There are two bases at Fehervar. One of them is the Alba Regia Base, which is officially the "High Quarters of the Hungarian Ground Forces", but everyone just calls it "Alba".
(Alba Regia, just like the word Fehervar, means "white castle". It was the name of the city in the ancient Roman times. In the early middle ages Fehervar was the capital of Hungary, hence the word "Szekes", which means "with chair"; this refers to the chair of the king. Many other cities also have the word Fehervar in their names, in Hungary as well as in other countries, for example Beograd also means "white city" or "white castle"; this comes from its old Hungarian name "Nandorfehervar".)
The other base is the base of the so-called 43rd Jozsef Nagysandor Signals Corps, which is referred to by the soldiers as "Nagysanyi".
(Jozsef Nagysandor was a martyr of the Hungarians in the War of Independence during 1848-49. Nagysandor was his family name, so he is incorrectly called Nagysanyi, which is also disrespectful.)
The Alba and the Nagysanyi are facing each other, on the two sides of a narrow road. The most obvious difference between the two places is that the Alba is clean, organized, as one would expect from the headquarters of a NATO army. The Nagysanyi at the same time is a desolate, ruiny shed with ramshackle buildings and tired soldiers wearing rags. The entire thing is commanded by Colonel Tibor Kalicz. This is where our happy bunch arrived, where we immediately lost our cheers. The entire place was desperate. Gray and dusty, plaster falling from the walls, some buildings simply collapsed and no one cleaned up the rubble.
We disembarked from the bus and stood there on some concrete. Soon we were led to some building, where, among many others, was also a library. I turned happy: it seemed like I would have something to read here at least. But I had no time to think about it, we were almost immediately taken to an old lieutenant colonel. Andrekovics - as his name badge said. Lt.Col. Andrekovics recorded our data, along with our professions. Later a corporal arrived and took me away, along with some ten of us.
- You will go to company 31/A - he said. Then after a little thinking: - You sucked in...
(No, it's not my English knowledge that's faulty, or at least not here. The soldiers always used an incorrect form of the verb "sucking", as this, "sucking in". This means someone sucks, something bad is happening with him.)
As I saw the base, there was no doubt. We marched across it, to the very end. We passed three-floored, barrack-like buildings, with old soldiers hanging from the windows in bunches - November and August ones - yelling to us like some crazy choir:
- Hereeeee! Bring 'em right hereeeeeeeee!
- You suck it in, bulls!
- You're dead meat, baldies!
But we did not enter either building. We headed for a somewhat neat-looking panel building. I was about to become happy that we got to the best place, but then we entered....
What can I say? Like a school building. This was my first impression. A dark corridor, long and wide, with rubber floor, classroom-sized rooms opening from both sides. Grate closed the end of the corridor, just like in a prison, where a battered service table stood. Dripping water tubes ran on the cracked ceiling. And all of it was dark, desperately dark. This was the quarters of the company 31/A, also referenced as "thirty-first Aladar", denoting letter A with a common Hungarian name. And of course, there were some old soldiers, who yelled and sweared at us, threatened us like in some prison when fresh meat arrives.
The corporal showed us our room. It was a very crumpled, patched-up place, with some rickety beds and lockers. Mommy, where am I? I knew only three among the baldie pack: Droggie, who seemed to become my roommate once more, the huge and fat Zoli Pinke, called Pinky, who had also been in company 9/3 at Szombathely, and Janos Kapcsos, another 9/3 dude. The entire company did not consist of 35 people at all, and the entire battalion, including another, even smaller company, the 32/B, did not have 70 men altogether. This means the battalion had slightly more than half the number of soldiers required for a company! The entire corps consisted of some 250 people at all, while such a unit is usually expected to have at least 1000 soldiers.
We could hardly put our bags down, someone already yelled to us:
- February soldiers, fall-in on the corridor!
So we lined up, as we were, still in our walking-out uniform. They gathered us at the opposite end of the corridor, away the grate, where the officers' offices were opening from a short passage, closed with a glass door from this side. Soon a captain and a sergeant-major arrived. The captain introduced himself: he was Capt. Tibor Takacs, commander of this company, the rest would be told by the sergeant-major in the leisure room, then he immediately left. So the sergeant-major led us to the leisure room, which was two empty rooms opened together, with a half wrecked tennis table and a dying television.
- I am Sergeant Major Erno Racz...
And he told us that he was Sgt.Maj. Racz, the service chief. He seemed very friendly, and asked each of us where are were from, and what our profession was. We all told. That was all.
Later, in the evening, when the officers left for home, we had been left there with the old soldiers. Our rest did not last long.
- February soldiers, fall-in on the corridor for cleaning up!
And we lined up again, carrying brooms, shovels and rags. The August soldiers poured an entire box, one kilogram of "Ultra" washing powder on the floor - this cheap detergent is an anachronism itself, since it's not been sold in shops for a decade or so - which resulted in deep foam that sometimes reached our knees. This was what we had to clean up with rags and brooms. Then we had to repeat the same in the so-called "M3", the water block. Clean the washbasins, the toilets, the showers. Typical rookie tasks. Meanwhile the oldies constantly yelled us orders. In fact it didn't really bother me, since I had already been instructed to totally pointless tasks before, I got used of it during the recent months. Anyway, it was not a real sucking, we all accepted it, and we knew that when the May soldiers, our rookies would arrive, we would do the same, "ultra up the long stage", as they said, and so they would do for the next ones.
There was a roll check after the cleaning. Everybody hearing his name had to shout "Command!", as it is written in the regulations. Of course most of my rookie mates did not dare to shout loud. The August soldiers did not like it.
- Private Janos Kapcsos!
- Command... - said a faint voice.
- What? Louder, baldie!
- C... Command... - said the voice now a bit louder.
- What's that, you have only one lung? Shout!! - said the corporal, so Kapcsos
finally did something like shouting. They let him go.
- Roland Kiss!
- Command...
- LOUDER!!
And it went on. No one had a perfect voice. An August soldier walked past our line, and pushed his ear to our mouths, listening to the "one-lunged baldies' whispering". I was at the very end of the line. He reached me, put his ear to my mouth and said:
- Nah, Private Polgar! Let's see how you shout!
I didn't want to ruin his day. In fact he didn't know that once, at a military show, an American marine sergeant had shown me how they were trained to shout. They received training to use a special throat widening method which caused a very well audible voice that can be heard even in a helicopter or in gunfire noise. If you've ever seen American war movies, you perhaps know what I mean. So I changed to this voice.
- COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAND !!!
Deadly silence.
The corporal had been removed from the wall. He poked his ear with his finger and looked at me really angrily.
- How the fuck are you shouting like this?!
- I still have both of my lungs, sir.
He sent me away. How funny, we were never asked to shout again.
Fortunately there were pleasing surprises besides of these negative ones. For example, the food was good. I don't remember what the dinner was on the first day, only that it was definitely delicious. Usually the cooks were doing a good job. Then there was hot water, and there always was. Finally: our belongings fit the lockers. These are simple things, but very important for a soldier.
I was lying on my bed in the night, staring at the broken ceiling. I tried to figure what the hell I was doing here. Perhaps I was not alone with these thoughts. Everyone lied on his bed with a desperate face, or sat on a shtoki, except for a baldie called Roland Kiss, who was surprisingly cheered. He grinned like the wooden dog, played the funny, and sometimes tapped the back of one of our mates, who he seemingly knew from civilian life. After each tap he usually asked him:
- Right, Cheeseburger, my friend?
Or sometimes:
- Gimme a hand, Cheeseburger!
Cheeseburger was a thin guy with glasses. His name was Gabor Andras, but this is not important. Sometimes he gave a bored answer:
- Yes, Borg, of course.
This one-sided conversation turned to be boring for Roland Kiss after a while, so he turned to Droggie, who had been renamed to Speedee shortly, and wore this nickname during all the time. Roland Kiss started to tell him stories about himself being such a big boy, a real cyberpunk, because he was doing graffiti! Then he explained that this was very cool, and he was in fact the king. He was really conceited. He told that he had painted something in Duna Plaza (a famous shopping center in Budapest), then that he was working as a security guard. He also showed the remnants of an old wound on his side, claiming it was the trace of a pistol bullet. The entire scar was as small as my fingernail, perhaps an airgun might cause such a small wound, but definitely not a wound that looks like an appendectomy... Later he returned to the subject of him being a FUCKIN' COOL graffiti guy, member of PNC (a very talented Budapest graffiti team), and anyway, he is an ARTIST! He was lying till everybody got blue in the face. I got bored of his stories after a while, so I inserted a question:
- And can one live on this?
He turned to me in fury:
- Listen, papa! This conversation is not going your way! I talk to HIM - he pointed Speedee - and not you! So shut up, especially if you don't even know what a "troaf" is!
Yes, I really didn't know. Later I figured that he meant "throwup", a rather simple kind of graffity that's "thrown up" within minutes. Anyway I told him who talked like this.
- Yes, I see I've met another toy asshole in this army. (The word "toy" is equal to "lamer" in the graffiti slang.)
He didn't say a word after this, but it was clear that we'd never become friends. Not even if it were the wish of my life.
The others just lied on their beds, and looked very "turned off", as they said when someone was rather sad. Of course no one was so conceited as this Roland Kiss asshole. On the bed next to me a boy named Attila Beres was sleeping, later he was named Padre for some reason. The one on the bed over me was a silent guy, Roland Kiss and Cheeseburger called him Andersen. His real name was Gyorgy Nyuli, which caused our room commander, Corp. Lajos Kacsandi to laugh out loud.
(The Hungarian word "nyul" means rabbit.)
Kacsandi was a primitive butthole with blond hair, who had only 6 classes of elementary (from the 8 comprehensive) as education. His profession was "cloth ironer", as written in his service booklet, and he had a limp. He received "D" category enrollment, and was not even reaching 60 kilograms of body weight. I wonder if there's any army in the entire world where such corporals can be found.
(About categories. When Hungarian soldiers are enrolled, they all receive a category by their health state. "A" means perfect, "B" means that the soldier should not perform some services due to minor bodily handicaps like short-sightedness, "C" is for worse handicaps, and "D" soldiers should not even receive training because they have serious disabilities. This means we had a commander who was in fact a handicapped man, with virtually no education at all.)
The next in our bunch was a tall, black haired soldier, named Nandor Torzsok. I already knew Speedee, also known as Gergely Szalay from Szombathely, so as Janos Kapcsos, Kapcsi with his long nose and round glasses. The huge, fat Pinky had been quartered in another room, as the only baldie among the oldies. Finally there was a red haired, freckled, always grinning boy: Robert Beres, who called himself Dragos.
On the next evening, when we received our uniforms, we were taken to a so-called "mobilization maneuver". This maneuver was a regular monthly mayhem for the battalion. The wrecks called "radio trucks" had been towed out from the depot and set up on a field some fifty meters away. They stood there for three days. Of course they didn't radio because that's expensive. The maneuver was in fact totally pointless, since after the soldiers had built the radio antennas, they spent their time with rather everyday tasks: they mowed the lawn, extirpated the weed and so. This is how it works in the Hungarian Home Guard: hoe and spade, redneck work all the day, without any point. Of course there seems to be a point, to prevent the base to be buried with weed. But what is the base for? To let the soldiers, who hoe the weed, sleep somewhere. As they said, the guard was at the gate to prevent brains coming in.
Our first mobilization maneuver was the last for the August soldiers. They were demobilized three weeks later. We couldn't do much on this maneuver, since we hadn't been trained yet. We just sat and bored ourselves dead. The August guys were quite happy, they threw their helmets in the air as they celebrated the forthcoming demobilization. The November ones warmed themselves in the radio trucks, because it was a bit chilly outside in April. So we just sat on the grass and stared at the sky. Sometimes we talked a bit, everyone with whoever he knew. It seemed that Cheeseburger, Roland Kiss and Andersen had been in the same company at Tapolca, the training base. Later I was proved wrong, Cheeseburger knew Roland Kiss from civilian life. Speedee disappeared somewhere, and the huge Pinky was not a talkative person. Robert Beres told us that he was a gypsy. Well, he didn't look like one with his pale yellow face and red hair, but he claimed he was an albino.
The maneuver ended at nine o'clock in the evening. We lined up and headed back to the quarters with the lead of a young, fat female sergeant called Gyongyi Margitai. We didn't reach halfway when the oldie next to me said:
- Uh-oh! There stands Korcsak at the gate of the building!
He pointed to a robust, moustached captain. I asked him who this Korcsak was.
- That? That's a spunk! The commander-in-chief. You'll soon meet him.
Capt. Korcsak halted the company and asked the sergeant:
- Where are you going?
- I report, to the quarters, sir!
- Who said that the maneuver is over?
- Well, I report... it's nine o'clock...
- Right, so you now go back to the maneuver field, and the maneuver's gonna
end when I say so!
There we went, another hour of freezing among the trucks.
In the days ahead the baldie bunch started forming a community. We cleaned the quarters, digged trenches, mowed the lawn. Days passed in a similar manner as at Szombathely, except for that they never gave us time to have a wash in the morning, instead we had to clean the rooms. The August oldies weren't too mean towards us, but of course, they weren't nice either. They yelled orders at us, requested cigarettes from us and so. Sergeant-Major Racz turned out to be not so friendly as he first had seemed. After the first lunch we'd received in the Nagysanyi base I visited the canteen. He ordered me to his office for this and yelled my hair off. He threatened me with jail, or several weeks of detention, "patter" as they called it. I accepted it with the regular military poker face, but noted that this Racz should be avoided in the future.
Also my mates brought their inners alight. Torzsok was preparing to become a literature teacher. He was a bit strange minded, or I can also say he was insidious. His current profession was a CNC lathe operator. Cheeseburger, who preferred being called Endez, was a graffiti guy from Budapest, member of the group named GRS and the rap band Jamboz. He had left a one-year-old little kid home, and was rather sad about this. Roland Kiss still claimed himself the king of the underground. Once when he was talking about his favourite subject, Robert Beres mentioned to us some of his affairs in the Budapest night: he was a kind of mafia guy, from the Raday street, a street that time known because of its very poor public safety. He said that his profession was a security guard, and he also had a gun at home, but since he never boasted like Kiss, and was anyway a rather muscled guy, we never doubted it. Andersen was another rapper, soon they wrote a satirical song together about the army and of course Capt. Korcsak. Andersen appeared to be a very well educated face, with a good sense of humour. Attila Beres, Kapcsi and Pinky competed in the "who is the most silent member of the bunch" contest, but Padre soon gave it up. He was from the Northern Hungarian city of Kazincbarcika. And finally there was Corp. Kacsandi, who simply did not talk to us at all.
During the first weeks we received our signals training. I was assigned to an R-414 radio station. We were waiting disciplinedly at the training building, the so-called officers' study. First we thought this would be a similarly conscientious training as the one we had received at Szombathely, but we were wrong. On the first day two sub-officers explained some: one was Sergeant Ferenc Bekovics, an only 19 years old, blond guy, the other was Sergeant-Major Ferenc Csoszi, a young officer with a true sense of humour. He sometimes made the audience laugh even due to the way he talked. In such cases he stopped speaking, and looked at us with a serious looking face:
- What is so funny about this... soldiers...
Of course, laughter broke out again, while he shaked his head disapprovingly.
On the first day we learnt how to handle the life protection devices of the radio station, which prevented accidental electric shock, and how such a large radio worked. We click-clacked the switches of huge radio monsters, just for fun, since neither worked. On the next day another young officer, Sgt. Sandor Voros, a short, balding, bellied man with a small moustache took us to the vehicle depots, for "practical training". This training meant that he sat in the radio truck, solving a crossword puzzle, while we lied on the top of the truck, reading porn magazines. On the next days this training was taking place in a club room, where we could also watch TV or play billiard. I've never seen the radio truck from inside. Finally the weekend came, and the baldies had been given permission to leave home.
At home I' felt pain in my knees. Since we lifted those lame concrete sleepers, I've always got a pain in my knees, especially when climbing stairs. It was rather unpleasant at Szombathely, as our quarters were on the fourth floor, but we were only on the second at Szekesfehervar, so it wasn't so uncomfortable there. So I just went to the Central Military Hospital in Budapest, the CMH, as they called it, since I lived only a corner away. A doctor examined me, finally said they would have to put my knee under surveillance, but he couldn't tell when the ultrasonic equipment would be available for me, so he granted me two weeks of medical leave.
My paper was valid from Monday, while my leave permit ended on Sunday evening, so I phoned the base about what to do: should I go back on Sunday evening and come back on Monday or what. They said I should do this. Of course, just as I expected. Racz badly scolded me for going to the doc without his permission, and besides he told that he hated "such shirkers", but he couldn't do anything against the doctor's stamp, he had to release me. My holiday that was granted from Monday began on Wednesday. Great.
A little rest didn't hurt at all. But unfortunately it ended one day. I was back soon. I had missed the entire training, but of course I had lost nothing. Sgt. Voros was a nice guy, he didn't give us a bad time without a reason. He did not want to overload our minds. We still lived in the baldies' room, and there was only a week to the August guys' leave. These days the morning wakeup shouting was the following:
- Good morning, soldiers, the night is over. Eight days for the August soldier. Good morning for oldies, wake up for baldies!
As it was expected, the bunch got shaked together even better while I was away. I learned that Padre would be the new scribble of the company, while Torzsok and me would be the battalion's scribbles, along with a November oldie called Szuhai as our commander.
Our good life ended with the training. We left for home on every weekend during that, and we also didn't perform any services, except for one: the Battle Alert Duty (BAD). The BAD later became the monster of the company. A green cross after someone's name in the weekly order meant that the soldier was in BAD on that day, so soon the green cross became a dreaded symbol. What was this BAD? The essence of this service was that the soldier did not do anything at all, but if war had broken out that day, he would have received his weapon to go and change the guards in the towers. In other words this duty meant that we couldn't go out, neither for a short nor a long leave, just sat in the room and watched the ceiling. It drove us crazy. Besides, our tiny battalion had to stand 25 men every day for BAD, while other, larger battalions gave 3-4 men only. Needless to say, we hated the green cross so much that we even avoided disinfection detergents that had the green cross on their labels.
One of my tasks as a battalion scribble was to handle a computer. Those days the old August scribbles were still there, a little guy called Csurgo from company 32/B, and a corporal from our company called Florovics. Csurgo showed me the computer.
- Errm, so the machine is a bit old, but don't be scared - he said before opening the office's door. - An XT with EGA display, do you know XTs?
I said yes, and didn't get surprised. It was just what I had expected, as I knew the technical level of our great army. A 386 is hypermodern hi-tech equipment, and even generals rarely have a 486. But I was not prepared for what I had to experience in the following minute.
The XT hidden in the dusty little office was ARMORED.
Yes, an armored XT. It was built in a huge, green steel case, similar to an industrial case, but much uglier. For example, neither of the connector interfaces had been left in their original form. Some clever military engineer had had the idea of removing every interface, even serial ports, and replacing them with some rather weird, custom built, round shaped connectors that didn't shape an RS-232 at all, except for the number of pins. The keyboard had been welded into steel and unremovably connected to the ugly iron box. So was the monitor - an original Yanjen brand EGA! Only the printer, an Epson FX-1000, had been saved from the insane engineers, it had only lost its port connector. As I later learnt, it was a special computer, a so-called "M/S-230T PCXT field computer", extracted from a HIR-2 signals command vehicle. But as a matter of fact, this old wreck did a far better job than a plain typewriter would have done, even if the only software available was Context and Norton Commander 3.0.
Here is the complete configuration for those interested:
- Turbo XT, 4 MHz
- 640K RAM
- 20 MB MFM HDD
- 84 keys XT keyboard
- Epson FX-1000 dot matrix printer
- EGA display.
There was also a 720K floppy disk drive, but out of order.
On the next day both the November and the February bunch were sent to clean some drain canal. We received one spade per skull for this task. Of course the November soldiers just sat on the shore of the ditch and smoked. In fact we also didn't die from the hard work. We spaded reluctantly, like if we were working, but suddenly Roland Kiss shouted:
- He, watch 'dat! The' shags da' krecha!
This was to be translated as: he sees a frog, and is very surprised, as it is expected from an urban kid. No one was interested in his frog however, as there were shitloads of toads around, if one walked on the main road of the base, he could see some for sure. But Roland Kiss decided to take a better look, so he spaded the poor being to the shore. It was a nice, large toad.
- He! Krecha! - repeated the identification, and we agreed: yes, you're a smart boy, Roland Kiss, this really is a krecha.
(In fact the word "krecha" doesn't make any sense in Hungarian either, perhaps it was Roland Kiss's self-made cool word.)
One of us mentioned that the frog was sick. It really was, one of its legs was missing, and half of its body was covered with gangraena. Roland Kiss then decided to kill the frog to end its suffering. If frogs could speak, this one would have surely explained that he didn't need euthanasia at the moment, thanks anyway, but then Roland Kiss got his pocket knife and threw it into the gangraena-covered back of the toad.
Now this wouldn't be a weird story, but only an hour later he used the same knife at lunch, without even washing it.
The company's silent life proceeded in order, until the day of the leave of the August folks. One day a new bunch of February baldies arrived, the truck drivers, who received their entire training in the training centers. And two days later the August solders got demobilized. One of them honoured the event by visiting to a nearby tree for a spectacular piss while Colonel Kalicz held his speech about being proud of their military time and the Hungarian Home Guard, be faithful to the homeland and such dumbness. Then the guys left with a friendly yelling and singing, and became civilians.
This day the November soldiers became the true oldies, and war broke out at our company.
This is me, the sexy boy; however, you can't see the computer well from this angle.
tomcat^grm
