Split

Following that weekend in Munich, father applied for and received a rotation back to the United States.  He never asked any of us our opinions, we would have all voted to stay in Germany!  So, knowing my father this meant there was another agenda running and that weekend in Munich was probably all it took for him to decide to run as far as possible away from Germany permanently.

Mother continued to be her weird self, father was away as much as possible, us kids just went to school and tried to avoid them both.

It was my birthday, 1972, when father had divorce papers served on mother.  His explanation as to why - was to wake her up that she was destroying her marriage.  You see mother had become a Southern Baptist.  She and father fought like cats and dogs over everything!  Food, religion, all aspects of marriage!  And us kids got to hear it all.

It was on my birthday, 1973, when the divorce became final in court.  So two birthdays utterly destroyed and neither of them cared - they just wanted their war to continue at all costs.

Of course, father then started dating the older sister of my girl friend and that made things very awkward!

Shortly after this, I became a Christian, having fallen in with a group of Hutterites.  Father was outraged that any son of his could be so stupid and did not talk to me for the next 32 years!

And so my tale of father now closes.  I know less about his other six marriages or him during this time.

Germany

Germany was a bit different than France, in almost all regards.  For instance, our forced removal from France was in December - we arrived at Kaiserslautern on a Sunday I believe.  Monday morning my sister and I were arrested for not being in school!  Yeah.  Just playing on the swing set at the hotel and boom! off to police holding.  As Germany was to prove, it was not the friendliest of places to live, unless you appreciate complete control freaks.

It was also the place where father changed radically.  In Portland, following the Cuban Missile Crisis, father was rarely to be found.  In France he was around the home a great deal of the time.  But, in Germany, he was gone for most of the time on Temporary Duty Assignments.  Yes the world was a crazy place in 1967 and 1968.  We knew where he was to be, we usually knew what was going on from the news, but his absences to those places often ran weeks longer than the actual news event.  It was mystifying to this young man.

On the plus side, mother suffered no more almost fatal "accidents".  But she did become the family control freak - attempting to micro-manage a teen male and that did not go very well - especially since she was barely twice my age as it was!  Of course, when father was home I would catch hell and he became increasingly physically abusive.

There had been times in Portland when I can remember he would come home and just beat the tar out of me, whip me until I bled, for some ill thought out prank.  But, there was once I could agree that I had that level of punishment coming.  That was the time I pulled a knife on him to protect myself from phase II of his abuse.  Bad idea, when you do not really know how to use a knife for defense.  In Germany, it became worse.  I swear if I opened my mouth, it was going to be filled with his fist.  That little arrest incident over playing on the hotel swings, brought on one of the most unjust of all beatings - especially since my sister received no punishment at all.  Somehow, I was to have known better than to play in a playground on a Monday morning.....  So I tried to stay away from him and the family as much as possible.  Oh yeah, I was beaten for that as well.

And honestly, I have no idea what our being in Germany had to do with his escalating violence towards me in particular.  But, even Germany itself was not exactly a great place back then either - as I will discuss later.

Deportation

In the world of politics, relations between America and France deteriorated tremendously - thanks to the US Ambassador, Sargent Shriver.  As read in the Stars and Stripes, as well as pieced together from adult conversations: Shriver had a son whom was 14 at the time.  Said kid in 1966 stole a car, went for a joyride and ended up killing an old woman walking along side the road.  DeGaulle confronted Shriver over this and the conversation turned ugly.  DeGaulle suggested that if the US could not control its children, then  maybe they needed to leave French soil by the end of 1967.  Shriver countered that if DeGaulle could not appreciate all the US was doing for France then perhaps the US needed to leave by May 1967.  DeGaulle then issued an order that all NATO facilities were to be closed as of April (26th as I remember) 1967.

Of course the French were outraged by this.  It was just more fuel for the French nationalist fires burning over America's entrance into the Vietnam conflict, a French territory.  Local villagers where I lived rose up in arms and slaughtered several of the NATO children living across the canal from us - amongst them my only English speaking friend.

Things had become so messy that by December 1966, we were escorted off French soil by machine gun toting policeman - all the way to the German border.  They were actually quite nice officers, had lunch with us, were very apologetic, etc.

Of course, change is evil and for those suffering with mental problems, change manifests evil.....  And father was not alone in getting a share of mother's difficulties.

France - Further Strain

Heeding his friends wisdom, father applied for  and got a posting to France.  His hope was to get mother to become less of a control freak and more dependent upon him.  Best laid plans as they say.

At the time, for some unknown reason, father utterly freaked out when we landed in France.  He went from normal to completely unable to speak for many weeks!  And he spoke French fluently, but with having lost his voice, we were dead in the water.  Something in father's past I assume caused this but I have no idea what stressed him to that level, just by landing in Paris.

Mother really did not do very well in France.  She refused to learn French, speak anything other than English and began rapidly becoming very 'odd' - like yelling at the French in English so they could hear her better.  Little things like leaving the house were only done when she was to drive to the nearest NATO base for shopping.  She formed no relations with any of the neighbors, except one old couple whom would watch my sister and I after school.  Yeah, odd.

My parents marriage must have begun deteriorating badly as father did some mighty odd things himself.  There were a series of 'accidents' which almost killed mother.  Were they accidents?  Or were they planned?  Mother was convinced that father was trying to kill her - the NATO police did not agree.  But, the grilling father got only made him more angry with her.

Within a short period of time, a kerosene heater failed and almost killed her due to carbon-monoxide poisoning.  Father was affected too but not near as bad as mother was.  Mistake, equipment failure or by design?

Father set a trip wire on the stairs which went up to the attic where mother hung the clothes in winter time.  She darn near broke her neck coming back down the stairs!  I know father did that because I saw him setting it but was too naive at the time to figure that one out!  The police never talked to me about that and I was ultimately blamed for it!  That was one was by design, which makes me wonder at the other incidents!.

A short time later, mother was driving to the local NATO base and one of the wheels came off of the car.  The only reason mother survived the crash was a tractor had pulled out onto the road and she slowed down from 60 to 20 before the parting of the wheel from the car.  Again, another accident?  NATO police blamed the local communist party.  But, where did they get a non-metric lug wrench for a car?  American bolts do not match up with metric tools well and the nut heads were in good shape.  No, that had to be father or another American in the area.

But why do this at all? I can not believe that he was planning on returning to Monika.....

My first indication that mother had lost it was when we were vacationing in Spain in 1966.  One morning she, out of the blue, started screaming and hollering about how we had to return home that day, immediately!  It was all very unpleasant and father drove us non-stop all the way from the Spanish coast to northern France in one horrible 27 hour drive!  Mother screaming, no words, just screaming the entire time!  Father so angry he bit the stem of his pipe in half, us kids cowering in the back seat.  Lord only knew what would happen next!  It was that bad.

Definitely, whatever it was that set her off, she remained 'odd' for the rest of her life.  One would at this point suppose that another change might help.  As it was world politics were about to provide a change of scenery for her and massive trauma for father.  Us kids were just plain screwed.....

Control Freak

I have mentioned in the past that I was a very aware young man, much to my parents dismay.  I could see, hear, reason and then understand a great deal far in advance of my years.  One of my many observations revolved around my parents marriage.  All was not well.

Father could tolerate no dust, no disturbance in his life!  So he would hide nickels around the house and then upon returning home, inspect the house to be sure all of the nickels had been accounted for as well the house work done to his satisfaction!  This went so far as to the proper tautness of the blankets on our beds and both my sister and I were inspected every afternoon for having achieved this.  Failure to do so ended with increasingly painful punishments.

I was not allowed to wear tennis shoes and so my shoes had to be inspected every evening as well.  Apparently this one task I excelled in and so by the time I was eight, he had me doing his shoes every evening.  Mandatory spit shine.  Okay I will admit that on occasion I would blow my nose on his shoes.  He never knew the difference and it gave me pleasure not to spit on his shoe but give him a snot shine....

Father was not an native English speaker, mother was, and she was constantly correcting him.  It became a power point for her to hold over him.  Also, she would choose the worse possible foods - things she knew he hated.  Think rutabagas, turnips and parsnips!  I am violently made ill by even the smell of them ... father was merely irritated by them.  It was just one more of many points of contest between them.

And someone amongst father's friends suggested that he should put the shoe on the other foot and completely remove her from her comfort zone.  Oh yeah, that one is going to teach her a lesson, right?

The Subject of Religion

This is the appropriate time to discuss father and his religious beliefs.  Why?  Because you have to remember earlier I told you about father converting to Judaism before marrying Monika, the young female prisoner he had met while interned at Wöbbelin.  So father was circumcised and this knowledge may have lead to a mis-identification of him by the US military.

To the US Military they had a quandary on their hands.   Father was known to have escaped from the advancing Russians, placing him on the east side of the Elbe River.  He was Jewish, that was obviously apparent from his medical examination.  Jewish, eastern Europe, survivor.  That pretty limited him to Nordhausen or Mittelbau.  But, was it possible to have escaped the SS carnage the US Army had discovered before the Russians had advanced on the Mittelbau complex?  This also meant he was a scientist or at the least science labor.  He had to have been familiar with the rocket programs.  So, his enigmatic past drew attention to him he really did not want.  Could it be there was anyone whom could be found whom knew him before his marriage to mother?

Father was really born into a Lutheran family in the small town of Munchstein, in Baslestadt, Switzerland.  The year he ran away from home, to join the Nazi cause, was also the year he went through Lutheran confirmation.  His family, and the church's pastors, all believed father was destined to join the priesthood.

Those Lutheran beliefs were obviously killed by the war - he saw what Lutherans were capable of - first hand.  His conversion to Judaism I am fairly certain was completely based on his sense of national and personal guilt.  What happened in the concentration camps was to have quite an impact on all of Germany and all whom I grew up with.  (And, yes, I understand that it was not the Lutherans whom were running the Nazi Party, but this was HIS take on the situation!  In truth, 7.5 million Christians were sent to the concentration camps for opposing Hitlers agenda.)

Father still held to his Judaism.  When I was born he personally brought in a Rabbi from Sacramento, California to see to my circumcision, on the eighth day, as required.  I was unable to be taken out the hospital for the first several months of life.  Babies of extra young mothers have a great many challenges in just surviving.

As I grew up, father taught me the Law of Moses, how to pray - in Yiddish, God's language of course!, and with a firm understanding that there is God - but you really do not want to know Him since he is not a very good god to his people.  I should say that part was beaten into me more than anything.

As I grew older, into teenage hood, father and mother clashed more and more over religion and food, eventually this brought about their divorce.  But we can look into that episode much later!

Following his divorce from my mother, father became an outright atheist.  Except he knew there was a God, he just did not what any part of him any longer.  So, perhaps it would be best to categorize father as a gnostic for the final fifty years of his life.  And, my becoming a Christian was about the final straw for him concerning me.....

Return To America

It is now fall of 1953.  My mother had successfully raised the $100 to have father allowed back into the US and father, under who knows what pretense, leaves his now pregnant wife and returns to America.  (Of course, this instantly raises the thought of father being a "dirty double crosser", since he crossed the Atlantic Ocean a second time to return to America.  And, a double entandre as well it would seem.....)

Father with a customer at the Duncet

Back in Portland, he needed employment and went to work at a sandwich shop near the train station I believe.  Though this is where a bit of a conflict comes up as he claimed later in life that he had owned the sandwich shop and went bankrupt later on.  This might be true however, but no matter which - the US Government now had him pegged as to whom he was and the wheels were quietly in motion to suck him to their employment.  Very innocently, the man whom had been father's INS case worker during his deportation jail time and trial, looked father up, was to become his best friend and gently guide father in the direction the government wanted.  It was almost Machiavellian how it worked out.  And though he was a family friend, even to a small child as I was, I could plainly see that there was an agenda being played - but then again, I needed to be an adult to understand why what happened, actually happened.

So father married the now 15 year old girl he had saved two years earlier and blam! she was pregnant.  Well, now father needs to do something because there is a family coming along and lots of expenses.  His new best friend sells him on the idea of joining the US Military - free medical, good income, career training, blah, blah, and blah.

This was so contrived you will not believe what happened next and father did not suspect a thing - ".....it had to have been circumstance.....".  After all, father (like most liars) believed he was smarter than everyone else ...  Unfortunately, that was both true and his eventual undoing.

Internment, Again

So father and the surrendered German sailors were held in the Portland city jail for the mutiny.  At some point, the city attorney figured out that Portland could not charge anyone with mutiny - which comes under international sailing law.  But, the police did not want the German's released, so they turned the prisoners over to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, whom then held them for illegal entry into the United States (the act of diving off of the ship!).  Which the Oregonian had a hay day with!

It turns out that father and five others could conceivably be charged with illegal entry.  However, it was in the rescue of US citizens and a public relations nightmare for the Portland INS office.  They were besieged with calls demanding the release of the German sailors.

At some point during this internment process, the Oregonian was able to bring enough public pressure on the INS that they released my father for a photo opportunity at the request of the newspaper, for one day.  So, father was taken over to my grandmother's houseboat for a day with the Americans and the 13 year old girl he had saved (my mother).

This photo is from the original newspaper clipping my grandmother saved.  However, the article has been lost.  It would have been interesting to know what it said they all did that day!  Other than have lunch.

In any event, this is one of the few photographs of father in his German officer's uniform and his ubiquitous pipe. Trimmed from the picture was the fact that he was wearing slippers as the INS would not allow the Germans to wear shoes since it was still thought they would run if given the opportunity.  At the end of the day, the Germans involved in the rescue were returned back to INS for holding.

After several months of being held, the agent, family friend Bill White whom was in charge, managed to negotiate a release during the daytime for the Germans.  After all, they had actually done nothing wrong and were model prisoners (compared apparently to others in the jail!).  And, then there was the whole problem of the press not letting the story die.  Father apparently spent most of his free time with grandmother's family and I have numerous pictures of him and my teenage uncles goofing off.

But, let us not forget the lawyers - whom were busy little beavers in the background.  The strike was to be broken when the courts ruled that since there was no agreement between the US and German Seaman's Unions, the US longshoremen were involved in an illegal strike and ordered back to work.  Completion of the inspection satisfied the insurance company so the ship could be released for repair and reloaded for return to India.  The courts ruled that with no physical evidence concerning the death of the German sailor, and with no evidence of lack of provisions aboard the ship, the German sailors were deemed 'dissatisfied' and the owner ordered to return the sailors to their harbor of departure, to compensate them for their wages and release them from employment.

Father, however, was to be returned to Germany in chains.

Father Meets My Mother

It is now fall.  The Portland Shipyard has been on sympathetic strike for the mutinous sailors aboard the SS Riviera for three months.  Everything is at a standstill save for the lawyers whom were busy in the background trying to break the strike and find some way to get control of the ship back from the crew.

My mother, then thirteen (13!) lived on the river in a houseboat built by my grandmother and several of her friends.  Back then, there were many houseboats in the backwater areas of the Willamette River and over on the Columbia River as well.

It was a Saturday afternoon when a Coast Guard cutter came up the Willamette River, to warn river traffic of an approaching ship and to get out of the way.  Apparently, this was standard procedure.  Also on the river, that day, was my mother and her two brothers whom had build a raft and were trying to pole their way across the river.  The raft had no chance against the hull of the cutter.

Father and several of the crew had been watching idly the progress of the raft and its impact with the cutter.  It was obvious that the kids were going to drown, so several of the crew, including my father, dove into the river to rescue them.  The kid my father reached first was to be my mother and he hauled her to shore.

Of course, the police had been on the docks and witnessed the accident, as were the press.  It took the police a little while to make it from Swan Island to where the houseboats where below the bluffs.  It took less time for the press to get the story to the Oregonian newspaper.

On the one hand, the police finally had the break they so desperately wanted - the ability to arrest the officer responsible for the stand off at the shipyards.  On the other hand, the press not only was able to sing the praises of the brave Germans whom risked their lives in the rescue of three teenagers from drowning, but also the unfair treatment of the rescuers by the police.  Anything for a story, eh?

In the end, twenty-four Germans surrendered to the police, the British crew remained on-board, the ship was allowed to empty its cargo, the captain was allowed access to his room where the crew files were to disappear (hence no murder charges could be brought against him), the required insurance inspection could occur and the lawyers were now into overtime!

Interestingly, the press went into overtime as well.  They were not going to allow this story to be hushed up or just disappear.  In fact, the Oregonian was probably the strongest reason for what was to occur did.