Transport To Odessa…cont.

And now the hunger awakes again. At Stein we ask the transport leader what about some food? He tells us that we will get some at the next station. The next station was the following morning. We already were over the border into Hungary. At the station we were given lukewarm brown water with no sugar, Not even bread. Whoever had money could of course buy something. Soon there was a lively trade going on with uniforms and other items from our packs. It seemed that no devil cared about us. Even the transport leader was not to be seen. It was strange. Everyone was his own senior or superior whether he had a star or not. Most of the charges took their collars off to be less restricted. But when the beautiful sex came around there was scarcely a sailor to be found. Suddenly, everyone was a non-commissioned officer. It is all about advantage.

So it went through beautiful Hungary, along Lake Balaton in the direction Budapest. There you had to keep quiet otherwise, instead of going to Odessa. you could wind up being transferred to the local Navy detachment. Better not! Then our train travels toward the Karpathian mountains and we pass by Godollo. When we arrived in Miscolc we had another long stopover.

Before the train had to leave I wanted to visit the W.C. and seven more men had the same idea. There were four Hungarians, one German and two Italians. We argued about who had the first turn until the train was gone and to nobody's surprise, everybody's urge was gone too! So now, out of the W.C. The Station Commander was an old reserve lieutenant, He stares at us absentmindedly and then asks us what he should do with us. We suggested to please fill out post-transport certificates for us. The express train will come in three hours and when we get to Sambor, we will have caught up with the transport train. He did what we asked and when the express arrived, we went aboard and did not feel like were part of a transport anymore.

One station before Sambor we caught up with the transport train but decided to stay on the express through Przemysl and then to Lemberg. Here they had white bread, cakes and pastries, sausages and white coffee. All things that we only knew by name anymore. We all pounced on this food like hungry wolves. Whoever had money had to pay for those that did not but did so readily. Then we waited for the transport. After three days it arrived.

Now we got our things off the train and sold everything we had. Then we let the train leave us again. The transport leader got into hot water also. Two Hungarians succeeded in getting to his trunk. As it turned out, instead of feeding the troops, he had used our chow money to buy things in Budapest that he planned to sell in Odessa for ten times the amount. We found all kinds of things that we too could sell. Then, our journey went on to Ternopol and to Podwolociska. Here we had to wait again. We crossed the Goryn River on foot. For the next day we stayed here and in the evening we marched to Wolociska. We stuck with the transport again to Prokurow and then became free once more.