The story of eight young refugees' dramatic escape from Hungary after Russian tanks defeated the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Together, they faced the dangers of the escape: Soviet tanks, secret police and border guards and together they suffered the cold, the rain, the thick mud, the cruel reeds and the hopelessness of being lost in the swamp not knowing whether or not they would end up in the free world or face the menacing arms of Soviet guards. In spite of all the misery, they also experienced the best manifestations of humanity: compassion, love, sacrifice and nobility. These are the memoirs of a teenager in 1956 written right after her escape to Vienna and translated from the original Hungarian document fifty years later without altering a word of the teen's diary. To enable the reader to better understand the sequence of events and see the distances covered during the escape, the writer added pictures and maps.