The badly fed and poorly clothed units were initially assigned to perform heavy construction work within Hungary. With Germany's invasion on Soviet Union, Hungary officials sent most of these units into Ukraine for additional forced labour work. They were subjected to atrocities, such as marching into mine fields to clear the area so that the regular troops could advance, and death by torture of prominent servicemen. Some units were entirely wiped out; others had as few as 5% of their members survive the war. However, these are more exceptions than a rule. Generally speaking, a member of the labour service units had got more chance to survive the war than a fighting unit. Until 15th of October, 1944. the loss of the labour service units was: 41 340 person (27,5-34,4%). But 40%-of this lost had happened in one month: January of 1943, in the Voronezh–Kharkov strategic offensive. The all retreating Hungarian Second Army was destroyed (only 20% arrived back to Hungary), with the labour force units also.