Budapest, December 4

Thirty-thousand Hungarian women and children forced their way by sheer weight of numbers to the tomb of Hungary’s unknown Soldier here to-day to commemorate the second Russian attack on Budapest a month ago to-day. There were some clashes: one woman was wounded by a Russian bullet and another was saved from arrest by a dozen of her countrywomen.

The call for the demonstration went out by leaflets scattered in the streets of the city last night. This morning thousands of women converged on the memorial in Heroes’ Square shortly before 10 a.m. Some led children by the hand, others pushed them in perambulators. All were bent on laying flowers on the tomb in memory of those lost in the fighting against the Russians.

But as they moved towards the square scores of Russian armoured cars arrived and sealed off the square. At the same time they placed tanks on the Danube bridges, thus cutting off the women from the Buda half of the city. It was strictly a women’s demonstration. When a man joined in the women pushed him away.

Russians Wave Guns

Russian soldiers brandishing tommy guns jumped out of the armoured cars and lorries and pushed back the screaming women. “Look at those Russians,” one elderly woman shouted, “they have guns and they are afraid. We are only women with our children, but we are not afraid.” The Russians allowed the first few hundred women to reach the monument. The rest of the crowd, bearing the national flag and other black banners of mourning, threw themselves against the Russian cordon.

When the situation was getting still uglier Ferenc Münnich, Minister of the Armed Forces in the Kadar Government, arrived with two Russian generals. They conferred with Russian officers on the scene and then the Russians opened their ranks and allowed the women to swarm through to the monument. The women, in columns of four and wrapped-up against the biting wind and rain, marched across the square and laid their flowers on the tomb. Many lit candles.

During one of several skirmishes, a girl aged about 16 spat straight and true at a Russian officer. He seized her and tried to bundle her into an armoured car. A dozen women broke away from the marching crowd and surrounded the pair. They dragged the girl away from the officer, and a senior Russian officer moved in to stop the skirmish.

As the demonstration reached its peak at noon another woman shook her fist under the nose of a Russian general, who pushed her away. Other women rushed in and started pushing and slapping the general. He pulled out his pistol to scare them off and they started to run, chased by several Russian soldiers.

The Russians fired several shots, most of them apparently in the air, but a bullet hit one woman in the leg. She was taken away from the square in a Hungarian ambulance. Shortly after this incident the women marched away from the Square, followed at a distance by the Russian armoured cars.

Two refugees find work in Palace

Two Hungarian refugee youths, both aged 18, have been taken on the domestic staff at Buckingham Palace, it was learned last night. One of them had been a waiter in a hotel in Budapest, and the other an apprentice hairdresser there. They will live in the palace, where they arrived yesterday.