Until we have made the Diktat I have vowed for the king and for the country. I came here for the “country’s defense”, but from here it seem we were under the command of the German – Hungarian tropes. The stories of this “remnant” villager have simply horrified me. The captains, having a feeling of the deplorable moral state that caught us, called for our embarkation at midnight, in wagons: boxcar, on an opened line. They were “pushing” us to the East, to the “heart” of Russia. The train was going on for six hours. It was a winter with short days and in which the wind was snow blasting continuously. It seemed that the night was endless. The air from the carriage, although it was getting through the board as if it was perforating you, because of the “over-population” of the carriage, was unbearable to breath. I pushed the door of the carriage a little so that we could “aerate”. The soldiers that were sitting down in the carriage started to howl that they were cold, the ones that were standing up, bawled at them approving what I was doing. In fact we were so overwrought that if we could, we would have started a fight from anything. That’s how it happened now. Someone has started a concourse that you could not figure out what was happening in that carriage. I believe we started to cross over the “Nistru” River. You could see outside a frozen expanse and from place to place a bit of jungle. I believed it was a swamp and in a full agitation, as if someone had pushed me, “I felt” in the swamp. The ones that have seen this, started to hoot, after this I heard how they throw their personal effects and even the weapon, after me. You could still hear the train but only as an echo. The ice over which I jumped broke getting into the swamp till my armhole. I rest in the swamp for a few hours necessary both for the orientation and for not breaking more ice, a thing that could be noticed from the trains that were leaving for the front. In the evening with the few things and any food I started to make the first steps to the country. The wolves “choirs” guided me everywhere, but it seemed they had enough corpses that they didn’t “annoy me”. Just one thought guided me: to move forward continuously. Where there was no danger I was walking by foot, otherwise I was crawling. At the beginning the wolves pack had frightened me, after that when I was hearing them I was glad, I was sure there were no troupes around, they brought me peace. In my hunted back-down, going through the places where the troupes have been through, other fighting, other just getting to the front line, an image that for a human being was incredible presented to me. There were a lot of amputations made by the cannon shots, but it could not be compared with the crimes of the civilians committed by the occupation “forces”. With all the fear that guided me for years, I woke up, thinking: “God, where were you when those wicked people snapped these innocent people, children, mothers to which they have taken out their babies from their belly with the knife”.

From different dead people, I changed my broken or wet clothes, at a run, if there were at least dry, a lot “safer” than my own. After what the telling of that mate, from the village, I was being careful not to freeze. Even then, when the senses of the extremities went away, I unshod and with the hat I was rubbing my feet, my thenar so it wont freeze. I was not worried in how much time I would get home, in my country, the purpose was to get there altogether with any flesh bones. I went the long way round the villages, the train stations and any populated place. If they would have caught me, they would have shot me for running away not for the weapon stealth, how they usually explained the death of many soldiers so that the occurrence of running away won’t be known. Harassing my being and usually “crossing” through were military operations have already been happening and most of the time under the darks protection; I was living only from the rest of food that I could find at the dead soldiers. The biggest problem was to pass from Moldavia to Ardeal. The frontiers were being watched by the “new” masters. It may be inconceivable but the wolves got me away, so that they won’t catch me. After almost three months I got in “my Transylvanian village”, in the beautiful way that Sugariu used to write. In here it was harder than I expected. Those (the Hungarian police) were daily passing through my house. I couldn’t come close to my family and don’t put them in danger. In a bank of Somes River from where people used to take out clay, an excavation formed out. I used to spend my days there and at night I got through one neighbors yard in our shed where I started to dig a cell. The land that came off I took it to the Somes River. This operation, of digging a shelter in our shed and only at night with my fears, it may have last for a while, but what I remember for sure was that through my skin you could notice all my bones, you could study anatomy. Ending the built of the cottage also concluded with my physical and psychical breakdown. I have fallen in a deep and long sleep. I still had days. Getting out of this half dead state, I hardly managed “to stand on my feet”. Now, I was not stressed anymore to clean off all the marks how I used to in that excavation from the Somes bank, so that in case someone will pass and notice traces of fresh cohabitation, that would betray my presence there. In the cellar from under the house I lived like an animal for more than a year. After strengthening I contacted the shepherds, knowing what kind of people they are, and after this through them and their people, through old helpmates, we made a group, which continuously looked to harass and sabotage the occupants, fact that allowed us the control of a bigger area and that was when I took contact with my family. I told you all this, I got with my story into your stories, because in our town used to be a monument on which was written: “Eternal blaze for the Soviet Army heroes that gave their life for the liberation of their country’s land”, I might have quoted wrong. Well, we all forget sometimes. The leaders of those days, from the war time, until September seventh 1944, subordinated all the Romanian armies to the Red Army.

In that case the Romanian Armies have been incorporated in the second and third Ukrainian line under Russian command and wearing as a name: “The Soviet Army” in comparison to the pure Red Army that belongs to the Russian federation. Maybe that some “personalities” from nowadays fell ashamed of “the activities” from then when they subordinated the Romanian Army to the Russians, the Soviet Armies, which in that time in our country were us, Romanians. Well, this “shameful” people have demolished “the famous” monument. Even if it was dedicated to other nations, on it was written that “it is built in the memory of those that gave their lives for the country’s liberation”, so not at all for the Russians praise as someone tried to inform us, and indeed he succeeded, destroying one heroes monument, unknown too, that have left and sacrificed everything – LIFE- to free this corner of the country. If somehow you believe I “went all round the circle”, forgive me because I myself forgave those that bargain this country, no matter with whom and when it happened”.
– There are interesting things, especially for those that have never known what suffering and humiliation means, but they only beat hard their “patriotic” chest, I see, walking our way for our guest’s name day celebration, Tomas. In front of a house, our guest gives us a sign for attention.
– Gentlemen, you retraced some stories of some facts that happened before this revolution, which, we have to recognize, brought us, truly, the so longed for freedom. Here, in this house, lives a family that, from what they have understood from freedom, has destroyed its entire life and fortune. He was one of the first discharged mine diggers, then, when everybody wanted to choose wheat from weed.
– But, how come? My friend interferes.
– I don’t want to say that it was easy, but their “freedom” manifestations were incomprehensible and have a circumstance of developing more conservative in the village where all the population forms a public opinion, where all are integrated in the village community. The members of this family, young enough, hardly after the winter ended, started to attend stoically the new “bar”, consuming more and more alcohol of an uncertain quality. You could not figure out who is more avid of drinking, the husband or the wife. People motivate their drinking through: the hard life they carry, the adversities they have been through, but for sure they started drinking for pleasure, in the end getting to dehumanize themselves totally.