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AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE IRON CURTAIN
The northern section of building 1 was mainly used as sleeping quarters
with at least four of the rooms here used as dormitories (Figure 86). A
picture taken in one of these rooms in 1988–1990 shows a minimum of six
bunk beds in this room (Army Forum Website Image 1) but it is possible
that there were more that could not be seen on the picture. A total of 40
soldiers were housed here at any one time. Only the soldiers lived on the
premises with officers provided with houses for them and their families in
Vranov nad Dyji (Tomas, 2010, pers. comm. 14 th October).
Figure 86: Corridor of sleeping
quarters at Hájenka border guard
station.
Anna McWilliams 2011.
Graffiti found in two of the dormitories show how the soldiers were
counting down the days until they were to finish their service. One of these
was written in English, stating ‘I very look forward to civilian’. Written in
another room was the suggestion “burn the officers’ nest”. There is also
graffiti comparing time spent at the station as being in jail. The dates in the
graffiti indicate that the majority of it was written towards the final years of
the compound’s period of use during the late 1980s and 1990s. In one
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