for the 2 years service to spy specifically on me, and 3 other soldiers. His controlling officer, Captain Josef Uruba, trained him, using his being kicked out of school for the May Day student demonstration, as part of gaining our confidence. He was trained how to watch us to potentially attempt any sabotage. Four of us were specifically named for our “dangerous” political background: in my case, because my father had a high government position and was two times in prison for actions against the communist state; in the case of Ginter Bedrunka, for his uncle being a WWII pilot who stayed in England; in Rudolf (Risa) Wagner’s case, his uncle was thirteen years in prison for actions against the Communist state; and Bohumir Cuhel, for being a Catholic priest. Kotva was reporting on us for the remainder of the two years in the army. He also reported on his own, not ordered to, on one other soldier, Jiri Cerny. The funny thing is, that for his reporting, he received at one point a reward of 50 Kcs, which was like $10.