BACK TO BUDAPEST
Bocsor, Kövári and Kelemen went into a meeting to which I was also invited. They decided that we should start our retreat towards Budapest and they instructed me to get our company together. They were working all over the place, some as far as 6 kilometres away. I got on my bike and went to collect them. The job was not without its problems.
In one case 30 fellows were working for the Germans unloading a railway truck full of paint. The German sergeant was completely unmovable about my wishing to take his helpers, he was only interested in unloading his paint. I argued with him and suggested that he talks to his own superiors who are supposed to know all about our orders and who will know that our company must leave Kecskemét whether or not his paint is unloaded. He left to contact his Airport commander and by the time he returns, we were gone.
Finally we were all together outside the barracks. It is late afternoon when Bocsor and Kövári address us. They give us a few pointers as to what we are to say if we are stopped by either the Germans or the Hungarian military police, but their main advice and instruction is that we should try and stay together on our way to Budapest, but if we cannot, we are to meet in the courtyard of a certain building and re-form the company.
Bocsor and a couple of others got into the best carriage and drawn by two of the best horses set out on our unauthorised retreat. Kövári, Kelemen and Schusztek, together with a sergeant sit up on the horse drawn peasant cart. Kennedy, still sick and I start off, pushing my bike, which has our luggage tied on it. The others, except some who stay behind and go into hiding, also start walking and a very bedraggled lot starts out for Budapest.
Some of us have compasses and thus even in darkness we know which direction to go. To ensure that we go by the most direct route and so as to avoid the Germans and gendarmes, we walk through fields, hoping to reach the main road soon.
Instead of the main road we met about 30 SS men. They stop us and instruct us to return to Kecskemét and dig some anti tank ditches. Kövári, who is with us, explains to the SS that we had orders to immediately return to Budapest, where we have very important war duties to carry out. The leader of the SS group listened politely and they moved back a little to have a conference. Finally, they wave to us and leave.
Next night SS men, the same or other than those we met, approach a similar group of retreating labour campers some 50 km away from Kecskemét, ask them to return and when they do not, shoot all 220 people, with only a few getting away to tell the tale.
The later it gets, the more tired we become and the more difficult our march gets. Soon we stopped and started emptying our rucksacks and suitcases. I sat down with Kennedy in the middle of a field and we inspected our luggage with a view to lighten it. After a while I suggested that we are crazy:
"You know damned well, that we are going to lighten our luggage every few kilometres, why the hell don't we just throw the whole lot away now?"
George agrees and we simply get up and carry on with our retreat, carrying nothing. He leans on the bike and I push it. His huge open wound on his thigh hurts him so much that he cries and I have to be very firm to make sure he carries on. Finally we reached the road that leads from the South to Budapest.
We were surprised to note that we are not the only people taking part in this retreat. There are thousands of civilians and we count 4 different armies, Hungarian, German, Croatian and Russian, yes, Russians who joined the Germans and who have now a lot to fear from the Red Army. They retreat in cars, carriages, horsebacks, bicycles, pushing prams, pulling handcarts or just walking.
Once we get to the road, we should ride the bike, not just push it. Kennedy is almost incapable of walking so I make him mount the bike and he pedals or I just push him for a some time. After a while, we stop and have a little rest and fall asleep in a roadside ditch.
He felt better when we wakened and so I suggest that he takes the bike and tries to get ahead. He does so and I soon loose him. I carry on walking for a while, until I discover Kövári and Kelemen at the road side, giving their horses a rest. They invite me to join them and I do so with great pleasure. Having a horse cart full of food, makes them very desirable people to know.
So we carry on, with horses so tired that none of us sits on the cart, but actually help pushing it. At about 2 a.m. it seems that if we want the horses to get us to Budapest, we better stop. Kövári walks to a peasant house to find that the owner is a "Schwab" or a Hungarian born German.
They were not very sympathetic with Hungarians and positively anti-Jewish. They were less than enthusiastic about letting us in and allowing our horses to stand and spend the rest of the night in their sheds. Kövári takes his highly illegal pistol out of his pocket and does as if he would be wondering whether to shoot them first or burn the house down. At that we are invited in, but the atmosphere is less than cordial. We and the peasant family all sleep in the same room and are up and ready to go two hours later.
Kövári offers to buy some eggs and chickens, but they will not sell. So Kelemen just takes the food from them and we eat their food while getting ready to go. There is another offer to buy some chucks, but they simply don't want to know us. So Kövári takes out his pistol again and starts shooting the chucks. We take at least 8 dead chicken, leaving no cash for the farmer.
We ommit to farewell our reluctant host and join the long line of refugee transport. The traffic is one way only, so much so that both sides of the narrow road are taken up by refugees and retreating soldiers. We are still walking beside and behind the horse drawn cart, our horses were in a worse shape than we are.
Every now and then there are military police stationed to interrogate and instruct the retreating members of the Army. We get our instructions from the MP's and promise to report to HQ as soon as we get there. Of course we have no intention of doing so. We are sure that the war for us will be finished as soon as we get to Budapest. We cannot believe that after such a disorganised retreat the German and Hungarian armies can ever stop running.
Finally we got to the outskirts of Budapest after our little walk of just over two days. We covered some 150 kilometres, which was not too bad, after all we had to help the horses up hill. We say good bye to the horses and to each other and take the tram for the next stage of our retreat. I take a soldier escort with me to ensure that I don't finish up in the cooler.
Of course my parents were in the hotel and not at home. Not that there is a shortage of people in the flat, which is still occupied by a multitude of people, all hungry for news about the Russian advance and when it might be all over. I am too tired to gossip and I go to sleep with my escort in my parents twin beds and feel really happy to take my boots off for the first time after quite a few days.
In the morning my parents came back from the hotel and were happy to see me in their bed. Jews not being allowed to have telephones Father has to go searching for one to cancel the Royal car, which was arranged to take him for another day of search for his son. What happened was that Father through the Army Command found out that my 701/101 Company disappeared from Kecskemét. He assumed that we are on our way to Budapest, so he wangled a Horch from Horthy's fleet and came to pick me up and give me a lift.
He was probably trying to make up for all the times when he did not allow me to be driven to school. Father and the chauffeur of the Regent's car spent the whole day trying to drive towards the front from where the thousands of refugees, myself and the retreating armies were coming, with limited success. The crowds trying to avoid the Russians would not allow even the Regent's car to pass. We probably missed each other when I boarded the tram. It was a great pity because I would have cherished the memory of having finished my retreat from the War in the luxury of the Regent's car.
Instead, my escort and I went to the meeting place agreed, but only a small fraction of our Company turned up. Those who did not, must have been convinced that the war was over and they had no further use for our Army unit. After making arrangements for our next meeting we returned home.
Next Sunday I went visiting relations. It was a lovely autumn morning and I felt real swell in my brand new leather jacket. I wore my army cap and the white armband and I was pleased because I looked clean and elegant and also because it was the first day of new regulations, allowing us to out on the streets without an escort.
My cousin Bözsi greeted me with the news that an armistice was arranged between the Hungarians and the Russians. She just heard it on her gentile neighbour's radio. I went looking for a radio and heard it myself: Horthy made an announcement and declared that the Germans broke their word, they attacked Hungarian citizens (oblique reference to the Jews, who were delivered by his Government, his railway, etc. to the German extermination camps), they have acted against the best interest of Hungary, they wasted the lives of Hungarian soldiers and what's more they arrested his own son. Consequently he decided to arrange an immediate armistice with the Russians and per medium of this broadcast asked the Russian Army not to fire on Hungarian troops pending the signing of the armistice agreement.
The background to all this was that Horthy's elder son, Stephen, 4 years earlier became the Deputy Regent, or in other words became his father's heir in an obvious effort to establish a dynasty. In 1941, less than a year after becoming the Deputy, 35 year old Stephen Horthy joined the Hungarian Air Force in Russia, where he is carefully kept away from being shot at. One day as he takes off in his German maintained and serviced plane, his Messerschmidt looses part of a wing and crashes above the runway.
The investigation is conducted by the Germans and Hungarians who agree that there are no suspicious circumstances. However nobody doubts that the Germans are responsible.
Horthy has another son, Nicholas, who is completely disinterested in politics, armies or air forces. However on the death of his brother he is forced to take an interest in the affairs of his family, which automatically means that he becomes involved in Hungarian power politics. When an approach is made to the British, it is Nicholas Junior who acts as courier, and when the Yugoslav Partisans of Tito wish to talk with Horthy, he sends his son along to meet them.
These partisan emissaries turned out to be SS officers led by the same Skorzeny who sprung the captive Mussolini from the mountain top where was guarded and who becomes the specialist in dirty tricks. Later in the war it is Skorzeny who leads the Germans who pose as Americans in the Ardennes offensive.
It is on Sunday 15th October 1944 that Skorzeny meets Horthy junior, shoots him in the stomach, rolls him up in a persian carpet and having carried him into a truck, kidnaps him. On hearing this Horthy senior gets really angry and decides, without having made any preparations, to send a recording to be broadcast to the studios of Radio Budapest, denouncing the Germans. Nothing shows the naivety of the rulers of Hungary more, but the fact that no body guards the radio station which is simply occupied by the Germans within the hour of the broadcast, nor is any force required by the Germans to occupy the Government offices or the Royal palace, where the Government and Horthy are patiently waiting for the Germans to arrest them, which they do, without a single shot being fired.
By 11 a.m. the Germans are frantic only because they cannot find the head of the Hungarian Nazis, Ferenc Szálasi who up to that day was being ignored by the Germans. They need Szálasi, because they want him to form a new Government. They find him at 1 p.m. and Hungary has no Government, no Regent, but a new Fuhrer.