Richard Lettis: The Hungarian Revolt

ELDON GRIFFITHS

Shortly before dawn on Monday, Nov. 4, a gray-green Hungarian staff car careened wildly through the streets of shellbattered Budapest. At a check point where ragged revolutionaries stood beside the weapons with which they had driven the Russian army out of the capital, the driver shouted hoarsely: "The Reds are coming back!"
It was the first certain warning Hungary had that the Red army was intent on revenge. But, alas, it came too late. By five a.m., Soviet Panzers had broken through the northern defenses and were in possession of Parliament Square.
The Red return was a piece of treachery comparable in infamy with Pearl Harbor. But treachery had its reward. The brave city rose again -boys of twelve and old men of sixty; and this time they were armed from factories of industrial Csepel. Revolutionary committeemen poured onto the streets with burp guns. Barricades which Red tanks smashed barely a week before were hastily rebuilt with street car tracks and stones. Machine gun nests sprouted in the rambling old citadel overlooking the Danube. When a Russian tank company moved up to Kilian barracks shooting sentries without warning, Hungarian soldiers opened up with automatics and the Red advance guard was mowed down.
By six a.m. the Russians were heavily engaged at scores of different points throughout the city. There was no or ganized front, only groups of desperate patriots flinging themselves at the hated Panzers whenever they appeared. Showers of Molotov cocktails left dozens of Red tanks in flames near Lenin Boulevard. At Peoples Park soldiers and workers fought back fiercely. From lines of trenches in the suburb of Kobanya, Hungarian artillery men waged a gun duel with the Reds that lasted seventy hours.
The rebels' one advantage was that tanks were helpless in the city's narrow streets. After a dozen or more were knocked out, the Reds switched to artillery. Heavy propelled guns occupied the top of Gellert Hill and flung hundreds of rounds into the citadel. Soviet planes strafed patriots holding out in railroad stations, heavy mortars pounded Csepel.
As the battle's fury rose, Western correspondents sought refuge with their diplomatic missions. Then, that night British correspondents and I were the first newsmen to go out and see for ourselves. Beneath a sky that was a patchwork of smoke spirals stitched with tracers, the conflict had resolved itself into four main areas of battle. We headed toward the fiercest.

KILIAN BARRACKS:
For eighteen hours Soviet guns had plastered Killian's walls. Now tanks were trying again supported by a creeping barrage of heavy mortars. We crept along streets that in places were inches deep in broken glass and plaster. A heavy machine-gun clatters along the street . . . for seconds we stand petrified. In the background, like a surf along the Atlantic shore, mortars fire without pause, tanks crash out their salvos. But from Kilian only tommyguns answer back.
It proves impossible to get close to the barracks for gun battles are raging at almost every street corner where the gunmen of Budapest are defending their [52/53] homes. All around is echoing confusion -yet here and there little points of order project themselves into the chaos.
A solitary traffic light that no one has bothered to turn off winks from the end of the boulevard. As we crouch in a bullet-seamed doorway, a radio disseminates the Oxford accent of the BBC.
Kilian fought all night and most of the next day. Hundreds of Hungarian soldiers died under falling masonry, but when the Russians demanded surrender the defenders replied with bullets. The next morning a group of officers went out under a truce flag to give themselves up to the Russians. The bitter men in Kilian waited until the Soviets stepped forward to receive the surrender, then shot them all down. On Thursday, Russian tanks broke into Kilian. One small group of Hungarians managed to escape in the direction of a nearby children's clinic. Promptly the Russian guns opened up on the clinic. Over the telephone to a Western legation came the agonized voice of a doctor: "There are 300 children here. They are panicking in the flames."

SZENA TER:
Across the river, Hadik barracks holds out with Hungarian tanks. It's pounded from Gellert Hill, but seven Soviet Panzers are knocked out in first twelve hours. North of Moscow square, mustachioed revolutionary chieftain Janos Szabo is holed up in a police building.
When the Russians returned, Szabo and a hundred young men -most of them high school students- pledged to fight to the death. Szabo embraced each in turn, his comic uptilted moustache tickling their ears as he hugged them. When the first Soviet tank charged forward, Szena Ter was ready. From windows rained cascades of Molotov cocktails mixed in Slivowitz bottles. The first tank was set on fire but managed to withdraw after blowing a couple of houses to pieces. The second tank which roared up the incline leading to the police building burst into flames when a barrel of diesel fuel rolled downhill toward it, and exploded under its belly. The turret opened and three Red tank men scrambled out. Szabo motioned his boys to leave them to him. Then, squinting along a burp gun, he picked them off like flies.
The Russian reply was a mortar barrage, then an onrush of armored cars. Heavy machinegun bullets from infantrymen in cars tore great gaps in the defenders and took off the lower half of Szabo's left arm. Thirteen defenders plunged into the rubble where they were safe from everything but infantry (which the Russians refused to commit). But food and ammunition soon ran short in what was left of the police building. Only a few dozen Molotov cocktails and a score of men to throw them were left for the tank onslaught as it came in. A blond boy running amok charged out from the rubble to try to toss a grenade into the tank slits. He was shot down before he had... [...]

Richard Lettis: The Hungarian Revolt