22 - The Legionnaire Insanity

Summary

Everyone was in mourning after the news of the horrid Vienna Diktat. I had the feeling that justice itself had been buried. We dreamed for a thousand years of the just Union of all Romanians in the natural borders of our country, and Michael the Brave proved it was possible, desired as it was by all who spoke the same language and who had the same customs and laws. After twenty years, though, the dream unraveled against everyone's will. And, of course, without consultation, because King Carol's government was anything but an expression of the country.

We remained brothers in pain for days following the Diktat, when we had to clear our heads in order to carry our meager possessions over to the free territories. The brotherhood in pain of the oppressed, left behind in the ceded territories, was matched by the mourning brotherhood of those in the parts of the country left unoccupied, who came to our aid. Their humanity was more vivid than ever. I can still see the trucks and buses that came to help, speeding around Cluj's streets, asking from house to house if they could lend a hand.

The streets on the outskirts were patrolled by three platoons of the regiment to which I belonged, to maintain order and peace. They were just as silent and hurting as were their brothers in arms, forced to retreat from ceded Transylvania without the possibility of firing a single shot in defense of our natural, just borders.

A few days after the Antonescu government formed with help from the legionnaires and imposed by Hitler, their supporters started moving. The odd column would march through the streets downtown, singing their song: “The Guard, the Captain, and the Archangel Michael.”

The apoplectic shouts were uttered with the zeal of neophytes. As it turns out, most of them had become legionnaires overnight, attracted less by the legionnaire creed as by their wish for wealth, and even plunder.