Budapest 1945: The Year Zero

In my stepfather's cellar I was waiting for the Russians. I was 20 years old, a deserter, with false military identity papers; if I were to befound out by the National Socialists or by the field gendarmerie, I could be shot or hanged on the spot. I had left my unit, an anti-aircraft battery in the Hungarian army, in November of 1944. The bedraggled remnants of the army were about to be shipped westward, eventually to Germany, together with the retreating collaborationist Arrow Cross government...