One of the most touching proofs that freedom had really arrived-and you could see men and women all over the city fingering these proofs with actual affection-was the appearance, almost as if by magic, of many different kinds of newspapers. There were socialist papers, peasant-party papers, labor union papers, and organs proclaiming this or that sure pathway to national prosperity.
"Look!" Eva cried one afternoon. "Newspapers!"
The Pals went up to a bombed-out stand where four different kinds of badly printed sheets were available. They carried mostly rumors, mostly hopes. But they were newspapers ... at last. The Pals bought one of each. But when they saw that the old Szabad Nep of the communist party had the effrontery to use as its new masthead the almost sacred seal of Louis Kossuth, they threw it in the gutter.
The Pals were deeply affected by many trivial things. Sometimes a ridiculous incident, which would have gone unnoticed in another country, would bring them to tears, and they would stand for a moment in the bright sunlight and wonder, "What happened to us?" One day when Eva was walking along the street she was jostled by a man. He stopped to apologize and she realized that he was not a Hungarian. He spoke in a foreign language and they stood looking at each other until a pa.s.ser-by stopped to interpret. "He is a Frenchman, a newspaperman."
Eva said, "Are newspapermen from abroad allowed in Budapest now?"
"There are hundreds," the Frenchman said. "Everyone wants to know what happened in your city." And for no reason Eva began to cry.
On All Saints" Day, Zoltan was listening to the radio when the announcer said that in honor of the brave men and women who had died winning Hungarian freedom the radio would play music that had not been heard in Hungary for many years. And from the speaker came the golden music of Mozart"s Requiem Ma.s.s, which was rarely performed in the days of communism. Zoltan sat absolutely quiet during the entire performance, staring at the floor. He felt exalted that he was again able to hear the music of the west.
One of the finest rewards came about in a curious way. In the early days of the revolution, students had demanded that the government shut down its jamming stations, and now the flow of news from London and Paris and Munich could come in strong and unimpeded. It was a luxury beyond a.n.a.lysis to be able to sit and listen to news coming in clearly from the rest of the world. Each of these little things-the coming of strangers, the playing of forbidden music, the arrival of news from Europe-made the Pals think, "We are part of the world once more."
Rumors infected the city, and none was more tragic than the one which claimed that the United Nations would shortly intervene in Hungary"s behalf. Eva Pal had long had the habit of listening to the American Radio Free Europe stations whenever their programs were not being blanketed by communist jamming stations. From the messages of hope which she had received in this way, she had unfortunately convinced herself that not only the United Nations, but the United States as well, would land paratroopers in Budapest, followed by tanks and an expenditionary force. When time proved that these rumors were false and that no outside agency had any intention of underwriting the apparently successful revolution, a foreboding sense of having been left isolated crept over the city.
This was partially dispelled, however, by the many jokes which the irrepressible Hungarians circulated. For example, Zoltan Pal took his wife to see the remains of the Stalin statue in Stalin Square. There the two empty boots stood, with a Hungarian flag jutting out of one of them. "We don"t call it Stalin Square any longer," Zoltan laughed. "Now it is Bootmaker Square."
Another visitor said, "You know, they didn"t pull the statue down at all. They just dropped a wrist watch in front of it, and like any Russian fool, Stalin bent down to get it."
The most appreciated jokes were those which ridiculed the stupidity of the communist government, which had actually broadcast the following plea: "Persons serving prison sentences for murder, willful manslaughter, robbery, burglary, larceny or theft and who have left prison since 23rd October for any reason without having served at least two-thirds of their sentence should report back immediately to the nearest criminal police headquarters."
Once Zoltan pointed to destroyed machine guns and said, "Those Russian guitars won"t play any more music." And the most common joke had in it a large grain of truth: "Imre Nagy says he wasn"t really a communist. Janos Kadar says he isn"t a communist. In fact, the only communist in Hungary is Nikita Khrushchev."
In this light spirit several profound changes were made in Hungarian life. The word "comrade" was officially banned, and it became very offensive to call another man comrade. October 23 was proclaimed a national holiday, and the Kossuth crest became the great seal of Hungary. Russian language study was dropped as a compulsory subject.
More important, political parties started to function, and nothing pleased the Pal family more. "Now we will be able to vote for the men we like," they said over and over to their neighbors. It was strange how simple things that a large part of the world took for granted gave Hungarians so much pleasure in those brief days: independent newspapers, political parties, a promise of free elections, with a booth in which you might vote in secret.
So joyous was the atmosphere that from all over Hungary delegations of miners and farmers and students came to Budapest bearing lists of proposals for a more democratic nation. They were not reactionary suggestions, as the communists were later to claim, for few citizens wanted to go back to the days of fascism. What they dreamed of, these workmen, was a liberal, middle way of life.
For example, one evening the Pals heard the radio announce the demands of one workers" committee from Borsod County. The requests were simple: Fire the people responsible for the breakdown in what they called the planned economy. Raise the basic wage. Stop undercover price increases. Increase pensions and family allowances. More homes, more loans to builders of small homes. Get the Russians out of Hungary. See to it that Hungarian uranium is sold so as to profit Hungary and not Russia. Arrange some treaty like the one Gomulka got for Poland. Fire the Russians" yes-men in Parliament. Then they added, "We agree with the socialist way of agriculture, but it must be reorganized in the spirit of complete voluntariness and with consideration for the peasants."
At the very moment when such rational demands were being submitted, communists in Moscow and elsewhere were claiming that the Hungarian revolution had been launched by fascists, capitalist elements, reactionaries and those discredited segments of the population who wished to take Hungary back to prewar days. Moscow implied that if the revolution succeeded, Hungary would be plunged back into medievalism or worse.
But the new Hungary, if it had been allowed to survive, would have been a socialist state devoid of absentee land ownership, large concentrations of private capital or private ownership of important industries. One might have termed it a modified communism lacking dictatorship features. It would have been more capitalist than either Poland or Yugoslavia, but it would certainly have been no 1890 feudal oligarchy. Many Americans unfamiliar with developments in Central Europe would have considered the new Hungary dangerously leftist. The world in general would have welcomed the new state as a hopeful step in the gradual decommunization of Eastern Europe, for compared with what had existed up to October 23, 1956, the new nation would have been a model of liberalism.
It should not be suggested that all was order and decency during these five days of freedom. For one thing, many AVO were still at large and some units of the Russian army remained within the city, shooting occasionally at pa.s.sers-by. Then, too, there were in many sectors bands of revolutionaries who were not yet ready to declare the city safe from possible attack. They were a law to themselves, and in some instances represented a kind of anarchy which if not brought under control might ultimately do the cause of freedom much damage. For the most part, however, the citizens of Budapest were astonished at how well the wild young men of the city had settled down, once the riots had ended in their favor. Especially remarkable was the performance of what Americans call dead-end kids, for it was they who had dashed under the guns of the tanks. It was they who had strung the grenades across the streets. It was they who had fought to the last ounce of their energy. Now they were policing the same streets and putting out unguarded boxes into which people tossed thousands of forints for the care of poor families whose men had been killed in the fighting. All over Budapest, Eva and Zoltan saw these boxes, full of money, standing along the streets. n.o.body stole from them, and at dusk each day the dead-end kids collected the money and distributed it.
In these heady days of freedom the Pals thought about the structure of their new nation a good deal. Zoltan says, "At first all we wanted was free elections, no AVO, no Russians, and newspapers. Then we realized that we would have to have some new kind of government, too, and that called for basic changes. Frankly, I didn"t know what would be best. About as far as I went was to think that Imre Nagy would form a liberal government and arrange for the Russians to leave. I knew Nagy was a communist himself, but a pretty decent one." Eva Pal had other ideas. All her life she had been a good Catholic, even when perseverance in her faith cost her much, and now she heard news which thrilled her deeply. The announcement came over the radio one morning at ten o"clock: "Jozsef Cardinal Mindszenty, Prince Primate, who was liberated on Tuesday by our victorious revolution, arrived at his residence in Buda at 0855 this morning."
For Eva Pal there was a kind of exaltation in this simple message, for her parents had told her repeatedly that the cardinal was a man to be trusted. In secret she had heard of the trials he had suffered, the punishments and the tortures. Her mother always said first, "Loyal to Hungary." Then she would add, as if she had blasphemed, "And he was loyal to G.o.d, too."
During the day, news of his incredible escape from prison swept through Budapest, and Eva heard that on the previous night four officers of the Hungarian army, fighting with the freedom forces, had learned that Cardinal Mindszenty was being held by fourteen AVO men in a mansion outside Budapest. The officers had hurried there without orders, had disarmed the AVO guard and had carried the cardinal away to safety. A few minutes later a Russian tank arrived, to protect the cardinal, the driver said, but Mindszenty was now with his own people.
The next morning these daring officers brought the cardinal to his official residence in Buda. From there the churchman made his first announcement to the Hungarian people: "I admire what the weapons of the youth, the soldiers, the university students, the villagers, the peasants and the workers accomplished. After eight years of imprisonment, they tore open the door of my prison. These brave officers of Retsag cared for nothing, they came to the house where I was imprisoned and took me along with them. I rested in the barracks. I send my pontifical blessing to the Hungarian weapons. I wish the glory acquired by Hungarian weapons to be multiplied by our peasantry when need comes. I want to be informed of the situation before I do or say more."
For some years Eva Pal, like a good many Hungarians, had kept hidden among her possessions a secret portrait of Cardinal Mindszenty, holding him in her mind as a symbol of resistance against communism and the Russians. Now, as she unfolded the battered portrait and placed it on her wall, the idea came to her that in the days ahead free Hungary would need the leadership of a man like this.
"He ought to be premier," she told her husband.
Zoltan, never one for religion, said, "Maybe not premier. I don"t think a cardinal ought to run the government."
"But he ought to be in the government," Eva persisted.
"That might be all right," Zoltan agreed.
And in the next days, when the cardinal"s powerful voice was heard speaking gravely of the tasks ahead, Eva Pal became more satisfied than ever that the unwavering churchman ought to help run Hungary. She argued with her husband, "Otherwise we have no leader. Who can really trust Nagy Imre?" In Hungarian, names are given in reverse order, and the communist leader"s name, when Eva spoke it, sounded like Nodge Imry, but all in one word.
"I like Nagy Imre," Zoltan said. "He"s a man of great courage."
"Why not a government of Mindszenty and Nagy Imre?" Eva suggested.
"Maybe, if Nagy Imre were premier," Zoltan grudgingly agreed.
Eva saw nothing strange in her proposal for a Hungarian government based on Nagy, the old communist who still adhered to the economic theory of communism, and Mindszenty, the prince of the church. When she suggested this strange team to her neighbors, she found that many of the women approved.
Zoltan, however, talked mostly with workmen, and while they agreed that a towering moral symbol like Mindszenty should have a place in the government, they felt that even Imre Nagy was too old-fashioned. "We"ll make him president, since everyone respects him, but we want younger men, the ones who led the revolution, to run the government." And they spoke of a middle-of-the-road system which would preserve the main outlines of the 1945 socialist state that had replaced fascism, but which would be based above all else on respect for human dignity.
"I know two things," Eva said. "Mindszenty ought to be in the government, and the AVO should be thrown out."
"And the Russians, too," Zoltan added.
On the evening of November 2, exciting reports circulated through Budapest detailing the terms which Cardinal Mindszenty had insisted upon as those under which he would agree to partic.i.p.ate in the government. Eva Pal was relieved to know that arrangements were being completed, but the workmen with whom Zoltan talked were most apprehensive. "The Russians will hear of these terms," they argued, "and they"ll have an excuse for coming back to Budapest. You watch. They"ll claim the revolution was run by priests and reactionaries."
Zoltan talked about this fear with his wife, but she reasoned that since the revolution had already succeeded before Cardinal Mindszenty was even out of jail, such Russian arguments would be ridiculous. "I think we"re going to have a wonderful new country," she repeated hopefully.
The vision of an honorable Hungary, free from Russian domination, seemed to bring out the best in many kinds of people, for additional proposals on how to organize the new nation came from all parts of the country and showed a greater statesmanship than the initial series. For example, Zoltan was deeply impressed when he and Eva listened to the sober plans which a committee of farmers had initiated for abolishing collectivized farms in Hungary. The reforms were not reactionary, nor were they stupid. The farmers said, "Our basic principle is that only those collectivized farms which produce surpluses and whose members want them to remain in operation should be continued. Those that cannot stand on their own feet, or whose members object, should be ended. But liquidation must be carried out gradually, after the completing of the autumn sowing and at the beginning of spring. Where a collectivized farm is liquidated, the land should be distributed among the peasants. This winter experts should study what size farm would be best, thus enabling the farmers to begin spring planting on their own lands. If a collectivized farm is continued, its norms and the way each farmer"s work is evaluated must be changed to insure more justice. For the time being, the present system of collectivized farms may have to remain, but control must be reorganized, and all of us must get a more just opportunity to use the machinery."
Men who ran factories were making proposals of equal responsibility. Political leaders were suggesting ways of combining powers to form a stable government, and the philosophers of the country were beginning to talk about the genesis of a true national spirit that would reflect Hungary"s love of freedom, her courage and her determination to exist as a sovereign power. There was a great deal of talk about making Hungary the Switzerland or the Sweden of Eastern Europe. "I like the idea," Zoltan said. "We are a small country. We should be neutral." And he found that Eva agreed with him heartily.
In fact, in these great sweet days of freedom, the people of Hungary talked good sense, and it seemed as if a basis were being built for a powerful and dedicated nation. "Certainly we have earned the right to be a nation," Eva told her friends.
Then came ominous news from the east. A boy came running into the street crying that hundreds of Russian tanks were in motion at the airport. "Not little ones like before. Big ones."
Men confirmed the evil news. "It looks as if the Russians were going to come back in force," a soldier said. "And those new tanks! They have extra machine guns that point down between the treads. You can"t blow them up."
There was a rumble to the east, a cold wind blowing from the steppes of Russia. At four o"clock the next morning, on Sunday, November 4, Budapest was awakened by the shattering sound of Russian tanks tearing the city apart.
The tanks did not reach northern Buda till late, but when they did they rolled up the street where Zoltan and Eva Pal lived and methodically began to blow apart a house where a sniper had been seen. It was not the house in which the Pals lived, but, huddling together by the shivering window of their fourth-floor apartment, the young couple knew that theirs might be next. The glorious days of freedom were ended. The five brief days which had provided a glimpse into a different kind of future were over. Even the memories were being destroyed by the Russian tanks.
5.
The Russian Terror
At four o"clock on Sunday morning, November 4, the Russians returned to Budapest. With a terror unparalleled in recent years they destroyed a city, and in doing so they stood unmasked before the world for the aggressors, the murderers, the insane fanatics that they are.
In the rubble of Budapest, in the graves of women and children mowed down by machine guns, and in the unrelieved terror of Soviet revenge lay buried Russia"s claims to friendship with the satellite countries who live within her orbit. In eight h.e.l.lish days Russia proved that she holds Poland and Bulgaria and Lithuania and many of the Central Asian Republics by cold, brute force.
Budapest was a dreadful price to pay for such knowledge, but if the knowledge is widely disseminated among those who were unaware of it before, and if Russia"s cynical and disgraceful lies are laid bare to the rest of the world, the death of this n.o.ble city will not have been in vain.
The Russians were quite brave in their a.s.sault on the unarmed city. First they took command of Gellert Hill, a rocky height which rises 770 feet in one sheer sweep up from the western sh.o.r.e of the Danube. To the top of this Buda hill the Russians sped mobile heavy artillery and enormous stores of ammunition. Sh.e.l.ls from these guns, which landed with terrifying force in apartment houses and government buildings, measured nearly four feet long and were vastly destructive.
From Gellert Hill, the highest point in Budapest, the Russian artillerymen could command the entire city. The guns, which were established near a monument erected to Russian soldiers who had helped drive Hitler out of Budapest, looked directly down at the eight main bridges that spanned the Danube and connected Buda with Pest.
To the north the powerful guns could fire into the old town of Buda, whose Castle Hill was a handsome collection of narrow streets, quaint houses and historic sites. The Russians knew that with enough high-explosive sh.e.l.ls they could blow the old town completely apart.
East of the river, the great guns could pinpoint university buildings, railway stations, museums, the radio studio, the factories in Csepel and one particular spot whose continued resistance infuriated the Russians: the sagging, gutted remnants of Kilian Barracks, where some soldiers and officers still held out.
In fact, these ma.s.sive guns on Gellert Hill could by themselves have destroyed Budapest. But they were, in some respects, the least weapon in the Russian commander"s a.r.s.enal. He had in addition about 140,000 of the most ruthless foot soldiers in the Soviet army, plus another 60,000 available in the immediate vicinity, if the going got rough. Each soldier was equipped with a sub-machine gun and huge supplies of ammunition that could be momentarily replenished. These soldiers had been given one simple order: "Shoot!" It did not matter whether the moving target was a student with a gasoline bomb or a housewife with a loaf of bread. "Shoot!"
Next came four thousand new tanks. These were not the vulnerable, old-style T-34s, with high turrets and machine guns which could not deflect, like the kind Sergeant Csoki had destroyed in the first days of fighting. These were lowslung, swift, superarmored and well-gunned T-54s with a turret from which sh.e.l.ls would deflect because of its sloping sides. They could do forty miles an hour, and run over a trolley car or crush an automobile. They carried in addition a powerful gun which could fire semi-automatically and deliver a punch that would destroy a house. The Russians brought two thousand of these tanks into the city and kept an equal number in reserve.
In the air, jet planes and propeller-driven bombers were called in to hit specific targets or to bomb whole areas. These planes were usually armed with rockets carrying enormous concentrations of high explosives, and one rocket could rip out a factory wall. Since the Hungarian rebels had neither planes of their own nor more than one antiaircraft gun, nor the ammunition if they had had the guns, the Soviet pilots flew courageously and accomplished great damage.
On the ground there were rockets, too. Nests of rocket launchers could be wheeled into position behind fast-moving trucks and discharge in rapid-fire order six giant rockets against a building that was attempting to hold out. Usually one volley was enough to collapse a building and kill all occupants.
But even these formidable weapons were not enough for what the Russians had in mind. Squads of men with flame throwers moved throughout the city, burning down large areas and incinerating the inhabitants. There were also armor-piercing batteries in case Hungarian freedom fighters turned up with armor or captured tanks. There were ant.i.tank guns to deal with the latter, bazookas in case of extreme trouble, and a new kind of baby tank that was extremely mobile and well armed. In addition they had an intricate system of communications, flares, walkie-talkies, reconnaissance cars and armed jeeps. Most important, for this second a.s.sault each Soviet soldier had been issued a new type of sub-machine gun twice as effective as the old Russian guitar.
Against this concentration of Soviet power the Hungarians had some homemade gasoline bombs.
Even so, the Russians were not willing to take any chances. Before launching their attack, they lured into a phony meeting the one Hungarian who might have defeated them. Colonel Maleter, now a major-general because of his amazing skill in defending Budapest and driving out the Russians, took the Russians" promise of safe pa.s.sage at its face value and went to a meeting "to discuss the withdrawal of all Soviet troops from Hungary." The Russians, stalling for time so that their last gun could be drawn into position, made concessions which amounted to a total Hungarian victory.
Hardly able to believe what he heard, Maleter accepted the Russian surrender. "Come back later and we"ll sign the papers," the Russians said. "In the meantime, no fighting."
During the truce thus obtained, the Russians consolidated their strangle hold on the city, and when General Maleter returned for the subsequent meeting, safeguarded by a flag of truce, the Russians promptly brushed aside the flag, arrested the hero of Budapest and whisked him off to prison, possibly in Siberia.
In the dreadful days of fighting that were to follow, the young men of Hungary marched out almost unarmed against the Russian tanks, without a leader, without generals and without lines of communication. What these young patriots accomplished against their Russian oppressors is an epic of human endurance.
The heroic Russians spent Sunday sh.e.l.ling the city from the safety of Gellert Hill and sending out squads of swift tanks to shoot up the boulevards. They kept their foot soldiers in reserve and tried to terrorize the Hungarians so completely that on Monday mopping up could begin.
They made a bad guess. The Hungarians stayed indoors during the worst part of the sh.e.l.ling, and tried to dodge bullets during the swift tank forays. Even so, courageous freedom fighters did find time to erect barricades across many of the streets of Pest, and there were some teams of young boys and girls who tackled any tank that slowed down. At one important intersection, Moricz Zsigmond Square, in Buda, a college student who had been forced by the communists to study military science cried, "It looks to me that if we can hold this square, the Russians will be tied up. Let"s barricade it."
a.s.suming command, he devised a masterful defense plan, but before he could complete his work a boy shouted, "Here come five cars of soldiers!"
The college student ordered his best men onto the nearby roofs, and when the reconnaissance cars swung into the partially barricaded square, he gave a signal and brought the cars under very heavy fire. Sixty-seven Russians were killed, and the three cars that were able to turn about fled back toward Gellert Hill.
Before the next Russian attack came, the college student directed his forces to overturn all the street cars in the area. They interlaced the street cars with timbers, and blocked themselves in. He gained unexpected support from some Hungarian soldiers who delivered two captured Russian tanks to the square, and these formed the main artillery of the defense.
Russian retaliation was not long delayed. Seven large tanks came screaming down from Gellert Hill, and as they came, machine guns sprayed bullets into all the surrounding houses. Out of range of the fighters in Moricz Zsigmond Square the tanks halted, rounded up twenty street boys and executed them in one t.i.tanic burst of bullets.
Inside the square the college student said to his men, "We will die here today."
The seven swift tanks, having completed their first act of revenge, now rushed at Moricz Zsigmond Square, but the defenders were so well dug in, so well armed and so daring that all the tanks were destroyed. The November Sunday then settled down into a brutal battle between more and more tanks and the fiery young men inside the square. It was here, facing youngsters, that the Russians learned that their grand plan for a quick humiliation of Budapest was not going to work. They would have to dig out the Hungarians man by man.
Among the freedom fighters inside the barricades at Moricz Zsigmond Square was a twenty-year-old youth, tough as nails but almost boyishly eager to be a story-book hero. His name was Imre Geiger, and his great sorrow was that throughout the entire revolution he never acquired any weapon larger than a rifle. He felt that if he had been able to get hold of a machine gun the outcome of the fighting might have been different.
Geiger was a handsome fellow, dark, chunky, with fine teeth and jet-black hair which he wore in a crew-cut. He wore a turtleneck sweater, kept a cigarette dangling from the left corner of his mouth and tried to talk in a snarl. He was on duty when five fresh Russian tanks whipped up to clean out the square.
"They didn"t succeed," Geiger reports. "I don"t know how we did it, but we killed one tank in the battle and drove the rest off." In the hours that followed, two more Russian tanks were destroyed at Moricz Zsigmond Square, and in the dull hours of night the Russians had to accept the fact that the second battle for Budapest was going to be tougher than the first. As if to prove this conclusion, Geiger and his men held their square against the full might of the Russian attack for thirty-six hours. At one point they were under fire from Gellert Hill, from tanks lining the perimeter of the square, from armor-piercing mobile guns that methodically shot down the buildings of the square, and from mortars that lobbed phosphorous incendiary bombs all over the fighting area. Even so, the young Hungarians withstood this ma.s.sed a.s.sault for two hours, and retreated only when there was no square left to defend. "They didn"t get much," Geiger says. When the Soviets finally marched in, the streets nearby were so blocked with crushed street cars, burned-out tanks, ruined vehicles, and collapsed houses that it was not worth having. As for Imre Geiger, he had squirmed his way out to fight at a more important post.
After the capture of Moricz Zsigmond Square, the Soviets turned their attention to a more difficult target. North of Gellert Hill they could see the old castle which dominated Castle Hill. Most of the streets leading up to it were on a steep incline, with treacherous turns, and here a group of dedicated young Hungarians, including many college students, had gathered to defend Buda to the end. After the fall of the square, they were augmented by a handful of experienced fighters who had already tasted all that the Russians had to offer. But the fight at Castle Hill was different from that at the square in one respect: here many young girls a.s.sisted in the fighting. They were to prove heroic.
The cautious Russians approached the problem of Castle Hill as if it were defended by the most powerful enemy in the world, rather than by a bunch of young men and girls with no weapons. In cla.s.sic sequence the mighty guns on Gellert Hill laid down a merciless barrage of high-explosive sh.e.l.ls for about an hour. It seemed unlikely that any human being could have lived through this destruction.
But not wishing to take any risks, the commander next sent in tanks to annihilate any remaining organized opposition, and these were to be followed by companies of foot soldiers with machine guns. Their job was to wipe out isolated survivors.
But the soldiers didn"t get there-not just then. For as soon as the sullen barrage had ended, boys and girls mysteriously appeared from their hiding places and under impromptu supervision took steps which would make the defense of Castle Hill a memorable page in the history of military improvisation.
Among the recruits whom Castle Hill acquired from Moricz Zsigmond Square was Imre Geiger, still lugging a rifle and still burning for a fight. "We had a simple problem," he says. "How to destroy tanks."
"There were three main ways," he explains. "The first way was to make them slip sideways and crack up. Sometimes we were able to do this when they were going uphill. Girls would spread liquid soap on the street, and the tank"s tracks would either spin or slide. Maybe the tank would jam into a building, and then we would pounce on it.
"A man who worked in a garage showed us how to smear grease and oil at corners, and a tank might slide sideways into a tree or a building, and we would have it trapped.
"Our second trick was to make them stop for a minute. Anything to make them stop. One clever girl spread brown plates upside down, and they looked exactly like land mines. The Russians would come up to them, hesitate and then start to back up. That"s when we got them. A workman thought up a very smart idea. From a soda-water plant he got a truck load of empty oxygen tanks. He spread these on the street and you should have seen the tanks rolling around. Some little boys strung grenades on strings, and jockeyed them back and forth until they came under the tracks of the tanks. The explosions stopped the tanks and we killed them. But the bravest were the young boys and girls who just dashed out and stuck lengths of plumber"s pipe into the tracks, making them jam. You never saw such kids.
"The third way," he explains, flipping his drooping cigarette up to a better angle by twisting his lips, "was to lure some tank into a dead-end street. Once we got it there, we had a good chance to kill it. Girls would put broomsticks out windows, and the tank crews would take them to be snipers" guns, and they would nose into the dead-end street. Too bad for the tank. Or we propped up old empty guns in doorways, and tanks would come after them, get bottled in the dead-end street, and we would kill them."
Getting a tank stopped, of course, was merely the easy part of the battle, for even a trapped tank could spit fire from its three heavy machine guns, all of which could seek out attackers by revolving in almost a complete circle. In addition, the Soviets were quite prepared to fire their heaviest cannon point-blank at even a single Hungarian, if by so doing they could prevent an attacker from reaching the tank with a gasoline bomb.
The young people of Castle Hill were equal to the occasion. They discovered many ways to kill a wounded tank. One energetic worker filled an entire depression in the cobblestone pavement at the top of a hill with gasoline. He just left it there and hid in a doorway until a tank reached the middle of the gasoline. Then he pitched a grenade into the open gas, and engulfed the tank in a wall of flame.
Another worker ran a high-tension electric wire onto a tank and electrocuted the occupants. At the bottom of a hill a determined motorman set his trolley car in motion, got it up to high speed and leaped off just before it rammed headfirst into a tank, which was then set ablaze.
But ultimately, the monstrous Soviet tanks were destroyed by incredibly brave young men and women who got close enough to them to douse them with handmade gasoline bombs. "I didn"t think girls could do what I saw them do," Imre Geiger says. "They would hide in doorways with one bomb apiece. If the tank went by in good shape, they didn"t move. Some of them, of course, were killed by machine-gun fire when such tanks shot into all the doorways they saw. Many girls were killed.
"But if the tank slipped, or ran into a wall, or was stopped in any way, out would dart these girls and blow it to h.e.l.l." A Presbyterian minister who saw the fight on Castle Hill says simply, "I have never known such heroism as the girls of Budapest displayed."
It fell to the lot of one twelve-year-old boy whose name is not known to achieve the ultimate in this fight against the Soviets. He lashed grenades to his belt, carried others in his arms, and ran into the tracks of the lead tank in a column, blowing its tracks and himself to pieces, but he stopped the column for older fighters. The same minister says of this child, "It should not have happened. Somebody should have stopped such a child. But he knew who he was fighting against."
In the end, of course, the Russians captured Castle Hill. A full two days behind schedule the ruthless foot soldiers marched up as planned, and finished the mopping up. But as they marched, cautiously and with the maximum weapons, they pa.s.sed the burned-out hulks of more than a score of Russia"s finest tanks. Not one heavy gun had been used against these tanks ... only the hands of young Hungarians who were fighting for personal and national freedom.
When the victorious Soviets finally entered the castle itself, the final bastion, only thirty young Hungarians remained to walk out proudly under the white flag of surrender. For three days they had withstood the terrible concentration of Soviet power, and they had conducted themselves as veritable heroes. The gallant Soviet commander waited until they were well clear of the walls; then with one burst of machine-gun fire he executed the lot.
Across Budapest the same terror prevailed. Early in the fighting the Soviet army had evolved a simple rule of thumb: "If there is a single shot from any house, destroy the whole house. If there are many shots from a street, shoot down every building in the street."