Pink postcards 9

[21 December 1914]
Name of the sender: K. Timó, Budapest, 1st Infantry Regiment
Address of the sender: 3rd March Battalion, 4th Section

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


My dear son!
Excuse me that I have not yet written, but now I write news that is better. I am still here in the barracks, and will even be home for Christmas. They guard us so much that we are not even allowed into the yard, but perhaps for the feast they will let us go home. If not, come here in the afternoon of the first day, go to my parents and come with them. We have already received all the food for the battlefield, and now we got the command to eat it, because it will go bad. We were in such a state of uncertainty, they even woke us up in the night, and we slept on benches. How are you, do you feel well? and your mother and sisters?
Until next time embraces and kisses from your d.-J-w
Károly

Previous letters (indicated in gray on the map): • Budapest, 11 December 1914 • 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

[The carrier of the good news arrived here three days earlier. Perhaps the writer of the letter, Károly, could not have received any better news. In the middle of uncertainties and turmoil, he received a little reprieve from fate.

Perhaps all of us have memories when on Christmas eve we were far away from our loved ones. In a suburban barracks it is not easy to stay calm even in peacetime, next to a makeshift Christmas tree; the thoughts are roaming far beyond the wire fences.

The newspapers report on the bright triumphs of Limanowa. The weather report woven into the war correspondence of Pesti Napló seems to anticipate the day’s weather: “I never followed our troops with so proud hopes, as in these days of great importance in December, which play with the soft breeze of spring.”

However, the 1st Infantry Regiment of Budapest is struggling with the Russians almost at the same place on the ridge of the Carpathians. “In the Carpathians, the situation has not changed significantly”, says a brief report by Major General Hőfer, Deputy Chief of the General Staff.]

“Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by this sun of York…”

Next postcard: 23 December 1914