Pink postcards 15

On 10 February [1915.]
Name of the sender: Private Károly Timó
Address of the sender: HOSPITAL OF SICK SOLDIERS, Budapest, IV, Molnár Str. 25.

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

Previous letters (gray dots): • Kecskemét, 30 January 1915 • Dukla Pass, 11 January 1915 • Felsőhunkóc, 4 January 1915 • Sztropkó, 31 December 1914 • Budapest, 23 December 1914 • Budapest, 21 December 1914 • 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

My dear son
I have a new apartment again. But I like it very much, because I have not yet lived in such a smart hospital. This is rather a club or a resort place, at the corner of Molnár and Sörház Streets. Here we will perhaps also have leave. If you were to see me, you would perhaps not even recognize me, such a pretty striped dress I have on. But I will tell you more when you come. Otherwise I feel well, and I wish the same to you. On Sunday come for sure. Visiting hours are every day from 1 to 4 p.m. See you soon

Embraces and kisses from Károly. Please notify Anna, lest she come here in vain. Greetings to those in the workshop.

[There must have happened no great disaster, if, after less than two weeks, Károly could leave the military hospital in Kecskemét, and was taken to Budapest. The news quickly spread among the acquaintances and those in the workshop, that the worst fears did not prove true, and he got a simple gunshot wound in the shoulder. The exact circumstances of the injury are not known, but he was the son of fortune, because in cases of this injury one rarely gets away without a serious operation or amputation. In pondering these odds, there is nobody who could not be considered an expert. Over the past more than half year, no family has avoided injuries or deaths.

This is discussed by everyone in the neighborhood, Perc Street, Kis Korona Street, and even the nearby parts of Lajos Street.


Such a wound, if the soldier is climbing or lying on the slope of the makeshift trench, avoids his unprotected face only by a span, and nests among the most sensitive organs, the artery running down in the left arm, the arteria subclavia sinistra (left-side subclavian artery), or its continuation, the axillary artery (arteria axillaris), and the nerves running down from here (nervi supraclaviculares). And the bones (clavicula, scapula) also escaped unharmed. A one in a hundred chance.

Was the postcard sent from Molnár utca? “Hospital of sick soldiers”. Is there any hospital there? Everybody turns the page quite a few times before going to visit there.]