Commemoration of the Prague Uprising

Photo: Miroslav Bobek, Prague Zoo

Years ago, I was collecting information on an old drift that ends near the aviary of bald ibises. Historians of mining were surveying it on that occasion. They were digging down there in a tight place to check if the drift had a turn-off. I reached them when they were finishing and called out to them, asking what they had found. Nothing. Still, I crawled to them on my knees and across a pile of soil asked again. Really nothing? Nothing. In disappointment, I dug into the soil—and I was astonished. I was holding a magazine with five live cartridges!

One possible thought was that it was a remnant of the weapons that had been hidden here during the occupation. When someone was quickly retrieving the rifle—and maybe other weapons as well—along with the ammunition, one magazine was left here. Who knows, maybe it was missed dearly a few hours later…

I took the magazine to my office and the next morning we called the police. When two policemen came and persistently demanded the information about the ammunition in the Information Centre at the main entrance, the colleague first thought it was a joke. Later the uniformed police officers called in the bomb disposal squad with a van full of top-of-the-line equipment including a special robot.

Unfortunately, the bomb disposal experts took the magazine away for disposal; fortunately, I took photos of it beside a ruler the previous evening. And I started searching.

The bomb disposal experts expressed their opinion that it was ammunition for a German Mauser rifle. Nevertheless, I sent the picture of the magazine to two experts. The first one wrote that these were most probably 6.5x51SR Arisaka cartridges, a modernized version that was introduced in 1905. The second one confirmed that it was indeed a Japanese Arisaka cartridge and added that after the World War I these cartridges were produced by Jiří Roth company from Bratislava. Since Russian legionnaires brought Japanese Arisaka rifles from their anabasis in large quantities…

Then it was easy to find that during the period between the wars these rifles were used in various shooting clubs like for example Národní svaz střelecký (National Shooting Union). And it was for these clubs that cartridges were produced. Finally, at the very end I had read that Arisaka rifles served also during the Prague Uprising.

I think that after these discoveries there is not much space left for doubts about the origin of the magazine from the drift in our zoo. Although I have only its photo, it is enough for commemoration of how our predecessors risked their lives in the fight for freedom.