Richard Lettis: The Hungarian Revolt |
Inside Hungary - Witness to Red Revenge[38]
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...
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Richard Lettis: The Hungarian Revolt |