The budding young Hungarian artist BEla Zombory-MoldovAn was on holiday when the
First World War broke out in July 1914. Called up by the army, he soon found hi
mself hundreds of miles away, advancing on Russian lines and facing relentless r
ifle and artillery fire. Badly wounded, he returned to normal life, which now st
ruck him as unspeakably strange. He had witnessed, he realized, the end of a way
of life, of a whole world.
Published here for the first time in any language,
this extraordinary reminiscence is a powerful addition to the literature of the
war that defined the shape of the twentieth century.
