On 25 July 1914 a boy called Rudolf Strechaj was born in Čachtice; three days later Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and the empire he had been born into had four years left to live. Men from the village were conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian army and sent to the Russian and Italian fronts, as they were from every village along the Váh. Across the monarchy the state requisitioned horses and grain and, from 1916, took church bells down to be melted for guns, and the vineyards were worked by women, children and the old. Nothing was fought here and the front never came close, which is exactly the point about a village in a world war: it can be emptied without ever being attacked. Remember the boy's name — he comes back into this timeline in the 1950s, and he does not come back well.Dvadsiateho piateho júla 1914 sa v Čachticiach narodil chlapec menom Rudolf Strechaj; o tri dni neskôr vyhlásilo Rakúsko-Uhorsko vojnu Srbsku a ríša, do ktorej práve prišiel na svet, mala pred sebou posledné štyri roky. Mužov z obce odviedli do rakúsko-uhorskej armády a poslali na ruský a taliansky front, tak ako z každej dediny na Považí. Štát v celej monarchii rekviroval kone a obilie a od roku 1916 snímal z veží zvony, aby sa z nich liali delá; vinohrady obrábali ženy, deti a starí ľudia. Tu sa nebojovalo a front sa ani nepriblížil — a práve v tom je poučenie o dedine vo svetovej vojne: dá sa vyprázdniť aj bez toho, aby ju niekto napadol. Zapamätajte si to meno; na tejto časovej osi sa vráti v päťdesiatych rokoch a nevráti sa dobre.
