Arpad Line. The Group of objects in Vyshka village.

The village Vyshka of the Velykiy Berezniy area can be considered as Mecca for skiers of Uzhgorod and surrounding areas. The famous ski resort ”Krasiya” is named after the mountain with the same name “Krasiya” or “Krasivaya” (1036 meters above the sea level). There are several large hotels and numerous private houses for tourists to stay, one old ski chairlift, one modern ski chairlift and a lot of other lifts. The church of St. Archangel Michael, built in 1700, can truly be called a historical landmark of the village.

The objects of Arpad Line in Vyshka village are very popular among the tourists from neighboring Hungary. Several objects near the road are included into the lists of excursions in some hotels of Berezniy area. There are quite unique military objects among them in the village. For instance, the house on the left side of the road just on the entry of the village was built up on the bunker!

The part of the house behind the leaves was built up on the bunker, precisely on the entrance of the bunker. One local citizen told me that this bunker was a medical. It consists of many rooms, paths, doors. Its vents are on the opposite hillside near Zhornava village. It’s a sort of camouflage: the entrance and the main part of the bunker are hidden in one place, but in case of an air attack the “empty” mountain part above Zhornava would be bombed.



The massive armored door can be seen in the background. The ornamental window with the insertion of the bottle bottoms is in the centre. The window broken by tourists and later clamped with wooden boards is in the right corner. It is impossible to get inside the building without resorting to brute force. It is possible to stick a camera into the hole and take a few pictures though. They say, if you know the owner, you can arrange a walk inside the bunker.



This is one of the bunker’s rooms. On the left corner you can see the massive armored door between the rooms. We also observe a hole in the wall, an old Soviet desk, debris and moisture. They say that there were times when local authorities had a lot of questions to the owner of the house. Allegedly, he was given illegal documents for the right of dwelling on the object of historical value. Nowadays, however, the house is boarded up.



We move further into the village and pass the modern ski lift on the right hand side. The next house after the lift also stands on a small bunker or rather a shelter. People warned me to avoid talking with the owners in order to see the sight. When I asked why, our guides told me that the owners of this house might have sort of mental disease. The reason is that all three or four owners of neighboring skiing area pressured them trying to make them sell their land. In these circumstances the owners of the house became paranoiac with the persecution mania. I followed the advice and didn’t approach the house. After 15 minutes, when my companions and I were walking on the hill searching for the bunker situated approximately in 100 meters from the house, the landlady, hearing the crunch of twigs in the woods, went out and began to strike on the washbowl with the soup ladle and … let the dogs run at us. This all happened when we were at the distance of nearly 80 meters from her property.



And here is the entrance to the shelter, which we were looking for. The entrance is hidden by blackberries and all kinds of small vines. It's easy to pass by without noticing it. At 100 meters away there is another one, too much overgrown with underbrush. Only the first one is usually being demonstrated for tourists. This is evidenced by the old mouldering steps on the path near. According to our guide, these steps were ordered by one Hungarian citizen, who led excursions here.



From inside it looks the same as other blown-up shelters in other fortified regions of the Transcarpathia – with armored concrete and traces of explosion.



All around we can see traces left by young people who watched lots of films and wanted to try themselves in role of investigators.



Such a nice view, by the way, opens from the path under the shelter. It is the valley of Vyshka village, precisely its beginning.



We take the “device”, make few steps, and a result – large concentration of the metal – is guaranteed. After a minute of raking the leaves, twigs and a few centimeters of soil – here is what we found. For those who are interested, this is a bullet case from the so-called 8-millimeter-Hungarian rifle cartridge (to be entirely accurate – “8mm Hungarian Mannlicher”). It is also known under the markings “8mm Hungarian Mannlicher”, “8mm M31” and 8x56R. The total length of the cartridge is 76 mm. The length of the bullet case is 55.8 mm. The diameter of the bullet is 8.36 mm. The weight of bullets starts from 13.25 g. The weight of a cartridge is 24 g. The cartridge was designed in Austria for the rifle and carbine of Mannlicher model of the year 1930. It was later adopted for Bulgaria and Hungary (in 1931) under the name “M31” for Mannlicher rifles M35 / M95 and machine guns 31M / 34AM. Besides “8-mm Mannlicher”, Hungary starting from 1940 also used a German bullet “7.92 x57”.



To say the truth, the whole hill is “ringing”. A generous amount of different metal is left from those times under the ground. Hundreds of meters of clearly marked trenches are around the shelter.



By the way, many objects of Arpad Line are situated in the neighboring village Lyuta, which is one of the longest (its length is approximately 12 km) villages of the Velykiy Berezniy area and of the Transcarpathian region as well. According to some rumors, several military storages still remain “unopened”… But those are only rumors…

03.03.2010. 09:03

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