The Bridge at Andau

by James A. Michener

  She walked along the dike, past the rush fields and the swamps and into Hungary to where the bridge of freedom had once stood. It was a cold, quiet night, broken only by the chatter of a machine gun somewhere back in the swamps or lighted for a moment by star shells of flaming phosphorus which the Russians used for trapping escapees unexpectedly. Miss Rohde had taken a few mental notes describing this desolate land of swamps and had started back toward Andau when she heard off in the distance the crying of a baby.

  She was alone, but the crying was so insistent that she went, at rather great peril to herself, in pursuit of the wailing night sounds. By great good luck the baby’s mother could not silence it, and before long Miss Rohde came upon a group of twenty-two starving, water-soaked, freezing refugees. They had tried to penetrate the Hungarian swamps without a guide, and when this Englishwoman found them, they had been wallowing for two days in a great circle. They had been in Austria once, but had not known it, and were now heading directly back into a Russian encampment.

  They were in such condition that they no longer cared whether the baby betrayed them or not. They only wanted to escape the swamp. Whether escape led to freedom in Austria or to prison in Hungary they did not care, for they had spent two days floundering in mud up to their waists and some of them had begun to freeze to death. It was then that the baby had begun its final, before-death wailing, and it was then that an English newspaperwoman decided to take one last look.

  The nearly two hundred thousand refugees who reached Austria—it is significant that less than five hundred fled to communist Yugoslavia, which also borders on Hungary—arrived in three clearly defined waves. My experience at Andau, as I have indicated, was almost exclusively with the middle wave—mostly young people, carrying nothing, but containing a surprisingly high percentage of engineers and well-trained technicians. They were, as I have said, the elite of the nation and of the revolution. Already their loss is being felt in the Hungarian economy, and as the years pass, the loss in leadership which they might have exercised will also be detectable. This second group was as fine a body of people as I have ever seen.

  The first wave, which I did not see, had a much different construction. A Hungarian sociologist, who left Budapest after the fall of Csepel and later returned surreptitiously, defined this small but very lively first group as follows: “There were a good many prostitutes, who throughout the world seem to have a fine sense of when to move where. The rest of us were fooled by the days of peace, but not these girls. They saw a chance to get out of a doomed city, and they left. Then there were the young adventurers, boys and girls of unstable homes who had always heard of the bright lands to the west. They left us like children in a fairy story going off in search of adventure. Finally, in those first days, there were many cowards who could not face up to the requirements of a free Hungary. Few of us who stayed in Budapest to fight the returning Russians felt any sense of loss at all when those first people left us. But we did feel resentment, and we continue to feel it. It was Hungary’s misfortune that her first representatives abroad were such people. I think the countries which took in these particular Hungarian refugees are going to have a lot of trouble with them, and I feel sorry that they accepted such ambassadors. The good name of all of us will suffer.”

  Fortunately, the first wave was not large and its members will probably do less harm than Hungarian patriots fear. I came into no direct contact with this group, but I did often hear bitter complaints against them. Said one later refugee with a good battle record, “What can you say for a man who fled Hungary before the Russians returned? One word. Coward.” In having my written words checked and corrected by Hungarian experts, I encountered the depth of feeling these first refugees had aroused. I had described a young man who left Budapest at the height of the temporary victory, and one critic said, “Please, sir, change this. No decent Hungarian left when we had a chance to win.” I checked my notes and insisted, “It says so right here. I remember what he said.” My critic studied for a moment and drew a line through the passage. “If he behaved in that way, it’s better we don’t even mention him.”

  It was the third wave that brought in the most refugees and the most problems. In considering this particular group it would be well to keep in mind the unofficial estimates of certain Austrian immigration officials. “Counting all refugees, including those who slipped in without registering, we will probably wind up with around two hundred thousand. Of these, the first wave of adventurous young people numbered not more than three thousand, and they quickly found homes abroad. They’re gone and forgotten. The second wave of real refugees, like the ones you saw at Andau, totaled about twenty-five thousand. But remember, even of this select group not more than two thousand had played any vital role in the revolution. That leaves around one hundred and seventy thousand who came out in the third wave, and practically none of them ever fired upon a Russian or committed himself in any way during the revolution. You’ve seen them. They’re fine, clean, healthy, middle-class people who hated communism and saw a good chance to escape. No doubt many of them had wanted to get out ten years ago. This was their chance.”

  I imagine that the Austrian’s figures were correct: about two hundred thousand refugees ultimately, of whom about one per cent participated actively in the revolution. This points up the difference between the second wave of refugees like those I had met at Andau and the third. Members of the former were apt to have had some connection with the revolution (although even among this group the percentage of actual fighters could not have been higher than two thousand among twenty-five thousand) and many fled Hungary because to have remained behind would have been to invite execution or deportation to slave labor camps in Russia. Members of the third wave neither participated in the revolution nor had any reprisals to fear therefrom.

  A second difference is more important, even though it grows logically out of the first. True revolutionaries from the second wave who can prove fighting records against the Russians may one day be welcomed back into a free Hungary and might even participate in the government of the country. But members of the third wave who left primarily because they felt they could better themselves abroad will probably never be welcomed back into their homeland. Moreover, if they persist in returning, they could play no part in any foreseeable future government of Hungary.

  It was of these later escapees that Representative Omar Burleson of Texas complained when he said, “America is heaping honors befitting a hero upon Hungarians who are deserting those who are willing to remain behind to carry on their fight for independence from the Soviet Union. We know little or nothing about these people who are being admitted. It would be interesting to know how many of those leaving Hungary were really ‘revolutionaries’ in the first place.”

  I do not share Representative Burleson’s fears, for although it is true, as I have explained above, that only one percent were fighters in the revolution (two thousand out of about two hundred thousand), nevertheless, many of the remaining ninety-nine per cent were honest seekers after freedom who supported the actual fighters spiritually, and they merit the attention and the sanctuary the world has given them.

  However, the friends of Hungary must not underestimate the bitterness felt by those who stayed and fought toward those who fled, particularly against those who scuttled out for personal economic reasons during the third wave. This resentment could be of importance in subsequent political decisions regarding Hungary, and refugees themselves were quick to realize this. Even those unquestioned patriots of the second wave, men who had fought valiantly and who had fled to save their lives, were aware of the dangerous step they had taken. Often they told me, “We left Hungary in its hour of crisis. We will never be welcomed back. Those braver ones who stayed behind will inherit the new Hungary.”

  Later these refugees tried to rationalize away their first reactions. “Maybe those of us who can prove we fought will be welcomed back,” they reasoned. I rather think their first fears were correct. Hu
ngarians who remained in Budapest and who bore the full brunt of Russian fury will be the eventual rulers of their country, and although it is possible that under extenuating circumstances they might accept participation from their brothers who fled, for them to accept guidance from the refugees who will sit out the great storms of the future in some haven like France or America is unthinkable.

  One refugee with a very good record in the 1956 revolution lamented, “The only way for me to work my way back into Hungarian life is with a sub-machine gun as a volunteer patriot when the next revolution occurs. That’s the only way I can establish my credentials. I’ll never do it by talking. Especially if I do my talking from safety in France or America.”

  Americans must understand this, for we are prone to uncover refugees whom we like—especially if they had titles or ran big businesses—and to assume that the citizens of other lands are ungrateful if they don’t like them too. We set up our self-chosen governments-in-exile, and condemn as radicals those who remain behind and won’t accept them. Refugee Hungarians in New York and Chicago, no matter how attractive they may be at cocktail parties, are not going to run the new Hungary when it evolves.

  We really ought to stop this nonsense. Hungary will not be governed by refugees of our choosing; it will be governed by those hard-headed young men who stayed in the universities and in Csepel and who matured with the events of their own national society. What happened in the case of Ferenc Nagy should be a warning to well-intentioned Americans.

  For several years Ferenc Nagy, a former Hungarian official, has lived in the United States as a kind of unofficial spokesman for his fatherland. He has done a great deal of good in reminding America of Hungarian problems, and has been an able defender of the Hungarian point of view. He became “the Hungarian whom Americans could trust.”

  When the revolution broke out, Ferenc Nagy was flown posthaste to Vienna, where he started issuing statements and instructions. The reaction from the revolutionary leaders in Budapest was explosive. One message said simply, “If Nagy doesn’t get out of Austria within twenty-four hours, we’ll shoot him.” The Austrian government, which itself had been plagued by several would-be governments-in-exile, many contaminated with former Nazi collaborators, was glad for this excuse to get Ferenc Nagy off its soil, and gave him twenty-four hours to leave. As one Hungarian patriot said, “We weren’t mad at Nagy Ferenc. We just didn’t want him meddling in our government.”

  I know that my warning on this delicate point is useless. I suppose that right now govemments-in-exile are being established in Paris and in New York. All members of the former speak French and all the latter English, and they are unquestionably fine people. Frenchmen and Americans like them very much, but not the people of Budapest. We must be careful not to ruin our chances in Hungary by trying to foist such a government upon a liberated Hungarian people. This strategy never works, and maybe in another two or three hundred years we’ll learn to avoid it.

  It is possible that some of the legitimate freedom fighters with impeccable records might be invited back to full participation in some future Hungarian government, but not if freedom is too long delayed. It is tragic how quickly an exile loses touch with the vital currents of his homeland and how outmoded he becomes. However, I do think that in prudent self-interest any future Hungarian government, from extreme left to extreme right, would welcome back in full forgiveness the young scientists who fled, for the loss here was critical. But world industry is so hungry for scientists that within a year those fugitive experts will be dug into fine jobs in Birmingham or Sydney or Detroit. I doubt if Hungary will get many of them back. As for the children, the communist government of Hungary is already demanding that all youths under the age of eighteen be returned, claiming that these infants were kidnaped away from the blessings of communism without their consent and against their wishes, forgetting that a large percentage of Russian tanks were destroyed by just such young people, who certainly knew what their wishes were at that point. But the pull of homeland is a tremendous force, and possibly some of these young people will return to Hungary and find there a satisfactory place for themselves.

  For the most part, however, each human being who walked out of Hungary in late 1956 represented a personal tragedy, as well as a momentary triumph. He was walking into freedom, true, but he was also walking away from his homeland and its future, and that is a pathetic thing for a patriot to have to do.

  The guides played a strange role. First they were local farmers who, out of the goodness of their hearts, led fellow Hungarians across the last dangerous miles to the border. By one of the coincidences of history, only three months before this enormous migration took place, some communist official in Budapest had ordered all land mines along the Austrian border lifted and destroyed. This single decision probably saved ten thousand lives, for had the entire border been peppered with mines, the loss of life would have been shocking. Who ordered the removal we do not know, but one refugee said of him, “I’ll bet he’s looking for a new job now.”

  “No,” said another. “He’s looking for a new head.”

  But even without mines, a guide through the swamps and up to the likely crossing spots was a necessity, and after the refugee flood had settled down into a steady flow, these guides charged up to fifty dollars a head to perform their dangerous work. Women and children with no money were ferried to freedom without charge, and many who refused to pay the fee nevertheless found their way into Austria, but there were gloomy tales of groups who tried to save money and did, at the expense of wandering back and forth in Hungary without being able to strike the border.

  After the first refugees were settled in Vienna, a deadly game developed. Two or three daring young men would approach likely strangers and ask, “You have anybody in Budapest you want brought out? We’ll do it for a thousand American dollars.”

  These fearless groups would then sneak back into Hungary, repenetrate the border defenses, infiltrate the Budapest check points and appear at an apartment house in the city with the startling news, “Your brother in Vienna asked us to rescue you.” Then the three guides and their customer—or sometimes several customers—would retrace the risky journey and fulfill their contracts. Few people who paid the thousand dollars were gypped; all agreed that the young men had well earned their fee.

  There was, however, a contemptible racket that grew up around this practice, for some Russian officials learned of the escape route and decided, “If the Hungarians are going to escape anyway, we might as well get some of the money,” and they insisted upon part of the rescue fee. This developed into a weird system whereby certain refugees rode from Budapest to a spot about two miles from the border in Russian staff cars, driven by Russian officers. This was escape in the grand manner.

  Most hilarious, however, was the experience of one super-daring Hungarian college student who volunteered to rescue an aged man from Budapest for a thousand dollars. He was an honorable young man and he said, “I won’t take a penny unless I can bring the old man out. If I succeed, I’ll call you from the border and you bring a car to get him. Then I’ll take the money.” With that he plunged back into Hungary.

  Eight anxious days later the man in Vienna who had offered the thousand dollars was vastly relieved to get a phone call from the Hungarian student, who sounded a bit wan. “I have the old man, but don’t bring a car. Bring a bus.” For when word of escape had trickled through the old man’s apartment house, everyone living there had decided to join the trek to freedom. For one fee, the college student had brought out a full bus load of refugees: twenty-seven Hungarians ranging in age from seventy-one years to eight months!

  Not all the refugees were heroes. Some men demanded that women leave babies behind lest their cries alarm the guards. Thus, there were numerous cases in which mothers came through the swamps alone, in order to save their children, but the risks taken by one young wife near Andau were beyond the average.

  “When my wife left Budapest,” her husband r
elates, “she was already eight months pregnant. We didn’t want her to make the trip, but she said she wouldn’t live under communism another day. And she didn’t want her baby to be born there, either.

  “Our trip was a hard one and we had to walk a great deal. All the members of our party tried to help her, but the time came when she couldn’t walk any more, so one by one the party had to forge ahead. I was left with my wife in a little woods not far from Andau and we knew her time had come. She said, ‘You walk to some farmhouse and see if you can get a woman to help me.’

  “I didn’t want to leave her alone in the woods, but she kissed me good-by and I tried to find a farmhouse. It took me a long time, and when I brought the farmer back with me we found that my wife had given birth all by herself and had fainted. But before she fainted she had wrapped the baby under her dress. We waited till night and carried her and the baby back to the farmhouse. The farmer’s wife kept us hidden for four days, and on the fifth day the farmer led my wife and me and the baby into Austria.”

  By common consent, the popular hero of the evacuation was a railroad engineer who pulled a stunt which had all Central Europe laughing for weeks. Mihai Kovacs, in the first days of Russia’s reoccupation of Budapest, was called to his station in Pest and ordered to drive a long train of sealed boxcars into Russia. He could guess what the cars contained. After he reached Russia he was certain that he was carrying many hundreds of Hungary’s finest rebels to concentration camps in either Siberia or Central Asia.

  So he used his head. He got one of his crew to fix him up a real big sign in bold black letters. He turned his train around at a little-used siding and came steaming back down the tracks, out of Russia and into Hungary. Through Budapest and Gyor he kept his train going, for the sign encouraged Soviet guards to step aside and let Mihai Kovacs steam ahead.