The May truck drivers arrived just two days before the November bunch was gone. We received several men, the company got bigger than before. Andrej's first thing to do was to gather the battalion and deliver a fearsome presentation to establish discipline and prevent pissing the baldies off. Not many of us understood what he said, but he was so enthuasistic that no one was ill-disposed to interrupt. I gave a little education to the May guys right on the first day. I put on Andrej's lieutenant colonel uniform, along with his "officer on duty" armband, and visited the neighboring battalion. The local oldies knew the ropes, so they lined the baldies up as if I were the real officer on duty. They stood like poles, rather scared, since a lieutenant colonel was a horribly high rank at Szombathely where they had arrived from.
I've asked them questions like: "What should a guard do if his post is attacked by air raid?" They usually did not know the answer. In such cases I said to a nearby February guy:
- Lance corporal, order this man to give you twenty...
And the baldies did the pushups, and answered the questions. Well, when they saw me the next day in the canteen as a lance corporal, they finally figured that they had been fooled.
Our baldies carried a way higher IQ than the November did. There were some well educated, intelligent people among them, for example one of them called Jozsef Bauer was learning accounting in his free time. Another one called Gabor Temesi happened to be another roleplayer, so he soon joined the club. There was a bald, brutal looking skinhead guy, who had spent some months in jail for serious bodily harm. But when he first saw the base, he immediately got turned off, since he had had better conditions in the prison. His name was Szilveszter Varga, and he was actually a nice guy, who later became a good member of our community.
The "most silent of the company" award was taken from Pinky by a little guy, hardly weighing 50 kilograms, called Jozsef Gulyas, the "little Gulyas", as we later apostrophed him. He rarely talked, and if so, he gabbled, spoke very rapidly. Everyone buffled from laughter during guard changes, when a misfortunate officer on duty pointed the little Gulyas in the row to check whether he knew the regulations about the duty. Usually the answer was somewhat like the following:
- Theguarguardszepostandnoletclosexceptcomderandshouldhaweapnready.
(The guard should guard his post, and must not let anyone come close, except for his commander and the shift leader, and should have his weapon always ready.)
There were many more baldies, but permit me to skip mentioning each. You can imagine how the little Gulyas talked when Varga and his mates once made him drink. He just lied on his bed like a stone, until someone asked him:
- Nah, Gulyas, have you been drinking a lot of wine?
The answer was a little mouse's lisping:
- L... lotslots...
This "lotslots" caused a huge guffaw, so it soon became another adage. For example: "How many days has the May balds left?" "Lotslots..."
That time we had some eighty days left, and we immediately got into the best of life when we became oldies. The company commander was Lieutenant Mihalyi, and as I've said, he was a rather untalented officer. He couldn't write a weekly duty order, he was still modifying that on Friday. We were assigned to duties totally randomly. Some received the order on Friday afternoon, just half an hour before he was about to leave for a weekend. On the other hand, some men just learned about his weekend leave permit on Friday evening. The chaos was made worse by the fact that there were three different duty orders: one at Mihalyi, who never let it out of his hands, another at the company scribble, Padre, whose right hand was Furry, later also Andersen, and a third one at the service desk. Besides, Mihalyi didn't know the unwritten laws of the army, for example that old soldiers are never sent to kitchen duty, or that guarding the trucks in the night during a maneuver is also the balds' task. He almost forgot to give us the lance corporal stars, but finally he remembered, so we became non-commissioned officers: Endez, Padre, Pinky, Speedee, Torzsok, the beloved Robert Beres and me.
Beres had been silent for a while. No one believed his stories about gangsters, business and such any more. He was a true liar, but usually he was the only who really believed what he told. His most favourite stories were those about his "gypsy brothers". For example:
- Hey, mates, I was on a funeral during the weekend. We've buried one of Szava's sons. That was beautiful! We've put a golden pistol in the grave, and the hundred-member gypsy band was playing...
Fortunately Istvan Szava, godfather of the Budapest gypsy mafia, didn't know about this story. Other times he boasted with having a stolen car, a two-year-old Opel Senator. Actually Senators had not been manufactured for eight years by then. If he didn't want to work - and he never did - he always told he had a lumbago. In fact he never had lumbago, even the bird Andrej never believed him, but he just kept rattling about it.
Dear Reader, you might remember that I was not talking with this Beres asshole, except in duty, when I had to. Once, during a guard session, when I was in a tower, he was my shift leader. He asked me during the way to the tower in the night:
- Say, actually why do you hate me?
- Because you're a stinky bitch gypsy - I replied briefly.
- But... - he built a grin, I've already said he was always grinning - is this
really the reason?
- Yes.
He was trying to convince me till we reached the tower that he didn't hate me. I was not really interested in who he hated, I just sometimes told that I did hate him. Then I changed a baldie, named Peter Andrasi, and finally I had three hours of silence.
But he restarted the subject at the next shift.
- But what do you have against me?
- Right now, a Kalashnikov on my shoulder - I answered, since I was getting
bored of his lame questions.
- But why do you hate me, and the others too, despite of that I am so nice,
see, I've helped Berkes to get an apartment, and... - and here he told all
who had been nice towards, perhaps in his dreams.
We were passing by some storage depots. Beres pointed to one:
- Do you know what's inside?
- Nope.
- Nice things!
- Aham.
- Should we go in?
- Now?
- Yes! Because I know a hidden entrance! - and he grinned like if he were
really knowing some secret.
That "hidden entrance" was a huge crackle in the wall, wide enough to let a dog run in. It was not hard to figure that half the base visited this place regularly to get this and that. This was a storage of obsolete chemical warfare stuff. Broken gasmasks in a pile, broken hoes, unusable chemical warfare suits, all trash. Beres was pointing around like if we'd just made it to the treasury of the national bank.
- Nah? How do you like?
- Great - I nodded, but I meant it the opposite way.
Major Hermann would surely be glad to finally know where equipment was going from this place. Now we had two witnesses, since there was also a May soldier with us, whom we had left outside, that the storage was being plundered by Beres. While he was packing up some crap, I also grabbed something for the storefront, some masks, and a suit because mine had been lost anyway. We creeped outside through the hole, and took the stuff to the quarters. Beres was convinced that I respected him now, but I was also building his confidence. He liked it so much that he blurted out more.
- Do you know that there are even better places?
- Like?
- Like the clothstuff storage!
- Can you go in there too?
- Yes! Across the roof. But there is much more better. There is an underground
tunnel system under the base...
There are bunkers under most bases, and since the Alba, the headquarters of the army, was next door, this seemed credible. I was watching, perhaps now he was not bullshitting. I asked:
- Do you mean the tunnel that connects Nagysanyi with Alba?
- Yes... but how do you know?
- Eh, see - now it was my turn to grin - I also know this and that!
Of course I had no idea about what was under our feet, it was the first time I'd heard of this. I started thinking: if the tunnel went to the Alba, it had to be wide, since it was probably not used for personnel traffic only.
- The one that goes to Alba is wide enough for a truck to pass - I said. Beres
was pissed.
- But how do you know? Were you down there too?
- What do you think?
- But... also in the ammo dump?
- The ammo dump?
- Yes... because we were there with Szosin...
LCorp. Adorjan Szosin was from company 32/B. He was a nice guy, of Ukrainian origin. Beres sometimes told stories about his Ukrainian mafia contacts, none of which was true. Their connection was about Beres hanging around the lance corporal, telling bullshit about his own "contacts", while Szosin was silently laughing at him.
Later, when we returned to the guard room, Beres tried to find out what I knew. I knew nothing at all, but I managed to feed him with the impression that I did. Finally he told that they'd stolen some hand grenades with Szosin, back in June. I was rather glad that he couldn't stop his mouth. The MSO, the Military Security Office, would surely be thankful for this information.
I didn't know how to reach the local MSO officer, so I talked with a scener called Lolka, or 1st Lieutenant Adam Farkas as they knew him at MSO. He talked with the locals, so some days later they invited me for a chat. I told what I had heard, so they agreed keeping an eye on this Beres guy. This is how it all started.
The investigation produced no result for a long time. Life was going on, and we were deep in it. We rarely went home, thanks to Lt. Mihalyi, and we were very often on different duties, including guard duty and our favourite BAD. We had a very good community. We had our own "club", we often gathered in the company scribble's office, the "Club of Gamers", to listen to music, talk, drink cola and so. Andersen, Endez and I were playing with the typewriter, we wrote short stories, realtime reports. We had pillow fights during the night. Our room, Room 3, was the best at it, it usually licked the others to a frazzle, but once while I was on a long leave, Endez and Tau bet the entire company together!
Andrej turned patent. When Korcsak left, he gave him some pieces of advice about how to keep order, and he was trying to do so. This is to be understood as: the old man repeated Korcsak's words all the day, I mean when he could repeat them, and we were all laughing at him. Once he disliked something, so he ordered all the non-commissioned officers into his room. We lined up as we were expected to do, and soon the old fart came.
- Yyyyou nnnonn-co-co-commissioned, gs'dick, you're e-expected t-t-to keep o-o-order, a-and I w-will che-check! - he started rattling.
We were standing bored, when I noticed that Endez, standing next to me in the line, was laughing silently. We all skanced on him: what the hell is so funny? Then Padre also started. Pinky was grinning too. Finally I noticed.
While our respected commander was preaching about order and discipline, his slit on his trousers was open, and his white underpants were lighting!
Another great event was the so-called "day of the signals troops". It was the birthday of Tivadar Puskas, the inventor of the telephone switching station. They organized several contests and sports competitions for this day, and of course, a guard duty for company 31/A, as it was a tradition to piss us off the most. Only two of us were kept out of duty, Padre and me, because we were ordered to voluntarily take part in some intellectual quiz in the library.
At the beginning of the day Colonel Kalicz was to deliver some speech at the formation field, but this was cancelled due to the heavy rain. For this reason the speech was passed to subordinate unit commanders to be read for the soldiers. At us it was started with all seven of us forming a line on the corridor, this was the entire battalion at the moment, including the internal servicemen. Lt.Col. Andrekovics came, tossed the paper with the speech to Lt. Kocsis, then stormed away. Then we had a nice talk with the lieutenant about the soccer match yesterday, and later we all left to the canteen.
Later we made the scene at the quiz, accompanied by Ensign Marko. He was a nice, young guy, we chatted a lot. At the beginning of the quiz, some female captain read Col. Kalicz's speech again, as if someone hadn't heard it yet, and invited us to select team names.
You can perhaps imagine the level of the event. It reminded me of the quiz held in the pioneer camp where I had spent my holiday as a kid, back in the communist era. Everybody took the entire thing deadly serious, except for us, so we deserved some disapproved glances while we were laughing at the entire competition, at the female captain, the speech, the faces of the opponents. Soon we received the first questions, perfectly fit for kids in the first class of elementary school, like: "Who wrote our national anthem?" "How many anthems does our country have?" The only problem with fair play was that the guys from the support company already received the questions before the quiz, so they sometimes answered before the question was said. But our team, the "Gryncrozz Klubb" (sic) was a tough opponent, we always shouted something in for a plus point. The three fat hags from the financial office got rather upset at this, and sometimes they grumbled to us. There was also some dumb funcompo-like thing, during which one had to tie a pen on his belt with a string, then hang it into an empty bottle. Our string was too long, so the pen was not hanging, but lying on the floor, which made it impossible for us to insert it into the bottle, but the jury didn't accept our complains, so we didn't receive any points. So what!
We reached the second place! We all received a slice of bread with fat and some onions (wow), and some books as memories, like: "The life of the glorious Marshal Malinovsky", and "How the Red Army liberated our homeland", and so on. Anyway we asked what the prize would be, as the prizegiving was scheduled later. The librarian answered:
- Well, I don't know... hadn't been decided yet... perhaps a map, or some biscuits...
Laughter broke out on this, you see, "a map or some biscuits". Another adage was born.
The prizegiving took place in the restaurant some hours later, in the evening, which was temporarily transformed into a theatre. It was rather nice, there was a stage, with a row of lamps above. Like: lamp-lamp-pause-lamp-lamp... Yes, the equipment was a bit broken. A so-called "comedy duo", named Shimli Show, performed some "funny" show, which we, conscripts, listened to with the regular poker face. It was not discipline, it was boredom. Some old officers, however, almost got choked of guffaw, including the well-know Captain Toth, who had had those nice jokes during the guard commander course. Then finally it ended, and the prizegiving followed. We were waiting eagerly: what would we receive, a map or some biscuits...
And...
And....
And.....
A MAP !! Woaaa! We've won a map! And we also received some ugly certificate, from which they had obviously erased the name of last year's winner and the date. We also received a pack of cards, which is quite interesting because playing cards is strictly forbidden in the army. But we had the liberty from now! Any time if some officer tried to forbid us playing, we would say:
- This is legal, we received this pack from Major Frankovics!
No one ever disputed: Major Frankovics was the head of the corps staff.
Some weeks later there was some technical display at the base, so they towed all vehicles to the formation ground. They expected some German deputy's visit. They say the soldier is always ingenious, and it's true: to give the feeling that these vehicles were brand new, they painted each with glycerine. Hm...
That night I was also assigned to guard the vehicles for two hours, which was to stand in the formation ground and watch if someone came to steal petrol. I thought the hell would stand here like a flagpole, and ordered the baldies to bring me my armchair, table and book out. The officer on duty got a bit upset when he saw me, but he could not find any rule forbiding the guard to sit down, only one against to sleep, but I was awake, he couldn't say a word.
After I'd got changed, and retreat had been sounded, a huge storm broke out in the night. It was thundering as it was expected from a summer storm. I don't know who the idiot was who had ordered to open the antennas of the vehicles, but perhaps he hadn't known what will happen if one builds a 15-meter-high metal pole in the middle of an empty field in a heavy storm. Around two o'clock in the night we were waken up by a huge
CRRRAAAAAACCCKKKK !!!!
followed by some heavy electric smell.
In the morning we could all see a nicely roasted armored mobile radio station. Actually only the radios on board had got burnt, but those had really got burnt. The German deputy arrived right when the mechanics racked the coal at the side of the vehicle, while trying to somehow remove the melted antenna. I don't know how it influenced our chances of becoming a NATO member, but the Germans left rather quickly, and they were not interested in the other vehicles either.
The weirdest thing during my entire military service happened with Padre and Pap. They both left for a short leave with Pap's Lada car, and they lost their way somewhere on the outskirts of Szekesfehervar. It was already dusk, but they just couldn't find the way. Finally they spotted two trucks parked in the bushes, close to the road. They wanted to ask the truck drivers about the way home, so they stopped and walked there. But those were actually not trucks. What do you think my bros found in the shrubbery, next to the road?
So, no one has an idea?
No, you can't have.
Two helicopters !!
Yes, two helicopters, both ready to take off, with tanks full, spare parts on board, even their doors were open, but there was not a single soul around, and the choppers were buried in bushes, they stood under some large trees. Someone had pushed them here. So, if you need a helicopter, just hop in your car and circle around Szekesfehervar for a while: you will surely find some.
But let's return to the sparkling life of the Nagysanyi. At the end of September, short before our demobilization, something followed which we all had been waiting for, not very gladly, however. It was the great maneuver called Vertes '98!
(Vertes is a mountain in Hungary, at which this maneuver took place.)
We all knew that those who had to go to the manuver, would suck ass because they would have to sit on some hill for two weeks without clean clothes, without any means of having a wash, and overall, without anything, and those who would stay would have so many duties that it'd be enough to drive them crazy. And so it happened. Of course, the 3rd battalion received the biggest cock to suck. Ten of us went to the maneuver field, while the left stayed to be on guard. This Vertes thing, as I told, took two weeks, and during this time we were on guard duty every second day, in switch with the men of the 1st battalion. Perhaps this does not sound that horrible when you read it, 24 hours of duty, 24 hours of rest. Actually, in real life, it's terrible. There's no money for which I would do that again. Spending 24 hours in a desolate, ruined guard room, lying on a dirty bench, having half-an-hour periods of sleeping, and meanwhile being responsible for the weapons, ammunition, keeping an eye on the officer on duty whether he comes to check us, and besides, sitting three hours several times in an empty guard tower, watching the empty darkness in the night: it's a real test of nerves. Many committed suicide during guard duty. However, the task of the guard commander and the shift leader is not that hard, at least in the guard room you have someone to talk with. Once we calculated that a shift leader walks 35 kilometres during the 24 hours, as he walks around the base and changes guards. There were two shift leaders, and the one on the 1st round - the southern part of the base - had to leave the guard room every single hour, in dark night as well as in the middle of a heavy rain.
Of course, soldiers would not be soldiers if they didn't find a way to release the pressure. If no officer came to check, the guard changes were rather fast, without giving a fuck to regulations. Of course, there are regulations about this too. For example, during night the guard has to shout "Halt, who is that?" to the patrol. Then the shift leader stops the men, and identifies himself, also illuminating his face with his pocket light, if the guard asks so. The guard then lets the patrol close to the tower. The new guard climbs to the tower on the shift leader's order, while the old comes down and reports. Finally they rearrange the patrol's formation and march away.
In real life, this proceeds quite differently. The patrol rushes past the tower, perhaps someone from it shouts up to the guard:
- Move it, fat ass, we ain't got no time!!
I doubt anyone did everything strictly following the regulations without getting crazy. Anyway, about regulations: I've once heard a story from an officer that happened in the Netherlands, at the Royal Holland Railways. There was some decision that was against the will of the railwaymen, but the situation denied the possibility of strike. Finally someone had an idea: let's not open a strike, if that's against the law, but let's just do everything strictly according to the regulations for two weeks. Check everything before a train can leave, obey the speed limits everywhere and so. As a result, the Royal Holland Railways got disabled for two weeks.
Our guard game started well before Vertes, and ended only after that, while I myself gave duty on seventeen (!) occasions, in tic-tac manner. Anyone who has ever been a soldier must know what this means. After the fourth or the fifth I couldn't even tell what day it was, and whether it was morning or afternoon. All this was topped by Mihalyi's new habit of sticking to the regulations whenever possible. He ordered that everyone should leave for lunch, even those who were not hungry and wanted to sleep, then that the quarters had to be cleaned thoroughly after lunch every day, so we couldn't really have a rest. Other company commanders at least understood how hard the race was, so they granted some liberty to their soldiers. Mihalyi was not that kind. I was usually a shift leader, along with Pinky, and the guard commander was usually Endez.
The guard duties of the third battalion would be worth another report. It was gruesome even when I was not yet with the bunch. Such things happened like when Speedee was a shift leader, and failed three times during one single checking by the officer on duty. First at the guard tower, when the guard shouted: "Illuminate yourself!" - as part of the regular identification process, he showed himself from behind a tree, putting the light under his chin, grinning like a halloween figure. The officer had to be washed up. Next he asked the officer whether he could cut the prescribed patrol route to the next tower, since it's faster that way. Finally, when he checked the seal on the door of the financial offices' building, he reported the following to the captain:
- Nah, okay, let's buzz off...
Still he had a little chance to survive this, but in the morning he left to change the guards without the protective patrol, the man who provides overwatch while the tower is unguarded due to the change of the guards, and met Captain Toth, whose planet was revolving around the guard regulations. He almost got shot at the spot, and even Endez, the guard commander, got in trouble. When they asked where he had left the protective man, he answered:
- He was sleeping so nice, I didn't want to wake him up...
Needless to say, Speedee was never a shift leader again.
When Vertes started, half of the company went to the field, and the other half immediately went to the guard room. It was a silent day: we just sat in the command room and played Shadowrun, usually Endez and me, but sometimes Temesi also joined. And of course we played silly pranks, some can be considered a service crime, but we didn't care: we photographed each other in the guard tower, the guard room and so. But these were just small fun: the big was, for example, when I once was a guard commander.
Yes, I was a guard commander, twice. On both occasions the officer on duty was Major Brody. I think I've already told about him: a maximally patent, rigorous old officer. Everybody feared him, since he always checked every single service of the base regularly, and always managed to punish those who broke the smallest regulations. Needless to say, the guards had no exception, indeed.
My first commander duty started with not finding the guard diary, a secret document required to start the duty at all. Our furry face friend, Private Zsolt Vincze, had locked the diary into the company scribble's office, and had left for a long leave, along with the keys, of course. The only spare key was at Lt. Mihalyi's, but he was also absent, and no one knew about his location at the officers' quarters. So we just sat in the canteen and waited. Finally the lieutenant arrived and opened the office, but then there was no medic on duty at the base hospital, so we couldn't start duty without the comprehensive medical examination. We finally got very late from briefing. During receiving our weapons, we lost two magazines of live ammunition somewhere. Fortunately later we found them at the weapon loading table, along with the guard diary, which meanwhile had been splattered with ketchup, because that lame canteen boy had spread half a bottle of it on my peasantburger.
Lieutenant Mihalyi said goodbye with the following words:
- Polgar, you're a dead man!
I, as a dead man, nevertheless commanded a perfect parade step saluting the officer on duty for the guard squad, this was always the closing of the daily briefing. Major Brody seemed to like this, finally there was a man who could even shout an order, not only whisper.
It didn't take two hours, my phone rang on the commander's desk. I picked up, it was Major Brody.
- Lance corporal, why don't you perform your task diligently?
I looked at myself. I sat at the table diligently. The guard diary was placed on the table according to the regulations. I held the phone parallelly with my ear. So, what was wrong? It came to light that the major had found two soldiers missing at the repair company, and he claimed that this was because I had let them escape! Nah, fuck your state treasury mind, how the hell could I see someone climbing the fence at the other end of the base? Anyway, I ordered the guards to be on alert, and report anything suspicious. So it happened that the phone rang in the afternoon, or better say it horned, because the same moron built a car horn in it instead of a ring. It was Peter Andrasi, from tower #1.
- A car is moving here.
- So what - I said - while it's outside, it's not our concern.
- Yes, but it's inside the base.
I reported it to the major, but he was away to check something, I only found his subsidiary at the phone - Captain Hogwash. I told him that the regular method in this case was to send out a patrol, because he didn't know it. I myself went there with two men, while giving command to a shift leader. We soon found the car, a gray Suzuki at the supply service office, closed and empty. We didn't see the seal on the office door, which was expected to be there. So I left a guy from the patrol there to stay alert, and went back to Captain Hogwash to report. He said we should go back and wait for the owner of the car. We did so. My man, whom I left there, was watching two civilians, a young man and a woman packing two crates of apples into the car.
- Excuse me - I said - is this your car?
The guy looked up. Oh, this is that first lieutenant that had pissed us some days before! Now it's payback time. Just by the regulations.
- Yes, what's wrong with the car?
- I am sorry, but you can't leave with the car until the major checks it.
- The major? Well... he already knows we're here... - he tried, without a
result.
- I am sorry, this is my order.
The guy got upset.
- What? What is that I can't leave with my own car? What?!
- I am sorry - I repeated - this is my order.
- But I am an officer! I am a first lieutenant! - yelled the face, and waved
his ID card at my face. - I am an officer!
- Sorry sir, unable to comply.
- Lance corporal, now you come with me to the office! - he ordered, and tried
to go inside, but my mate stopped him.
- You can't give me any order now, lieutenant - I reminded him to the guard
regulations that say that the members of the patrol should only obey the
patrol commander and the officer on duty, not even the commander of the
entire army may command them.
- What? Why can't I? I am your superior! You're expected to obey me!
- Not when I am on patrol.
- Who regulates this?
- The Hungarian National Guard's according regulations.
- If you're doing by the regulations, why are you holding your weapon like
this?! - he yelled, and pointed to the Kalashnikov on my shoulder.
- If you wish, lieutenant, I can aim it on you, as it is written in the
regulations - I said, so he finally shut up.
His girlfriend was sitting on the edge of the pavement, with her tail between the legs, and sometimes nervously inserted that she was not bothered, she understood that this was duty, she agreed, etc. She at least had the guts to understand that when they come to the base to steal apples, and the guards get them, at least they should shut up.
The discussion was ended by Captain Hogwash, who appeared in the distance, and waved us to go there.
- Get in the car, and drive slow - I ordered the lieutenant in my coldest baldie-frightener voice, who didn't say a word, but if he had been staring on the wall like he did on me, the plaster would have surely fallen. They drove slowly, and we followed, with weapons obviously ready to fire. This made the girl pretty nervous, she often glanced backwards, and seemed rather pale. The lieutenant stopped at the service room of the officer on duty, and immediately rushed in like a rabbit. Motherfucker, I thought, will I let you lie the stars off the sky? I also rushed in. All Major Brody saw was an angry civilian rushing into his office, trying to say something, but interrupted by the guard commander storming in with a gun in the hand, pushing the civilian away and shouting:
- Everything in order, sir?
- Ehm... order? - the major recovered his wits - Yes, everything... thanks,
lance corporal, you can leave now.
I left to the entrance passage and stayed there, I wanted to hear what happened. Of course, the lieutenant painted a colorful picture of my patrol overrunning them as a barbarian horde, scaring his girlfriend to death, pestering them with weapons. He requested the major to punish us for this action, and all the guards along with us. The major listened to him, then said:
- I don't see your problem. They were doing their job. You'd better not walk along here during weekend, without the guards knowing you. And if I once again hear that you order the gate guards not to scribble your car's plate number into the traffic diary, I will put you under detention. Dismissed!
The lieutenant was unable to say anything, so he devastatedly shambled away. I was giving him the same grim I had given to Racz in Major Hermann's office. He produced the same changes in color. He never messed with our company again.
Lieutenant Mihalyi seemed a bit worried in the morning. He was expecting the major reporting some horrible violation of the regulations committed by me, for which he would be responsible, as he was the one who prepared us for duty. You would have had seen his face, when Major Brody asked him:
- Is this lance corporal your man?
- Erm... uh... yes... why? - he grinned, and expected the immediate strike.
- Praise him.
- Eh... what?
- Praise him! He is the best guard commander I've seen in these days.
- Err... good work, Polgar - he mumbled shocked. This was something he hadn't
expected.
This was the funniest case during our guard duties, but not the only one. Once I was a shift leader, but I got fed up with the rain that was falling for five days that time. I brought a nice, blue and white stripped umbrella, and I led the patrol with that from then on. It had a great advantage, it could be tied to the muzzle of the rifle, so I didn't even need to carry it in my hand. But once Lt.Col. Andrekovics met me and my patrol, and yelled my hair off for "breaking the regulations". Actually, his problem was not the umbrella - his problem was that the soldier at the end of the formation wore a raincoat, and the next one a tent canvas, and it is not uniform this way.
Another time I found an axe in the locker of the guard commander room. It should have been some fire axe. I walked to a sleeping baldie, and after some gentle waking, I slammed the axe into the wooden bench he was sleeping on, just millimetres from his leg. He had a funny face.
Or there was the case when we regulated Private Nyisalovits. This Nyisalovits guy was another nice example of the Borsod inbreeding. He was a rough, sturdy peasant boy, although even he couldn't produce the accent of Krokos. Perhaps it's enough to display his intelligence level to cite his words from a conversation:
- Hm, funny, Lt.Col. Andrekovics has his birthday just two days after me - I
said, with the officers' roster in my hand.
- Why, was he also born in 1976?
Anyway, he was not a bad guy, but had two rather annoying habits. First, he always snored like a pig. Second, he always ate others' food. The problem of snoring was solved by Jozsef Fekete, our mate. All of our squad was awake during a night, because Nyisa was mocking a Zil-131 truck engine. Fekete came after the noise, he was the internal serviceman that night.
- What's wrong here? - he asked.
- We can't sleep from this bastard!
- Nah, let me show you how we solve such problems in room 4!
He grabbed a pillow, and smashed it to Nyisa's head so hard that the bed almost collapsed.
- NO SNORING!! - he yelled.
And he really never snored again.So, back to the guard stories, once I was sitting at the commander's desk, and he was an "ArWa", Armed Watcher, which meant he was standing in the front of the guard room, guarding its entrance. Suddenly his cattlish head appeared in the window, and said this:
- He, Polgar! Gimme a water!
The dice stopped in my hand. What was this? The baldie said something to me, or what?
- Are you talking to me?
- Ha! - he answered, in the usual brief Borsod style.
- Hmmm - I was forming evil thoughts - all right...
And I brought him a glass of water. For a long time he didn't understand why everybody was laughing, and what was floating on the top of the water, and why was that a bit salty. Only after our demobilization he was told that he had got a glass of water - from the toilet. He never actually believed it, he thought that his mates were fooling him. But I can confirm that they did not...
Our common friend, Torzsok, almost got bet up during these days. All oldies were on duty in the guard room, so almost all May baldies stayed at the quarters, with only three February soldiers: Torzsok, as internal serviceman, another called Ferenc Ferenczi, an ugly, conceited Borsod guy, widely hated even by his fellow countrymen, and the beloved Robert Beres. Torzsok had the idea to start cleaning. Rag fun! This was unfair, because great washups only took place when no one was on guard, so that not only a few poor suckers brushed up the entire place. This unwritten rule was never broken by even the November guys, not even in the worst days of our opposition! And Torzsok also ordered to move lockers and beds, to scrub up even the rooms' floors. This was denied by the baldies, rather rightfully, and Torzsok was told to shut up or have a broken face. Then Torzsok phoned the guard room to ask us what to do.
I was picking up the phone. He whined that this and this baldie threatened him, how could it happen, and he asked me to talk with them. I asked the one who threatened Torzsok to the phone, and scolded him to the ground, how he dared to do this. Some of us had great authority in the eyes of the baldies, like me, so grumbling, but they started the clean-up. There was silence for a while, but suddenly some of them appeared at the window of the guard room personally, asking:
- Why do you let that faggot playing with us? Do you know what he is doing?
This was when we finally learned what was actually going on there. Now this was a different matter. We phoned Torzsok. Endez yelled with him, Torzsok hanged up. Now he also came down to us, to our window, complaining about the balds not respecting and obeying him, and so on. My pressure ran high, so I shouted him away from the window so loud that his hair is probably still growing horizontally. He offendedly said "yes? okay then..." - and went back to the quarters. We phoned the officer on duty, and gave him the idea to check what was going on at the company. So it happened that Torzsok, Ferenczi and Beres rather quickly collected three weeks of detention. Torzsok never understood why we didn't let him to "gain the respect of the baldies".
This way Robert Beres got to the field hospital. What has detention got to do with the hospital? I've already told that they at the Hungarian Home Guard take mental problems so seriously - they say it's not good when stupid people shoot themselves, but it never bothered me in fact - that when someone feels himself mentally offended, he can immediately go to the hospital, and idle there until he feels his soul has calmed again. If he can't feel this for a certain period, he gets discharged and sent home. So, Robika thought it was boring to always fake a lumbago, he became a mentally wounded person from then on, and he was immediately transferred to the hospital. He never went to any duty any more. It was perfectly against the regulations, since he was in hospital without any papers, even his name was not written in the book of the sick at the company, but thanks to our clumsy commander, there was no obstacle in his way. Lieutenant Mihalyi was somehow always scared to investigate the legality of Beres's transfer, despite that what he did is called "shirking of duty", which is a serious military crime. But he never cared about this. Finally we all had to give more duties, since we also took Beres's duties, so everybody started to badly hate that gypsy scum.
One morning I couldn't find my cap, so I borrowed one for the morning briefing. While it was running, Mihalyi stood behind me and asked:
- Polgar, where is your cap?
- I don't know, I will search for it.
- What, you've lost your cap?!
- No, I just left it at the...
- I don't care, Polgar! I will detent you! You won't leave for a month!
- Yes sir - I answered - and don't you want to detent Private Robert Beres
for something?
- Erm, uh, well, he's in hospital, so I can't...
- I see, lieutenant, you handle your men rather justitiously.
The lieutenant turned red and hissed something about the respect of the officers and my voice towards him, but that did nothing, half of the company was already laughing at him. He got severely burnt. Later, after the duty, he called me to his office, asked me to sit down, and asked - what asked, in fact he begged me - not to incite rebellion at the company, since "he has so hard work" with them, so "he doesn't have time even to keep discipline". I am still laughing when it comes in my mind. How can a commander be so weak that he starts to beg the soldier who opposes him? Well, as a matter of fact, I was not opposing at all, he was simply a very bad commander.
There was a weird case during another guard duty. A captain named Kallay came with me to check the guards in the night. We reached tower #3 at the ammunition dump. The regulations say that the guard should stop anyone with a loud "Halt! Who is that?" shouting. But the guard was silent this time, in spite of that Endez already phoned all towers that the officer on duty was checking the guards, everybody keep order and hide books, magazines, pocket radios. There was no sign of the guard understanding this. We stopped under the tower, from where we could see the head of the guard, with a walkman on the ears. I shouted:
- Hey! Guard 3/2!
No answer. I shouted several times, then we shouted together, finally he realized that someone was talking to him, and yelled back above his shoulder:
- What's that?
- What, what, the officer is here to check!
- Right then, fuck it!
And he placed the earphones back. He was lucky that the officer was Kallay and not someone else, because any other officer would have shot him immediately.
Everybody was after Beres. He was in the habit to leave without permission. That was rather disappointing, we pushed the duty, not leaving for home for months, while he was just sleeping all the day, and went to the town in the evening. We were all watching where he was climbing the fence. We decided that the one who spotted him would fire a warning shot to him, so he would be deep in the shit, as we would be able to prove that he didn't stop on request, which usually ended in a military court case. Our patrols were not moving, they just waited at the "dog house", the guard dog trainer's house, where the fence was low and everybody climbed in and out. Unfortunately we never managed to capture him, but any time he left the hospital, we immediately knew that and reported to the officer on duty. Soon he had a nice record of crimes: leave without permission, threatening a serviceman - he told the hospital serviceman, a May bald, that if he doesn't let him out, he will make him suck - shirking of service, and of course, the investigation against him in the case of that ammunition thievery still didn't end.
Beres always had bad luck. Once I was out with a shift patrol, and I was late, I changed the guards a quarter of an hour later for some reason. How come, I met Beres at the base fence, he was with his friend Szosin. The other shift leader saw them at the same spot at the next shift. Their pants were wet under the knees, so they had walked in tall, wet grass somewhere, and he was excitedly asking the shift leader if I had reported seeing him. I hadn't reported, but I always noted where and when we saw him. Some days later we almost crashed into them at the vehicle repair depot. They thought they were smart, they'd waited for us to disappear at the corner of the next building, but I'd walked back to see what they were doing. They were climbing in to the closed depot. I reported this to the officer. I suspected that they hid something there, something they'd stolen earlier. This was false, but they had really stolen something: a barrel of brake fluid. Major Hermann later didn't really believe what they claimed, that they had just been throwing rocks on stray cats, and some of them had run into the depot, that's why they had climbed in.
Anyway, I still can't understand why the hell they stole a barrel of Zil brake fluid, which wasn't good for anything, except to be filled into the brake system of a Zil truck. It couldn't even be sold.
Do you still remember that Beres had the habit of threatening everyone with his "brothers", as he is a "mafia guy"? Well, he kept his habit. He promised me that he would kill my family, Pap to be bet to dead, and so on, and so on. He was sent to the psychiatry, where they ordered bromide against agressive attitude. Captain Magyar from the Military Security Service visited him in the hospital and talked with him, later Beres summarized that the MSS officer "respects the great criminal he is" - these were his words - while the captain summarized that Beres was lying till everybody got blue on the face, so he didn't have any mental problems. Actually the ammunition thievery was not true either, but by making up this story many of Beres' smaller crimes had been uncovered.
And here came our loved Lieutenant Mihalyi, who actually hated Beres just like us, and wanted to arrange some major punishment for him, but was unable to do one bloody step towards this goal! But there was no way to arrest the scumbag without his commander's denunciation. Anyway, the scumbag had some dreamless nights, especially after we had convinced him that I was a built-in MSS investigator officer, who had come to the company to investigate some drug case. This story was based on a news article about drugs usage among soldiers, which contained the information that the highest drug usage rate was among the Szekesfehervar soldiers. Anyway, I still don't know if I hate Beres more for being such a creep, or Mihalyi for being such an impotent butthole.
Beres meanwhile got befriended with Roland Kiss. Asses to asses, as they say. Roland Kiss fell in panic, when he heard that Bajai would soon get out of the jail, and immediately phoned Beres's cellular phone. He asked him to give me the phone, and tried to threaten me with beating me up. He didn't succeed. Actually he only had a narrow escape from us beating him up, since neither Uncle Tau nor Endez got a leave on the next weekend, we were seriously planned to visit the asshole. You know, one who is hated by an entire company of soldiers, should not have a big mouth, especially if these soldiers know his address. Beres's cellular soon got confiscated by Lt.Col. Andrekovics, who "accidentally" lost it somewhere. Things happen. Not even Andrej was that stupid.
Everything ends someday. Even tic-tac endless guard duties. Thank God. You can't imagine how it felt when we finally gave the goddamn rifles back after sixteen duties, thirty-two days of exhausting work. And I had been in all the 16 duties, while most others had omitted one or two. We even celebrated the big event. Also the guys from the Vertes were back, a bit bristly and very dirty, but happily. They carried souvenirs: 5.56" blank bullets disposed by American soldiers, Italian canned food, autocannon cartridge cases. Padre and his company got really pissed, they had to work at the headquarters. They arrived, disembarked from their radio trucks, and asked where the tent of the third battalion was. The answer was:
- Third battalion? Man, there's ain't no tent for the third battalion!
This was rather groovy, six men sleeping in a radio truck for a week, while there was barely enough space inside to sit down. They only saw food when the other units left some, because also the supply depot didn't know that the third battalion would also be there, so they hadn't brought any food for them.
Uncle Tau and his mates were on a hill with two sergeants, Csutoras and Szatmari, they had a better time. No high ranking officers came to check, no one cared about them until their telephone line worked. Sometimes they went to climb cliffs. Once, halfway on the cliff wall, they spotted a helicopter taking off from the headquarters. OK, then run for it, they all jumped down from the cliff, ran two kilometres back to the radio trucks over hedge and hitch, before the officers in the chopper might spot that they were not on their places! Fortunately they didn't break their bones, just Tau rolled in some nasty, thorny hip bush. Finally they reached the trucks... and the chopper happened to be an American one, not their commanders'.
This is not a posing! I was wearing Lt.Col Andrekovics's uniform with an "officer on duty" arm band. I drilled the entire 1st battalion, and no one realized that the officer on duty was not wearing a pistol
but a pair of thousand-year-old, rag-like old pants.
The baldie on this pic is from company 32/B. He forgot to salute me, and while I drilled him, Private Dezso photo-sniped me from behind a glass door.
tomcat^grm