Bill Martin

Bill Martin

BILL MARTIN was born in 1939 in Csorna, Hungary. As a third year secondary school student, he joined the local National Guard during the 1956 Revolution. Alarmed by rumours that those who actively cooperated with the revolutionary authorities would be rounded up and deported, he left Hungary on 15 November with two of his childhood friends. He arrived in Melbourne in March 1957. He did various jobs in Australia from grape picking to road works, selling home improvements, sales management, and finally running his own small business. He has been married to a Latvian for 51 years and is the father of a daughter and a son.

THE DAY THE RUSSIANS CAME

I was not yet six years old when the Russians came to our provincial town in the northwest of Hungary. I don’t know the date but it was early spring, in 1945. There wasn’t any serious fighting in the immediate vicinity that I know of, although there were three burned-out