WW2 as experienced by a child, Part 2

Attila Salamon
Jul 10, 2017 · 10 min read

It was the 14th of December 1944 when we boarded the bus. Shortly after we got started it got dark. Since the city was virtually surrounded and only one road remained open toward the west we needed to proceed under cover of darkness so as not to be seen and not to attract dive bombers. The bus moved at a snail’s pace through most of the night often stopping for long periods while the sky all around us was illuminated by the flashes of artillery fire. It was the eeriest night I have ever experienced. It was so frightening that I could not sleep; however, I was so tired that I was in a trance, half awake and half passed out. Things seemed to be happening around me as in a dream; but a dream that I would remember for the rest of my life.

Imagine the worst lighting storm you’ve ever experienced and multiply it by a hundred. That’s what it was like. Continuous flashes of light in all directions on the horizon, the roar of the cannons, albeit several miles away, combining their individual dull reports into an all-encompassing sound. Occasionally shells exploded close enough to our road that we (there was a whole caravan of vehicles fleeing the city) had to stop and all lights and engines were turned off. We had to wait there like sitting ducks, praying that we would not be noticed. Then we would start up again slowly, occasionally having to go off the road to skirt a crater made by a cannon shell.

Eventually we reached the town of Naszaly where the caravan stopped and we spent the rest of the night on the bus, trying to sleep. The cannon fire was still visible on the horizon, and continued all night; but, it was now further in the distance and the roar had subsided and was like that of a distant thunderstorm.

The next day we proceeded to the town of Tata where we spent the next ten days. There was a lot of commotion and waiting around until the powers-that-be decided where to house the mass of refugees. We were assigned a typical farmhouse somewhere in town. It had a small garden and a high board fence on the street side (so you couldn’t see the street) and an orchard behind the house, about 200 yards deep and 50 yards wide. I don’t know where the owners were, I don’t remember having seen them the whole time we were there. I only remember leaving the house twice. Once I wandered out to the street and found a German “Tiger” tank parked directly in front of our house. It was very foreboding looking and mysterious. It was closed up tight and I wondered if anyone was inside, and if they were watching me. I wanted to touch it but was afraid that whoever was inside might be offended and shoot me. I remember being concerned about this tank lest dive bombers were to come and attack so close to where we were.

The other foray into the outside world was when my father had to go to the town hall, presumably to find out what was to happen to us next. The town hall had been taken over by the government officials who had fled with us from Budapest. I’m assuming this from the fact that my father seemed to be familiar with them (from working with them at the Budapest city hall). While we waited, I noticed a man trying to repair a typewriter. I was always fascinated by typewriters, and it had always been a special treat when I was allowed to go to my father’s office and play with one. I watched with fascination as the man tried to figure out how the myriad pieces went back together. After watching his frustration for a while, I made a suggestion, which turned out to be the key to reassembling the monster. He was very impressed and dubbed me “The Little Engineer” on the spot, more importantly, I was allowed to use it while my father waited for his interview. Imagine the joy! It even had a red and black ribbon! This incident, and my newly earned reputation, was to play an important role later, as will be told presently.

Our room in Tata was large and well furnished. It had a large bookcase with many fascinating books with neat pictures and comic books !! This was my first experience with comic books and I never got tired leafing through them even though this was the only entertainment for most of the ten days. There were some other people quartered at this house, or possibly even in our room, for I remember one or two nice gentlemen who would spend most of the day in our room playing chess with my father. This is where I learned how to play chess; the grown-ups would give me a rook advantage and then I had to fend for myself. I soon got the hang of it.

There were air raids every day, but one night we thought we were goners when several bombs landed in the orchard behind the house. I remember running to the shelter which must have been a wine cellar judging from the vaulted brick walls and ceiling. We had to go out the front door to get to the cellar, and just as we opened the door one of the bombs exploded behind the house and a cataract of glass came crashing down right in front of us from a window somewhere above. One second sooner and we would have been showered with broken glass. Most of our ten days in Tata I spent in bed. Not that I was sick, but to keep warm. There was no heat in the house, most of the windows having been broken by bomb blasts and only cardboard covering the openings.

On the 24 of December Tata was under arial attack all day. In spite of this we had a little Christmas Eve celebration and I even got a present; God knows where they found it. It was a little toy saw mill. I played with it in my bed until late in the evening and still had it when we finally settled in Bavaria at war’s end.

The next day, Christmas day, there was a lot of commotion. All the refugees from Budapest were preparing to leave town because the front was getting closer. A caravan was being formed. We were loaded on the back of a flatbed truck and at 4 PM headed west to our next stop at Mihalyi.

I don’t remember much from that ride, only that it was cold and very, very long. Occasionally I would stand and peer over the cab looking at the road ahead or the snow covered scenery until the cold forced me to huddle down with the rest of the passengers. I don’t remember traveling thru the night and sleeping on the truck; but, according to my mother’s diary we arrived at Mihalyi on the 26th. There were no rooms waiting for us at Mihalyi and we had to spend the night at the town’s cultural center. It was a brilliantly clear night, extremely cold with our breaths turning to frost and the snow crunchy under our feet. The Raba river was frozen solid.

On the 27th we found a room at John Simon’s house. My mother’s diary has a terse entry “cold, closed people”. I have no memory of the people, but I remember some aspects of the room vividly. It was small and narrow with a window facing the street and a door to the outside on the opposite wall. Above this door was a painting of a famous battle from Hungarian history, soldiers on horseback fighting at close quarters with swords, the dying and wounded all around. My bed was along one of the longer walls and as I lay in bed trying to fall asleep I would stare at this painting. As was typical in rural houses, my bed was very high off the floor and the down comforter was almost a foot thick. I had to use a stool to climb in or out of the bed. At that age I still occasionally wet the bed. My mother was so apprehensive that I might do that and embarrass us in front of these people who reluctantly took us in, that she threatened me with death if I dared to wet the bed. It worked, because I never did it since then.

John Simon was a cabinet-maker. His workshop was at the back of the house. I spend most of my time at the window of the shop watching him work. There was nothing else to do; the only toy I had was the little toy saw mill, and that would only go so far. There were no books. The ground was covered with snow up to my neck and it was very, very cold. Narrow paths shoveled in the snow looked like little canyons and I could barely see above the rim.

One day my father and I walked to the other end of town to visit Bandi Bacsi, a friend of my fathers. (“bacsi” literally means uncle and it is the polite way children address their elders) On the way we made a little detour to the Raba River, which was not much more than a creek about fifty or sixty feet wide. We paused on a bridge just downstream of the little dam and listened to the hum of the electric generator, the “hydroelectric power plant” of this little village. A few days later the Raba froze solid and we had no electricity for a while. Bandi Bacsi’s family was quartered in a very humble house of a poor old couple. The floor was packed clay and it had a thatched roof. There was an open fire place and it was cozy and warm inside. As humble a dwelling as it was, it had an electric light bulb and we had a very nice visit. Their son, nicknamed Cuci, had a microscope set over which I nearly lost my mind. Cuci was a few years older than I and I listened with fascination as he explained things to me. A treat almost as good as this was a lump of “potato candy” that I was given. To this day I have not determined just what “potato candy” is. It was white and had the consistency of putty and was sweet, but not overly so. Like the taste of “Turkish Honey”, this taste lingers in my memory to this day; but I have never experienced either taste since then.

I will never forget our walk home from this visit. It was a brilliant night. I don’t remember if there was a full moon or if the stars were so bright and the snow so white that it was almost like daylight. The snow crunched under our feet, our breath froze in little clouds and the stars shone brighter than I have ever seen them. I felt warm and happy inside and I think I felt closer to my father that night than at any other time in my life.

According to my mother’s journal, on the third of January we bought a pig and had it slaughtered so that we would be sure to have something to eat for the next few months. The sausages, smoked ham and other items of food were packed in a small crate with molten pig’s fat poured around them to form, after cooling, a solid mass as a preservative and padding against any mishaps in our journey.

One other event remains in my memory of this little town. It must have been near the end of our stay, in March, because the snow was gone when one day there was a major commotion and a horse drawn wagon came down our street carrying two large unexploded bombs, a long red one and a squatter one of an olive green color. I was very frightened that they may explode, but my curiosity got the better of me as I peeked through a crack in the fence which I thought would protect me.

When we returned to Mihalyi with my cousins in 1990, all the scenes which I thought I had forgotten returned to me. We knocked at the door of John Simon’s house and a spry little old lady came to the door. We introduced ourselves and said that I had spent three months in this house as a refugee during the war. Her face lit up with recognition for she had lived across the street at that time and had “baby sat” for me and my sister. Her name is Elizabeth and she was maybe 16, or so, when she baby sat for 8 year old me and 4 year old Ildi. She had many sad stories to tell about those times. The dead German soldiers arriving by the truck-full, young beautiful boys that she helped bury in the cemetery; all that wasted youth. John Simon was dead; she showed us his grave. His work shop was still at the back of the house as I had remembered it but the picture above the door of the room where we had stayed was no longer there. We were so lucky to have stumbled onto Mihalyi at that time for John Simon’s house was to be razed that summer to make room for a new house.

On the 24th of March we were packing and getting ready to flee again. On Palm Sunday, the 25th of March, we were waiting for a car to pick us up to resume our flight. The Russians were at Pàpa and getting ever closer. The Germans were in frightful retreat. I was sick with a temperature of 104. The next day we finally got to leave. I guess I was pretty sick because we were taken by ambulance to the border town of Zsira. I have no recollection of being sick, or of the ambulance ride. I only know this from my mother’s journal entries. I do, however, have one very vivid memory of Zsira. We arrived in the evening at an inn, not far from the border. There was a large room where all the furniture had been removed and blankets were spread on the floor. Here we slept, on the floor, with many other refugees side-by-side like sardines in a can. One man went out somewhere that night and came back drunk. I was awakened by people screaming and hollering at him as he staggered over, and stepped upon sleeping bodies on his way to the corner of the room where his blanket was. He very nearly stepped on me and there was an angry exchange of words between my father and him. He vomited several times during the night and walked over people every time he went out to relieve himself. I had never seen a drunk before and I was very frightened.

We stayed at this inn a second night; and, on Wednesday morning, the 28th of March, my father’s 40th birthday, we crossed the border into Austria. I often wonder what must have passed thru his mind that day. How could he have guessed where we would wind up, how worried he must have been over our loved ones left behind, engulfed by the fighting. We did not step on Hungarian soil again until 1988.

Attila Salamon

Written by

I am a retired engineer. I was born in 1937 in Budapest, Hungary and lived through the second world war. I want to write about my experiences during the war.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade