A Story to Tell: Part 2

So the red lettered placard of the 10th December put a full stop to the end of my thoughts and I went to report for military service with food (a lump of maize-bread and a few apples) for two days. All of the other workers and apprentices where I worked obtained exemption one way or the other. Perhaps because as I was already a marked person in the Arrow Cross Party's book or, perhaps, I was alone, no-one would sponsor me at my work place for exemption, fairing some retribution from the Party.
I spent a whole day at the reporting depot, a sort of a large beer-garden or cafeteria on one of the hills of Buda, as I remember. There were many hundreds of boys of my age there and many more of an older age. A few officers collected us together and divided us into smaller groups of about a hundred each. The night was spent on wooden chairs, on and under tables or just on the bare floors.

Next day, Christmas Eve, we were marched to the Southern railway station and loaded into cattle trucks. We were there for the day and most of the night in a bitterly cold train until at about 3 o'clock in the morning at last the train started to move. We traveled 60 miles on a cold day and arrived on Christmas Day in the industrial city of Gyor. Later we heard that Budapest was encircled by the Russian army on the night we left. We must have been on one of the last if not the last train, to get out of Budapest.
Had we not got out or had we been caught by the encircling Russian army, our fate would have been perhaps even worse. Shot to pieces during the siege of Buda or captured by the Russians and sent to the USSR as prisoners of war, thousands of young men - or were we just kids at 16 years old? - unarmed, untrained, hungry, more human fodder for Stalin's labour camps.

When we left the trucks we had to find a place to shelter. At last we got to a large cellar under the town hall but we could not get in it. So we had to spend the night, in the open, on the steps of the Town Hall where we had a grandstand view of the Russian air force bombing the nearby industrial area. By now our provisions had run out. It was bitterly cold, well below freezing. The searchlights, the anti-aircraft fire and the Molotov cocktails brilliantly lit up the houses and the town square in front of us. The bombing was nothing like the daily carpet bombing by the Americans or the night bombing by the R.A.F. of Budapest but a few Russian planes dropped bombs and Molotov cocktails all through the night. So it was a long, hungry, cold, noisy, "bright" night for us out in the open in a strange place and with an uncertain future.

The following night we spent in the Town Hall cellar. I don't think anybody had slept in that place before, except the hoards of mice who were very excited at the sight of us. They ran amongst us all night. Some of us who slept on the floor got a few kisses from them! - but we were too tired to be aware of their existence. The cellar was very small and we were too many. So we had to steal as many tables as we could from the offices above in order that we could sleep not only on the floor but on the tables as well. Those who managed to get on to the tables were lucky because the mice could not reach them. I slept in a wastepaper basket. As I remember I started to sleep on the top of it but the next morning I found myself inside the basket, packed in as tightly as sardines in their tins.

It was a sad miserable Christmas for all of us. Most boys had never been away from their parents before and probably none at Christmas. It looked as if everything was against us. The nights were clear and beautiful with thousands and thousands of glittering stars above us but down on earth we were suffering from the silence of the night, or from the bombs of the Russians. There was nobody who seemed to care about us or even say a few words to raise our spirits.
At last in the morning we were able to leave the town hall. We were ordered to march 15 miles to a small village on the river Raba. The day passed easily. On the way we found some Christmas trees; we took a few of them with us. After all it was Christmas. At last, for the first time since we had left our homes, we were treated to a hot meal of a very watery vegetable soup from an army kitchen that took pity on us.
Late in the evening four of us were billeted in a smallholder's house with our sleeping quarters in a stable. The man of the house was commandeered with his horse and cart by the military for some trip or other for a few days, hence we got the horse's place in the stable. The following day we reported at our officer's billet and were told to return to our billet and report the next day. There were no arrangements for us to receive any food. We ambled onto the frozen river where we passed the time skating on our heels, feeling hungry and very sorry for ourselves . We saw half a dozen geese so we planned to have one of them for Christmas dinner knowing well that this was the only way we would eat anyway! At dusk we struck! We got one goose and I wrapped it in my heavy winter coat and hid it in our sleeping place in the stable. Later that evening we were sitting in the kitchen, which was for us a real treat, when the man of the house returned and wanted to stable his horse straight away!
But he was kind to us, he said "It is too late now, but you boys will have to leave tomorrow. For now move all your things out of the stables and sleep on the kitchen floor".
He must not find one of his neighbour's dammed geese, I thought, as it might result in capital punishment - after all only the Germans and the Arrow Cross Men had the right of appropriation! - so we must dispose of it before anyone noticed it. Meanwhile the goose had been sweating and messing up my overcoat in no small way as I found out when I slipped out of the kitchen. Luckily the goose got free unnoticed and we heard a few days later that the neighbour found his bird in good shape. Unlike the state in which I found the lining of my overcoat! The bird left his indelible mark although I made a strenuous effort to wash out its remains with snow.
We spent more than two weeks in the village so we grew quite accustomed to it. It was a quiet pleasant and still peaceful place. The fighting was for Budapest, so for the time being the war front was not moving westward.

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Or that was what we thought. One morning early we got the order to march westward towards the Austrian border where we were urgently required, so they said. According to the order lodgings, already vacated by another troop, would be awaiting us. After three days disorganized marching in the snow bound countryside, sleeping in schools after the children had gone home or in empty cold barns, we arrived at our destination.

It was during this march that we happened to mingle with some Jewish "prisoners" with their yellow David stars crudely sewn onto their shabby clothes . It was a dreadful forced march. We were all in an awful state. The only difference was that we were all young 16 year olds and warmly dressed, while the Jews were from 8 to 80 years old, picked up by the Nazis anywhere and at any time and dressed as they were when arrested, some even in dressing gown and slippers. They were "guarded" and bullied, kicked and those who could not move to the armed Arrow Cross thugs' satisfaction were shot and left in the snow covered ditches by the road side. Some of us were also beaten as they did not distinguish us from the Jews. We were not one of them and that was enough. Luckily we were somewhat faster than the Jewish column of humanity and we left them behind. The sight of that misery has left a very deep scar.

What I saw and experienced at first hand in a very small degree compared with the Jews, and what I have learned since, started my doubts about the Christianity I was bought up in. How could innocent children and old defenseless men and women be made to suffer at the hands of such self righteous, ignorant thugs? Surely God could not allow this, according to my simple understanding of Christianity or to be more precise, according to Catholic teaching? There was cruelty everywhere but there was a lot more to come for me to witness before the end of my’ teens.

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