Jen stopy v trávě – Valeš Jan (2024)

In 1952, four years after the political coup that saw our republic abandon its natural democratic development, at a time when everyone was literally spying on everyone else, Václav Uhlík, a transport entrepreneur, forest worker, mechanic, and obsessed dreamer, acquired and assembled an armored personnel carrier in the yard of his house in Líní. A year later, he, along with seven others, overcame the increasingly fortified state border with it. The story described in this book recounts his journey to the wreck of the war vehicle, the very construction of the transporter, which was also contributed to by soldiers from the then Líní airport, its trials, the stolen weapon, the failed attempt, and above all, the successful breakthrough of the state border into Bavaria. Besides the journey of the transporter from an immobile wreck to a functional armored personnel carrier, whose life ultimately ended only on American soil, the story also captures the life fates of all crew members both in their homeland and later abroad. An additional layer to the whole story is the subsequent investigation conducted both in the area of the breached state border, where the Tank of Freedom, as the transporter was later called throughout the Western world, broke through the wire obstacle with a considerable stroke of luck, but also the subsequent...