Dagmar Deimlova before her departure for England

This is a photograph from right before my departure for England in 1939. What was my childhood like? Happy. My girlfriends and I got up to all sorts of mischief. Normal kinds of things. For example, back then you just couldn't go out without a cap or this little hat. Hanging on the back of the hat were these two ribbons, and I dare say that all of us girls in the class had the same little hat. I remember that one afternoon we went for a walk, put the ribbons in front and then were blowing on them. And we'd shriek out cheeky sayings at everyone who turned around to look at us. However we managed to do this in front of the building where our teacher lived. She looked out the window and the jig was up. Also, one time in the park the planted a linden tree in honor of Masaryk. In general, we were brought up the Masaryk spirit. Well, the linden had a grate around it that was supposed to protect it from being damaged. I once stuck my head inside, and then couldn't get it out. Someone had to come and saw the grate apart, and my father then paid for the repairs. Quite overjoyed was he. Our father on the whole paid quite dearly for us. For everything that we got up to at school... For the various broken windows... We used to throw paper balls around, and so that they'd fly better, we used to put rocks inside them. Then, which was splendid and my sister and I even had permission for this, the whole winter a roasted chestnut vendor used to stand outside in front of our building, and my sister and I used to lower a basket down out of the window, into which he used to put the paper cones full of chestnuts. When our father would come home, he'd always pay for all the cones. To this day I recall this fondly.