FIELD OF FIRE

City Under Siege

PRELUDE TO BATTLE

The events I am about to describe I would rather forget. They took place more than half a century ago. They should have found their way into the litter-box of my memory by now, along with the flotsam of a long life. Curiously, they won't go away. Unwanted baggage, they stay with me. Even if I try to lose them deliberately, shut them out, they turn up at the doorstep of my consciousness time and again. I even looked in the mirror, expecting to see "Budapest: 1944-45" emblazoned on my forehead but found no outward sign. Yet I know that what I am going to say is engraved somewhere within me and will accompany me, like a shadow, for the rest of my days.

The notion that I was somehow enriched by these events is called into question by the circumstances in which they took place. Yet I cannot deny that the lessons I learned from their passing have shaped my thinking for life.

I recognized that life as a force is more difficult to extinguish than I had thought. I came to realize that, no matter how tenuous your hold on life, it is worth hanging on. Most of the time things will work out in a way to leave you with some choice at least.

I now know that when you are in uncharted territory, when all support is gone, when there is no script to tell you how to act, which way to go, you must trust your instincts. The unrecognized, often unexplored or even considered inner self has resources in plenty to see you through events to which you might otherwise have surrendered.

At the end, whether you emerge as a survivor or victim is up to you.

* * *

I grew up in Budapest, a city renowned for its beauty, its music, its gaiety. As a child, I believed that the Danube was blue and that the day would last forever. I took comfort from knowing that if only I did my homework, the future would take care of itself.

A growing child needs a sense of security. This is found in a stable home where there is no threat, where events take place in a predictable pattern, where there is love, food and warmth.

Such insecurities as I did have, all related to our lack of money. Luxuries, such as family holidays, we did not know. We travelled by streetcar and only occasionally did I enjoy the thrill of a ride on the bus. The end of the streetcar line, for all intents and purposes, was the end of the world.

My first journey on a train is memorable for the fact that I sat on the hard, wooden bench of a third-class compartment on the way and when the train stopped, my very best friend, alighting from the adjacent plush second-class carriage, pretended not to know me.

As a boy grows older he needs to widen his perimeter. I longed to own a bicycle but rode one only in my daydreams. As for a family car, I knew we would never own one, so the folding window pane became my windshield and I took it for long rides to places that existed only in my imagination.

At dinners with the greater family present the children always sat at the lower end of the table. From the conversation of the adults we learned that a war was going on somewhere but did not know what that meant. In time, such talk became more serious and for the first time we had an approaching sense of threat. Still, it was all in the abstract.

The door burst open in 1944 and the threat was abstract no more. Bombs rained from the sky. I very quickly understood the fear of imminent death and my inability to do anything about it. German soldiers were seen everywhere and were deadly serious about taking control. Threatening posters appeared, people, some our friends, vanished overnight. Martial law was declared. Bursts of gunfire were heard in the night. The light of morning often revealed rows of dead bodies in a nearby park. People began to talk in whispers as it was no longer safe to speak out loud.

Then, one afternoon, I heard the rumble of a distant thunderstorm. Unlike other storms, this one did not end but continued into the night. The lightning bolts lit up the sky in the east for hours on end. Slowly I realized that this was no thunderstorm at all: a great battle was being fought close enough to visit our senses. The war, the distant threat of dinner table talk a few years before, had reached the far outskirts of the city. The fury of the sound of guns filled me with awe.

I was almost fourteen.

* * *

BAPTISM OF FIRE

A watermelon is an innocuous fruit, almost comical when it grows to a certain size. As I was taking generous helpings from it one hot August afternoon in 1944, I did not know it would put my life at risk.

The village of Csömör (translates as "surfeit") lies some 16 kilometres outside Budapest to the northeast. We rented a room in a house made of mud bricks along Andrassy Street. The street led to an intersection with the main road leading into town and continued straight on as a tree-lined avenue through farmed fields. At the intersection stood a tavern, notable for two things. The owner had a pathological fear of bombing. He also had a lovely daughter, pursued, alas, by the son of a wealthy farmer.

We moved to Csömör to get away from the bombing, a good decision, as in the event our house received a direct hit and other severe damage besides. What we did not know was that the army also looked at the village as a haven and that every time there was an air raid in the night, they would drive a whole column of armoured cars from a depot some distance away to the shelter of the avenue of trees in line with our house.

In the late summer of 1944 the Russians took care of night bombing. You could tell by the sounds of the airplanes and by the bits and pieces such as bomb fragments and unexploded bombs they left behind.

There was a Russian air raid the night I consumed all that watermelon. This time, however, the planes flew quite low and close by and in no time the night was lit up by parachute flares. They turned the moonless darkness into broad daylight. Obviously they had signals from the ground as the flares were dropped right over their intended target: the armoured car column down the road.

At first they made several passes, dropping bombs. They made a lot of noise but their aim was not good. One of the bombs dropped close to our house but failed to explode -- we found it the next day in the field with its fin still above ground.

While the bombs were dropping the watermelon enforced its inevitable effect on my bladder and I had to go to the bathroom urgently. The problem was that the flares still lit up the village and the toilet was an outhouse down the garden. It was unwise to attempt to go outside. The approaching drone of aircraft engines heralded another attack. By now I was very uncomfortable. I stood on the steps under an overhang, looking at the outhouse which looked so desirable, even beautiful, in the eerie daylight created by the flares.

The planes approached and I knew I could not leave the house. Just then I heard a machine gun open up and I saw the dust thrown up by the bullets just outside the steps. I remember my grandmother's voice urging me to join her under the table, which she quite correctly identified as the only refuge in the event the roof collapsed. There were three planes going around in circles, strafing, now that they had discharged their bombs. I tried to figure whether there was enough time to make it to the outhouse and back between passes, but there was not. Because the armoured cars were in line with us, we also got the strafing. The airmen found their target and were not letting go.

My distress turned into agony. I had to do it, but with the planes coming around in circles I could not risk going to the outhouse. The dust from the third plane's bullets had not yet settled when I was forced to do some watering from the bottom step. It did not keep the dust down for long.

* * *

As the Russians advanced, night bombing became more frequent. The army still continued to bring the armoured cars under the avenue of trees by the tavern. The owner then decided to build a bomb-proof air raid shelter. Work began at once. I watched the workmen dig deep into the ground, then place reinforcing beams. Entrance was made by a vertical ladder. Much to my pleasure we were invited to share the shelter and none too soon as there was an air raid alarm that very night. It took us a few minutes to get there in the pitch dark. The owner waited for us. A candle burned deep in the shelter where it could not be seen from the outside. Descending the steps felt like entering one's own grave. In a way, that almost came to be.

The door was closed and we sat by the uncertain light of the candle. The air was stuffy, the space small. I even wondered if the candle would go out as we ran out of oxygen. The taverner was thanked and congratulated on his foresight to build so secure a shelter. Barring a direct hit, it should stand up to anything.

We could soon hear the planes. With the front getting closer they took no time to reach us. They were low again and very close -- the engines roared overhead and suddenly the ground beneath our feet leapt as the bombs hit. Phew! That was very close. More bombs followed, but none closer. There was no strafing, the raid took only a few minutes. The "all clear" soon sounded. Emerging from the shelter we found four very shallow craters close together some thirty yards off. Large trees in the immediate vicinity were blown away by the blast. The bombs, obviously chained together, were the kind that explode above the surface and do damage by blast and splinters. Luckily for us, they did not challenge the shelter.

It also became obvious that the tavern and its shelter were literally at the bull's eye of the bombing target as long as the armoured cars continued to return. Besides, there was no doubt that someone was using very effective signals to guide the planes to their target. Mud-bricks or not, it was safer in our little house two hundred yards away.

As the ground battle came within earshot we moved back into the city. The bombing continued both day and night.

A terrible game of chance, sitting under the bombs. If you are anywhere close to the target of the day, you hear the planes coming closer and closer, and when you begin to think that they will go right by, you hear the bombs. There is no escape. You don't know where they will hit so there is no point in running. They fall faster than you can run, so you just wait. You hear them getting louder and louder as they whistle through the air. You try to shrink into something insubstantial as if you could make yourself into a smaller target. You know you may die in less than a minute, perhaps in seconds. As the whistle becomes a roar overhead there is no time to think. Suddenly, everyone is alone. There is no time to pray.

When the bombs hit, the ground leaps underfoot and the sound is deafening. In the fitful urgency of the moment all rational thought ceases -- you simply die, only to find you are alive again until you die once more as the next wave hits. Then, suddenly all is quiet again. The ground is still. In the air the sound of the airplanes quickly fades. The whole thing lasted a minute, maybe two. In the shelter people sit upright again and finally someone speaks. When the siren signals "all clear" it will be time to go upstairs until the sirens signal another attack, sometimes only minutes later. Civilians living under such attack are helpless. It may be your turn or someone else's turn next time. There are no winners, only losers.

* * *

The Russian ring around the city was closing fast. It was clear that when it finally closed, a savage battle would follow. Some people, fearing the prospect of a war on their doorstep, some fearing the arrival of the Russians, fled to the west, prolonging their war and departing for an uncertain future. I remember hearing my old uncle recite the words of an old Hungarian anthem to a man who was in two minds about going:

"........ should Fate's hand bless you
or strike you down,
here is where you live
and here is where you die ......."

The rapid advance of the front cut off supplies of food. The artillery shells were finding their way into the city. This made it hazardous to move about. Soon the streetcars and buses stopped running. With martial law firmly in place, one could not venture far as anyone seen on the street after 5 p.m. was to be shot on sight.

People meeting in the street no longer stopped to talk. Where, before, they would stop and chat about family and friends, they now exchanged curt greetings and continued on their way. Survival became everyone's main concern now that shells came from every direction without warning.

There began a process of increasing isolation of one individual from another. During the bombing people seemed to withdraw into themselves to deal with the recurring threat of death in their own way. At least with the bombs the wailing sirens gave warning. Not so with the shells. They kept coming all day. Social contact, visiting and sharing meals with friends all ceased, not only because of the danger of moving about or the reduced perimeter imposed by martial law but because there was no longer enough food to share with friends. This animal way of protecting food supply was acutely felt in a society where sharing food and drink with friends had been a way of life. As food became more and more scarce the sense of isolation grew. Those without food were too proud or too embarrassed to admit their plight. Those who had food stayed away from others lest they were embarrassed into giving food away.

Our supplies of food were pitiful and for the first time in my life I came to know hunger. I was hungry all day, even after our meals. The concept of sharing became a reality as we took small helpings to make sure everyone had fair share.

THE RING CLOSES

On Christmas Eve 1944 we sat down to a spartan dinner in the kitchen. With the windows in the other rooms blown away in an air raid some months before, the kitchen was the only place where we could keep warm. There was no Christmas tree and we had no gifts. The sound of carols was replaced by the whistle of artillery shells. The water in our glasses rippled with each explosion. We were anxious about what was to come and helpless to do anything about it. Talk about Christmas Eve dinners of years past gave us comfort of sorts but the simple fare on the table brought us back to the reality of the moment. The fear of the unknown visited all of us. It came to stay.

There was a knock on the door. Our neighbour came to tell us that the Russian ring around the city was now complete. The real battle was about to begin.

It was time to move down to the air raid shelter. Even though we had been living and sleeping in an apartment without windows, at the mercy of the elements, the prospect of staying in a large, musty cellar with a lot of strangers was unappealing. Like it or not, the cellar was to be our home for the next two months.

On Christmas Day the shelling was heavy but I went to church. A young priest was saying his first Mass. The church was full. Many in the congregation must have believed that it was their last visit there. During the service an artillery shell hit the building, sending debris and glass flying. The service continued. When it ended I stepped out into the crisp, sunlit morning and heard the guns fill the air with menacing sound. In the street I saw a group of heavily armed German soldiers, dressed in camouflage uniforms, marching in step, singing defiantly:

"...... rechts und links marschieren g'rade an ...."

The battle for Budapest lasted 59 days and was particularly savage. The story got around that, when the city was surrounded on Christmas Eve, the Russians sent a Captain Ostapenko across the lines with a white flag. He carried a message asking for the surrender of the German garrison defending the city. The Germans refused to surrender. As Captain Ostapenko walked back to the Russian lines the Germans shot and killed him. The veracity of this story was later questioned but of the savagery of the battle there was no doubt.

* * *

By day the Stormovik fighter bombers ruled the sky. I watched them from the window of our apartment as they circled the Citadel, strafing and bombing, hours on end. Their attention was caught by anything that moved on the main roads. One day I was walking with my mother along the road when aerial activity was light. Suddenly, a machine gun opened up behind us. My mother pushed me into a doorway and as she lunged after me the sidewalk was peppered with machine gun bullets, stirring up dust. Only when the shots were already well past us did we hear the Stormovik's engine come alive with a roar. As we looked up, there he was, climbing again. Gliding in on the target with the engine idling they achieved complete surprise.

One day, about sunset, a crippled Russian plane flew over the city. It was flying very low, obviously trying to make it back to the Russian lines. Every anti-aircraft gun, machine gun, submachine gun, rifle and pistol was firing, trying to bring it down. The sky was alive with tracers from all directions. You just had to feel for the pilot. It seemed inevitable that he would be hit. He flew on, crawling on air, it seemed. At length he was safe from the guns of the ringed city and I hoped he made a safe landing.