Pink postcards 8

[11 December 1914]
Name of the sender: K. Timó, Budapest, 1st Infantry Regiment
Address of the sender: 3rd March Battalion, 2nd Section

Address: To the honored Miss Antónia Zajác
3rd district, Kis-Korona Street 52
Budapest


My dear son,
Now I am fully equipped in gray. Today, on Friday at noon I will march to Érd. Maybe I’ll come home on Sunday.
I leave next week.
If I do not come home on Sunday, then come on Monday noon. I will wait for you at the gate, but at the back gate, my father knows where it is.
God be with you. Embraces and kisses, Károly
Greetings to the people in the workshop, also to the old man, and your mother and sisters.

Previous letters (indicated in gray on the map): • Budapest, 2 December 1914 • Budapest, 28 November 1914 • Budapest, 27 November 1914 • Budapest, 18 November 1914 • Budapest, 27 October 1914 • Debrecen, 25 September 1914 • Szerencs, 28 August 1914

[However, we turn over the card, it emanates an unspoken despair. For the gray soldier of a gray troop leaving during the following gray days, there is no real hope to stay for Christmas. If they just could meet at least once or twice before that. Beyond that, only divine intervention and luck can help them to meet again, after so much fear and anxiety.

László Mednyánszky: Winter trench

As to what to expect at the front in that gray uniform, you can read of it in the article of the war correspondent of Pesti Napló. It does not need any particular imagination.]

The Winter War. “The early expectations of a quick termination of the war have not come true… However, our soldiers will not suffer more in the winter than in the summer. It is true that a soldier’s life is not mere delight; after all, our lads are in the battlefield, and not in a distinguished hotel…”

Next postcard: 21 December 1914