3 NOVEMBER 1961, Page 6

Sunday, November 4, 1%6 From SARAH GAINHAM

BONN

rr LIB guns thudding woke me about five o'clock. It was dark. But the day before had been quite a day, with the drive to the frontier to put a story over on the Austrian side that would be sure to get to London—it was not my story, but I had to go with it in case there was no way back and there I would be, in Budapest with the Russians coming and no transport.

I spent most of the daylight waiting in the village hedge-tavern at Magyarovar, drinking tea with ersatz lemon and listening to the long table of other journalists telling tall tales of hair- raising escapes. One had not quite escaped and huddled in a blanket opposite me by the roaring, literally red-hot stove, with a ten-day-old scar across his scalp; he had not met the Russians in serious mood before and thought trying to edge pae, them was like trying to edge past the stewards at a Hotne Counties race meeting. He moaned quietly to himself from time to time and picked his nose, poor man. His (equally famous) companion spent some time at the long table shouting and bullying the thin, elderly waiter and the fat girl in German, trying to dis- cover someone who spoke that lingua franca to guide him and his wounded colleague across the frozen field-paths to the flat, open border.

These two had stayed together most of the fortnight they had spent in Budapest, as the highest-priced men on popular national papers seem to do on a big story—not out of affection, but to watch each other. The unwounded one got no change out of the staff, who appeared to speak no known language. The thin waiter came over to me, to see if I wanted anything else—a meal, a wash, a lavatory other than the one used by the peasants? We talked for a long time—in German, of course; about his family, split by the 1922 frontier, and about his father, himself and grandfather, who had all served in the K and K army. I promised to say 'Servus' to Vienna for him if and when I got back there, which seemed uncertain, since the car had been threatened by the suddenly released brakes of a Russian Tiger tank only an hour before on the road just inside the frontier. The tank stood watch on the road, which had a slight lateral slope; by releasing the brakes the monster just slid sideways and slid the car towards the road ditch where the crushed car of a Swedish Red Cross Mission director lay. The tank's main armament looked very big from Volkswagen level, and it swivelled quietly right down into our faces, as it seemed.

Unlike the Swedc, we stopped instantly at the shouted 'Stoy!' from the diesel-fumed soldier, black-faced in his sinister black helmet with the chin-guard up. That VW had often been driven too fast before, but it excelled itself down the flat, hedgeless road to ,the frontier village of Hegyeshalom where there were no telephones and on to Magyarovar where there were. The story that couldn't be put over the border was finally telephoned from the hospital at Magyaro- var where the head doctor's office had a licence to make long-distance calls and (illegally) got Vienna.

The doctor's sister had given me fish-cakes left over from Friday while the long wheedling was going on elsewhere; they were rather good, but I can taste them yet sticking in my gullet. The high-priced man had, in the meantime, heard the waiter (I had been sent back to the tavern) talking to me in German, and by chang- ing his bullying condescension for a pleasant manner had got the man to co-operate. They got a guide and got over the border. Funny how in such moments little personal details stay in one's memory. I remember the waiter's face quite clearly, He asked me what was going to happen (everybody did in those few days, though they all knew the answer) and I said I didn't know. The great foreign correspondent turned and looked down at me, with ineffable kindness, and said, 'Haven't I seen yoU somewhere be- fore?' I disgraced my upbringing by not answering. We ha:4 met at least a dozen times.

There were tanks everywhere on the road back. They all had men with blackened faces in black helmets with built-in earphones, like American football-players to look at-7-that is, when there was anyone human to be seen; mostly they had their hatches battened down. In the dusk of a freezing evening they looked as ominous as they were. A wide sweep of the Danube about half- way to the city (it ip about four hours) was brimming with dark, swollen waters among the leafless alders and willows rustling dryly in the still frost. It was quite dark when we got back and the nice Hungarian was waiting to translate the latest freedom-radio transmissions. Pal Maleter had not returned from his meeting with the Russians; he never did. It got very late. So when the artillery started up about five o'clock, it just sounded like the war again, only not the same as anti-aircraft guns, and I went back to sleep until the telephone rang just before seven. The racket was still going on, much nearer now, and a lot of fast machine-gun fire as well. I had heard it in my sleep (we had closed the double windows when it started), but, of course, the telephone ring woke us at once. It was an Austrian friend, a radio man: 'Seid ihr noch da, Kinder? Hab's nur gteich gedacht! But you'd better get going now. The Russians will be over the bridge in about twenty minutes, the manager says.' He rang off to go to his Legation, while we dressed to go to ours.

Typically, our English colleagues in the hotel had not thought to call us—less tired, they had not slept through the guns; but one of them re- membered he had left a pair of pyjamas in his bathroom and rang up to see if anyone was left to bring them over for him. We called every room (not many were occupied and all by foreigners; they were all empty) to make sure nobody was still snoring, and left, shaking hands shakily with the manager. The Russians took the bridge a few minutes later.

We reached the Legation without any more incident than a dead man stretched on the pave- ment near the Danube Quay—he was still there four days later—and smelling that sweet smell. Inside the Legation were dozens of strangers and acquaintances, all in a state bordering on— hysteria? alienation? A colleague complained bitterly that someone had a radio set playing music; this was no time for music; the listener was trying to get some news, but the thing would only play music; he himself was drinking strong whisky-and-water; it was nine-thirty. The Lega- tion staff were kindness and self-restraint itself. There were two Communist newspapermen there, both of whom had become 'ex' in the last few days. But the Legation is another story.