True stories – Shovelling snow in uniform

My Dad told me a lot of military stories about himself when I was a child but none of those stories were as funny as the one I’m about to relate to you.

He did his military service at Szabadszállás in 1967-69. Back in those days, winters were tough, soldiers were shaking with the frost on duty and the most wretched lot was that of the green berets assigned to guard duty in sentry boxes. When outside it was bone-chilling cold, the privates condemned to guard duty did all they could to keep themselves warm – they kept the fire in the little iron stoves running at full blast on end and clad pretty well, but their superiors also made sure they got hot.

Such a never-ending “warm-up” task, for example, was shovelling snow in winter. Footpaths to military installations had to be perfectly passable at all times, as the regulations stated, so the privates were often driven by the officer on duty to continue shovelling the snow till the end of the world. In February 1969, huge amounts of snow fell in Hungary, the army got its fair share as well. My Dad was assigned to sentry duty, and he swiftly shovelled the fresh snow away from the path leading to the sentry box in the morning so that he could go in to have some warmth.

Following the good job he rested in the sentry box so nicely that he dozed off and only woke up to the bellowing of the officer on duty.

He tried to explain away his conduct, that there was not a single soul around the barracks since it was so cold, but, of course, to no avail. He was ordered to shovel snow, and because snow had already been pushed off all pavements, they assigned him the largest heap of snow. He was to shovel it over to the other side of the stone wall of the barracks. My Dad found this a totally superfluous exertion saying that snow can melt inside the barracks, it doesn’t have to be shovelled outside for that to happen. So he only went on leaning on the shovel, refusing to work with it.

His superior awarded his smartness with three days in detention, but, that having failed, he was then locked up for two weeks in solitary confinement, for disobeying direct orders. Naturally, he was still disinclined to shovel off the heap of snow, which, naturally, brought about another disciplinary action and papers. Less than a month later he found himself standing in front of the military court.

My Dad thought it would be better even to be locked up than to pointlessly shovel snow in such cold weather.

When he pointed this out to the military court, the judge almost broke out laughing.
“Are you here because of refusing to shovel snow?” he asked, baffled.
“Yes,” my Dad replied, “as the footpaths were already clean, so I supposed that my superiors were intentionally making me work uselessly.”
“It’s not your job to judge what the Hungarian People’s Army considers useful!” the judge bellowed.

My Dad was sentenced to half a year in a military cell for disobeying direct orders, but his superiors were also severely punished for having tried to cause a member of the military personnel to perform unnecessary work, and among difficult natural conditions at that. By the time the obstinate private was freed, after half a year, there was no snow any longer, and when he mentioned to his superior that he would now be willing to shovel snow, he could hardly avoid another disciplinary hearing.

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