We, the incorporated one, received the first mission from “Dobrogea” to the “Basarabia” depressions and on the waterside of Black Sea. Like any other reservist, the “wasp-wasted” left us too. We were all of us, all kinds of size. The types of wind from the steppe during winter were very strong and cold. We, the Transylvanians, few knew about what a wind was and specially one of a steppe. Then we put things straight. The small and raw-boned ones, the wind carried them up side down and the weird thing was that it was blowing them backwards not forward, having to recuperate the “walking” distances. On the ones that something has “deposited”, it was simply choking them, probably dying from heart attack. All this I remember from that “movement” with the cold wind in my face, as to the place of billet. Between us there wasn’t any soldier at least fat. They all “remained” on the way. From how many we were, the ones that we left, we got to that place of billet, because we hanged on close to each other, by hand, clothes or equipment. There I have seen images that a human cannot imagine. The frostbites were of all kind and in all the places. The clay fleshed from the bones from places that you would have never thought. The frozen ones remained with the bones uncovered in those places. A lot were crippled from the coldness, and then they were sent … home … if they could make it. About drugs … there was nothing to say. Through them I found one of my villagers that was telling me: maybe the way I see him know I think of him as a human rest, but if I would go in line, I will have the chance to see of what the “united armies” are capable of when it comes to the native population from Russia. I would consider myself lucky if I will end as close as he was now. I was completely out of place thinking of what this warlike will take me next.

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.