"I was outside, and it was just after 5 p.m.," he recalls. "I heard the engine of the plane, and then some banging. Then the sounds got louder."

Today, in a grove of birch trees outside the small village of Srbská Kamenice, north Bohemia, a memorial stands honoring the 28 people who lost their lives Jan. 26, 1972, when a Yugoslav JAT DC-9 airplane en route to Zagreb from Copenhagen blew up over the Czech Republic, victims of a bomb planted by Croatian nationalists.

"It is present in our subconscious, in the thoughts of the people here," Kubík says.

A volunteer firefighter at the time, he was on call that day and led a group of men who became the first responders to the crash site.

"It is still a very vivid memory for me," he says. It is for others, too.

Thirty-five years after the crash, townspeople will join representatives of JAT Airways and the Serbian ambassador to the Czech Republic to mark the anniversary Jan. 26. There will be a church service, followed by a visit to the crash site to lay wreaths, according to JAT Prague spokesman Ivan Stambuk.

One person who will not be present is the crash's only survivor, a 57-year-old Serb named Vesna Vuloviç. She was a flight attendant, and managed — miraculously, many say — to survive the explosion, despite falling more than 33,000 feet (10,058 meters) while strapped into her seat (a feat The Guinness Book of World Records recognized by naming her the record-holder for the longest free-fall without a parachute).

A twist of fate

Vuloviç was a 22-year-old with wanderlust in 1972, someone who wanted nothing more than to stay in a Sheraton Hotel, no matter where that hotel might be. In this case, it was Copenhagen, where she arrived to work the onward route to Zagreb and Belgrade.

Vuloviç ended up on that ill-fated flight by mistake; JAT mixed up her name with another employee named Vesna.

In 2001, she told a reporter for Aviation Security International that while waiting to board the flight in Copenhagen, she spotted a man deplaning (the plane had originated in Stockholm) who was acting suspiciously. Other crewmembers also noted the man, whom she is now convinced was the bomber, someone who had placed an explosive in a piece of checked luggage and never re-boarded.

Vuloviç remembers getting on the plane. She remembers sitting in her seat, and the plane taking off. She remembers nothing else.

"I have amnesia from one hour before the accident until one month afterward," she told the reporter.

"I put on my overalls and started running through the village, calling on people," Kubík, the firefighter, recalls.

He and five other men drove out to where they thought the plane had crashed, but didn't see anything at first. When they found the scene, the men found Vuloviç still strapped in her seat inside the plane's tail cone. They pulled her from the wreckage, unstrapped her and called for an ambulance.

Doctor Miroslav Randa had just arrived home from work at the hospital in nearby Česká Kamenice when he got the call.

No fear of flying

When the ambulance arrived, Vuloviç was barely clinging to life.

"She was in a very grave health state," Randa said. "Her skull was damaged, as well as her spine and kidneys."

Vuloviç had a fractured skull, and her brain was hemorrhaging. Both of her legs were broken, as were three vertebrae in her spine, including one that left her paralyzed below the waist.

She was in a coma for four days, and remained in Kamenice hospital for more than a week before she was airlifted to a larger facility in Prague.

Vuloviç spent months in the hospital, healing. A series of operations fixed her skull and vertebrae, and she regained movement in the lower half of her body. She eventually was able to walk again.

Two weeks after the crash, doctors in Prague told her what happened. She didn't believe them. They showed her news articles about the crash.

But she cannot remember any of this; her family recounted these days for her.

Today, according to press reports, she still suffers from back pain. But she is an avid traveler and is not afraid to board an airplane. Barely six months after the crash, she told a reporter, she wanted to return to work.

While a Croatian nationalist group later claimed responsibility for the bombing, no one was ever arrested or brought to justice.

Kubík says that, in the years since the crash, he has collected many people's recollections of that day. The stories still haunt him, even though he was able to help somebody.

"When I remember it now, I am happy I saved a human life," he says. "But I was not alone. It was our obligation."

Naďa Černá contributed to this report.