In Remembrance Of

Tuesday was my father's birthday.  I have not been back to Denver since his death, so I planned on going to his grave on his birthday.  See if there is a stone yet, leave a flower, wish him a happy birthday.

Yeah, I know.

So, I went, spent about 10 minutes trying to remember where his grave was.  Took some pictures.  Lost control.

I could not wish him a happy birthday.  Yeah, he is not there.  It is my belief that he is not only separated from this life but from God as well, for all eternity, by his own informed choice.  There is no one to wish happy birthday to.  And I lost it.

All of those years of frustration and anger at the injustices he subjected me to, all of the pain he inflicted upon me, all came roaring back.  For the first time in my life - I felt something towards  him, and it was not worthy of me to have felt so of anyone.  Such is the new nature now that I do have emotions.

I reread what I wrote upon his death.  Yeah, it is still true and yet it was written by the old me, someone whom had never had a feeling in his entire life.  Today, that short memory would have been far different.....

I felt so sorry for my friend whom was with me, for I was truly a basket case.

As for the poppy, his mother's favorite name for him was Poppi, her wild flower.  More true than she ever knew.

Response

The little blog has been my way of putting some of father's story down, admittedly as a way for me to work through my own angst over his death and our complete lack of relationship.

And, the responses have run in the hundreds of emails to me!  The majority are from historical revisionists claiming that the Holocaust never occurred.  The one I would like to have gotten would have been from Martha, outside of Hamburg, my unknown half sister.  Yes, I hope in vain to at least ease lack of memory should she have thought others knew her father and perhaps connect her with father's family in Switzerland.

I find the entire historical revisionist movement disturbing.  First, there is some truth to what they claim.  Yes, 6.5 million Jews did die, however the evidence of their systematic execution is weak.  Much of the photograph material we have of executions were actually Ukrainian peasants - whom had the Germans treated decently would have joined forced against the Russians!  Rather shortsighted there Hitler.  Much of the evidence concerning the Holocaust comes from the Russians and it has been scientifically proven they manufactured evidences for the Nuremberg Trials.  Building were modified at Auschwitz to fit their story line, again proven.  However, there is the question of the 55,000 Hungarian Jews, whose end were documented ad nauseum by the Germans: from their capture through to their execution in Poland a week later.  Every step, every detail, all photographed step by step.

So, a revisionist may argue against all systematic arguments against the Holocaust, but you are stuck with the 55,000 Hungarians.  And if you want to argue that it was an anomaly, fine, but it is still genocide.  You lose.

Okay, so the next series - when I have time - I will be posting is the Holocaust from Germany's own documentation made at the time by the Nazi's.  None of this is from Russian sources, it is all Western German captured paperwork.  Then I will publish the Hungarian photos.

I have also deleted this blog at least four times, this is a memory I do not cherish.  However, again response has been overwhelming to have it restored each time, over 900 this last time!  So what you have read to this point is restoration 4!  For some reason there is a strong interest in stories of the war, from a first person perspective.  Admittedly, I find enjoyment that my father was at the Dresden Firebombing and lived to tell the tale of the US fighters strafing the fleeing civilians.  Why?  Because that story was told at the time and no one believed it then, the pilots all denied it.  And yet, even the Russians filed the same complaint - whose forward observers had been strafed as well!  So, the Russians testified to this, the Germans testified to this, my own father could back it up with the damage down to the family estate outside of Dresden where he had run across a balcony and the terracotta shot up by the fighters as they wheeled around to fly across Dresden again.  And western history says this did not happen.  So whom are you going to believe?  Witnesses?  Victims? Or the pilots whom would have faced charges were it found to be true at the time?  And that is what makes eyewitness accounts so inconvenient - it contradicts the testimony of the victors.

Like the Holocaust, the further we move from that time period, the harder some facts become to be believed, while others completely become reasonable.

In Memory Of

He saw the rise of National Socialism and the fall of the Reich.  He worked on the first atomic bomb and luckily never saw its completion.  He witnessed the evolution of rocketry, from hobby to weapon.  The birth of the jet age fascinated him no end.

He survived the bombing of Dresden and told the politically incorrect truth, that is not a part of our "history".  He saw the mass murder of the scientific laborers by the tens of thousands.  He survived the Russian onslaught against his chosen homeland, at one point, only by playing dead.

He knew starvation as he fled with three others on his team from the Russians and American forces to surrender to the British.  He knew what it was to be a prisoner of war and to be prison labor.  He learned the hard truth of what freedom really meant and at what cost.

Although, as a mathematician he only understood facts and data, and I an artist, we agreed on virtually nothing across our lifetimes, except food.  So different from me, that by second grade I was sure I was adopted!

As I stood at Fort Logan National Cemetery this week, and looked upon that tiny plot of ground, I could not help but think of both the good and bad he had represented.  The beginning and end to so much of history.  And all of the what ifs......

But, he was my father.

Legacy

I was raised in European schools.  They will forever be best remembered for their blatant violence against a young man whom really did not understand what the heck was going on.....  One of the lessons I remember well, because it gave me cause to stop and think, was on the topic of: "what is going to be your LEGACY?".

A legacy?  Why on earth would I even care what people thought of me when I was long dead and gone?  As the years have passed, I have sort of figured out that I might like to be remembered by those I have successfully fathered, those I have discipled, those I have mentored.  Hmmmm.....

By the same token I can remember my father speaking on the topic a legacy, probably as I was trying to figure this whole idea out.  He seemed to think this was important at the time.

Of course, I have been rereading father's enormous highly fictionalized autobiography and the thought keeps coming to my mind, "Why did he write certain stories the way he did?  Why did he ignore certain stories or split others into separate events or even worse, why did he combine stories?"  Yeah, he created quite a work of fiction and I just do not understand.  Some of his stories I had forgotten and others I remembered extremely well - so I know they were wrong.

By the time the tales are over, one is left with the question of LEGACY.

Apparently, he did want to leave one.  But his complete ignoring of any of this children, other than one step-son, makes you wonder.  Even, Sommer, the golden girl - did not get as many mentions as bathroom humor.

A man whom was at the creation of 20th century history, blew off that history so as to be politically correct in the end, and those of his descendants, he left with nothing.

I am not suggesting that you must worry about leaving your descendants anything but you might want to think about it - in terms of history and truth.....

That should be the basis of any of our legacies.

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.

November 1967

November was a hard month on me.  I was in seventh grade at the Canadian School and had a music class from hell.  Mr. Elliot, I have no doubt was a wonderful teacher and a gifted musician but he was unable to understand that there are people in this world whom have no sense of rhythm and can not play a musical instrument!  He literally drove me to a nervous breakdown.

At the same time, father found out that Heisenberg was living in Munich and was very agitated to have learned this.  When the doctor wrote my school a request for a few days off for me to just get away and recover, father threw me in the car and took me to Munich for a long holiday.

It was fun and I naturally assumed that father had gone to see his old professor, when he disappeared for so many hours one day.  Coincidentally, Mr. Elliot did have a nervous breakdown and we ran into each other at the same hotel!

Fast forward to 1984 and I received a letter from my grandmother, it had been written in 1968!  Unfortunately, I already knew she had died in 1974 - I had seen a letter in German laying on the table at my father's house announcing her death.  So, I now knew for sure that father had lied to me for the length of his life about his family.  So, I decided to run his family down and solve the mystery of my father.

At the end of three years, I now knew that father was not whom he claimed to be; I had his real birth certificate and a good piece of his real life's history.

I also discovered that the real man, whose name father had taken back in Wöbbelin - had work on the Italian train system following his release from Wöbbelin and retired to Munich in July of 1967.  He had been murdered the very weekend I was in Munich with my father recovering.

Yet another coincidence in father's life?  Or did father permanently silence the one man whom could unravel father's real identity ... ?

When you hide behind a wall of lies, well, there is no way you can be thought innocent.  Luckily for father, there was nothing ever to tie him and that man together - only in this day and age, with the abundance of information can such a coincidence be ferreted out.

Narcissus

The first time I read father's autobiography, I was struck at how father was a complete and total narcissus!  The entire 1,100 pages completely revolved around him.  I scored about three lines, my sister - the golden girl - managed half a page, but one of his step sons about three pages, any of his eight wives - almost not even a mention.  The rest a highly fictional story.

Since my last post, I have now reread father's tome a second time and I have been struck, yet again, at what a complete narcissus father was!  Not like it should now be a surprise, only it is, due to the level of narcissism we are discussing here!  We are discussing mental illness levels. So, if father was a narcissus, then I thought I would read up on this subject on the internet.....

I did not know that narcissism is a variant of being a sociopath.  Sociopath I understand very well, I was diagnosed as such at 17 by the US military - whom then wanted me rather badly.  But, my father?  I also learned that psychopathy is a genetic disorder.  Great.

Now I am seeing his family in a new light.  Either of his parents passed this trait on to him.

Now I can understand the man whom could walk away from his family in Switzerland to support Hitler, the man whom could be married eight times thinking he was in love and often with more than one bride at a time.  Social convention meant nothing to him.  I could understand how he could have worked on atomic and hydrogen weapons with no flick of regret or doubt.  How his work on the V-3 (A-9) rocket and its purposed mass destruction was completely without understanding.  The Reich was his god, Hitler its prophet, my father its worshiper.

And yet this man had seen the slaughter of the tens of thousands at Dora, as the SS cleaned up all of the scientific workers - leaving very few for the Russians to capture.  It touched him enough that he converted to Judaism at the end of war.  It touched him enough that even to the end, he was seeking if there was a God or not - but he could never equate his life with the existence of the kind of god he sought.

I still have to wonder at some of what I know about my father.  Not the least of which is why did he write an autobiography that would be largely a work of fiction ..... ?

Another Broken Arrow

Over the weekend I was thinking about the fun Broken Arrows brought to this young man.  Lots of trucks, cranes, missiles, military types all over and I was always a sucker for anything destructive!

And I remembered of a little incident outside of Portland, Oregon.  I can not even begin to remember the year or even where in Portland we were - so I had to be mighty young!

Now one of the ways to go to the Portland zoo, back before they build a superhighway straight into there was to drive southwest through Portland and then take this little road that went through a small tunnel.  As we reached the tunnel, an Air Force jeep came through and blocked off the roadway.  No big deal - that meant the day was about to get more exciting.

My father got out, identified himself and asked what was up.  Before the poor MP could even answer - there came this horrendous crash and shriek of metal from the tunnel.  Yeah, something big had just made a mess.  Dad and the MP took off running - and hey, no one to stop me - I went to!  And, what a sight I saw!

Seems a tractor trailer was hauling a missile back towards Portland and had impacted the warhead with the top of the tunnel.  The missile was now ejected out of its cradle and lay half on, half off the cradle.  The nose cone was mashed horribly.  Father let lose a series of oaths you would not have believed!

Dad grabbed the radio, ran for the Portland side of the tunnel and radioed into the Base for a decontamination team, full geared inspectors, a suit for him and two cranes to be brought in from the south.  What an exciting day!

Of course, I got to go through decontamination and you know I really do not like stripping in public.  Just a modesty issue I have never overcome.

In due course of the day, they found the warhead (which was supposed to have been removed prior to transport!) was intact; very little radiation was evident in the area - other than the roof of the tunnel and ground below; and it took close to a week to extract that puppy from the tunnel and reload onto another carrier - this time with the warhead safely removed!

I never got to see if I glowed in the dark or not.  Oh yeah, good times!

Broken Arrow

The night after our being detained by Catalonian Separatists, we headed off again in the cooler night air, continuing on towards Madrid.

Again in a mountainous area, at a bend in the road, you guessed it - another roadblock!  Just as the night before, an uniformed officer asked for our papers.  Only this guy was really nervous - so nervous that father was actual getting concerned for our safety!  Father tried to get a  conversation going but the guy just got on his radio and talked so rapidly no one knew what he was saying.

Several minutes later,  a military jeep drives up with some - what I am guessing were Spanish MPs.  One of them was quite fluent in English and from the car I caught the gist of the conversations - they had managed to drive too close to the shoulder of the road with a tractor trailer hauling a nuke and rolled it.

Father then identified himself, more talking on the radio and they were off - father to inspect said nuke and to supervise the correct reloading to the carrier on the trailer.

Once completed, father returned and we drove on with lots of smiles and hand waving by those still working on the mess they had made.

It was the first time I had ever seen one of the newer missiles and I was impressed.  No idea as to which one it was but it was cool to see something you heard about but no one had any pictures of.....

Held In Catalonia

In 1966 father decided we needed to spend the summer camping our way through Spain, Portugal and of course - Gibraltar.  Summer was perhaps a poor choice since the heat was unbelievable - hitting 121 on several occasions!  I can remember watching the tar on the roads bubbling when we would stop for a lunch or stretching.

So, we drove and camped our way south through France, through Andorra and then down into Spain.

It was late at night when we entered Spain.  As we wound down the narrow gravel road from Andorra and the heights of the Pyrenees Mountains, we were forced to stop at a roadblock.  A uniformed officer approached, asked for our papers, was delighted to practice his English and then spent some time on a walkie-talkie.  Returning the papers, he explained that the road would be closed for a few hours due to highway construction.  So, we were stuck.

About thirty minutes later a group of women approached, walking up the road, set up a table and motioned us to come join them.  A large pot was set out, along with plates and bowls.  They were providing a meal!  We marveled at Spanish hospitality!  The soup was good but the bread was first class!  Dad and the officer talked quite a bit - father in Spanish, the officer in English.  Though we could not know it, father was about to use a whole lot more Spanish in an official capacity!

Once done, the ladies packed up all of their stuff and trotted back down the road and around a bend we could not see beyond.  A short time later the officer returned again and told us that we could now pass the construction zone but to be very careful as workers were still on the roadway and to stay far right.  So we started down and around the bend.

What we were to pass by was miles of what looked like concrete water pipe.  Workers, hundreds of them, were busy drilling holes in the pipe.  It made no sense, but having no real knowledge of construction, who knows what they were doing!  We continued on through the night, eventually reaching a campground by early morning, where we set up and went to bed.

About mid-day we were awaken by the local police whom told us they were interviewing all travelers and wanted to know if we had come from the north the night before.  We said we had and then father told them all about the road construction the night before, the great soup and bread, and then being allowed to continue on after a while.

We then learned that Catalonian Separatists had bee sabotaging the new water pipe construction project.  Ah, that explains all of the holes in the pipe - they were making it unusable!  Then across many questions we were to learn about Franco's problems in Catalonia, the guerrilla movement and the policeman's concerns over Communist activities in the area.  Of course, as we were to find, Franco's freedom was so heavily socialist and the people so preyed upon by the government - no wonder people were involved in what father called Monkey Warfare.....

James Bond For Real?

My father made a point of taking me to all of the opening nights for James Bond films.  Dr. No - stupid, Goldfinger - mostly stupid by I liked the girl with the rifle, Thunderball - pure gold.

I was not really impressed with the beginning of Thunderball and I felt real sorry for that snake if it was real and thrown from one vehicle to another.  The take over of the Vulcan bomber, priceless.  I always loved Delta wing aircraft and the Vulcan was probably the largest and longest living of all of these 1950's relics.

Suddenly, the movie was stopped, the lights came up and an officer standing at the front of the theater ordered all disaster preparedness personnel to report to the lobby immediately.  Father left, the movie restarted and about three hours later father returned to take me home.....  He was very angry over being called out of a movie and not being reimbursed the admissions price!  Plus the NATO theater was a 70 mile drive one way for us.

Seems someone in the audience was familiar enough with the breathing systems on the Vulcan and wondered if the same was in usage on the B-52 and Convair's Delta Dagger (F-102), both nuclear equipped.  If it was multi-passenger and could carry a nuke, its air systems were thoroughly investigated that evening.

I can't say whether or not any problem was actually found, but I am sure that after the release of Thunderball - there was no possibility any gassing of the crew, via the movie plot scenario, as being any longer a possibility.

OMG Off Spain

It was my birthday 1966.  The family all went to Basle for the winter carnival - my favorite!, to celebrate.  Okay it is really my and my mother's birthday, we were born on the same day and knowing my father this was really for her but I will claim it!  :^)

On January 17, we headed back for home, up in the little notch where Belgium, Luxembourg and France are all joined together.  But, something was wrong on the Swiss - French border, Father was requested to leave the car and go to the guard shack.  Very odd.

When he came back, he was really in a state of agitation.  Seems the US had lost a B-52 over Spain, equipped with four Hydrogen Bombs!  Three had been found, one was missing.  Nothing like one of your toys going missing on you.  (Not even getting into the whole discussion of how on Earth he and Edvard were able to justify what they had created!)

Father, faced turned from camera

So, we had a very quiet ride home, were dropped off and father headed for the nearest NATO base for an emergency flight to Spain - in winter - life is really tough.  The school was all a buzz over this.  News leaks out of Upper Hayford let us know that the bomb had been found almost immediately - but the idiots were going to leave it where it lay because the searchers had broken military search routine in finding it.  Wasn't finding it the whole point?  But it lay another 9 weeks until it was re-discovered, and then could be properly raised.  Father was so angry when he got home, you have no idea.....  I have no idea if any of his complaints against the wackos responsible had any effect.

I know from my secret readings in father's books, that things were not going to go well for those poor villagers whom had been contaminated by plutonium when the three bombs, which hit ground, had blown their conventional detonators.  I remember at the time reading in the newspaper of villagers kicking sand on the bombs to put the fires out; posing for pictures sitting on the bomb casings, and living life as usual - in a contaminated environment.  I never did see any reports come out on their life expectancies or deaths in public sources.  Just not news I guess when you have shots of President Johnson holding up his beagles by their ears or whatever.  And, I try not to even search on such subjects on the internet lest I draw undesired attention.

Prior to this I had always held the US military in high esteem.  But, if you were so anal as to "stick" to a scheduled search and then reprimand those whom broke protocol to find what you were looking for - doesn't this point to a significant problem within the power structure of the military?  Until January 1966, I had wanted a career in the US military, like my father, but now I started to watch, listen, remember and think on what I was hearing.....

All Those TDYs

Father was gone so much of the time from 1962 on, that one is forced to consider what it was the government had him up to!  You can look at world events, look backwards in history later on, as well as, note interesting occurrences. In this case, occurrences may have more of a clue than usual and we knew almost instantly what was up once the German State Police raided the village!

I was in training to be a long distance runner, so every morning I was out the door at 5 am for a cross-country training practice at mother's insistance.  Make no mistake, this was not my idea.  But, there was a little shoemaker about half way through my run and I would spend several minutes with him every morning to keep my time average high for mother's records.  He was a very nice man.  Lets call him Hans.

Hans was in this later sixties, sort of a broken man I would call him.  He knew almost nothing of the village history and carefully avoided all wartime discussions.  He made himself more interesting than he should have been.

One Saturday morning, even before the cows were up, I ran past Hans' and noticed the shop in disarray, with no Hans.  I ran for the Police.  Not the friendliest people in town but they were honest and reliable.   The Sargent was ash white when I told him Hans was missing.  Within minutes, before I could even get out the door - there were several calls concerning missing citizens.  The Sargent understood what I could not fathom.  I jogged back past the shop and now the State Police were there and I was instantly detained for being "of interest".

One of the patrolmen sat and told me about how they were hunting Nazi war criminals and Hans had been one of those being sought.  I then repeated how I had reported Hans' absence to the local police and had over heard of missing people all over the Pfaltz....  The officer swore, ran for the door and quickly sped away.

I quietly re-entered Hans' little shop and remembered the humor and fun we had enjoyed.  I have always had the utmost respect for my elders, because they were interesting and I saw value in their knowledge.  I saw Hans had dropped a vest pocket wallet, which I picked up.  I burned the photos and papers inside, to his memory and perhaps protection.  I kept his SS Identification, dated August 1944, issued in Odessa.

Father moved us from the village to military housing following this.  There are no coincidences in life, one did not have to search far to find a similar SS Id Card carefully hidden amongst my father's papers.  This I followed up with also collecting my uncle Fritz's as well.  The three of them I imagine make quite a unique collection.  I have yet to see even one, even in photographs on the internet.  Hmmmmmm.....

However, this post is not about outlawed SS organizations, it is about the SS funding rocket research with the Egyptians in order to hasten the removal of the Jewish State in 1962 through 1967.  Egypt finally went with the Russian Scud missile as its offensive deterrent to the Jewish "aggression".  Nasser was nothing if not a scum bag himself.

As for father?  That is a pretty easy one: he and his fellow team from the V-3 (A-9) were all in on the project.  They all had the backgrounds, were all German and the three also had the nuclear background - because a missile has to deliver something!  Was the US Military Intelligence involved?  Was father and his friends all on contract to the Mossad?  Military to CIA to Mossad?  Certainly, enough of their co-workers met with horrible deaths back in Germany.  Makes you wonder about their absences and whom exactly was fingering German Nationals and European suppliers.....  Someone was feeding the Mossad and father was a Jewish convert after all.  To further add to the discussion, he received his second Bronze Star just after the missiles failed to launch in 1967 War.

Tales of Pork

The US used to have a base outside of Tripoli, obviously, if my father was involved - nasty stuff was present.  The base had been there since the end of World War II.  And it seems that there was a certain young officer in the Libyan Army whom was attempting to breech the base perimeter either for the sake of gaining arms or cause an international incident.

What is one to do?  The US Government under Lynden B. Johnson was committed to not offending host countries, but here was a situation where a loose cannon officer was trying to cause an incident and rightfully, even by treaty should be shot for his attempts to scale the wire..

Of course, he did get the incident he sought, just only not quite the way he thought it would go.

Father ordered the water trucks filled with the deep fry fat (hot pork grease) from the NCO club and then driven out to the fence the radicals were gathering near for their morning - "go ahead and blow me off this wire with a fire hose" routine.

The group rushed the fence, a translator warned them of what would happen and they dared the pumpers to make them unclean.

Yeah, a certain young Lieutenant Gaddafi was completely hosed down and left standing covered in pork fat.

Father had a very great laugh over that one.  Of course, officially he was reprimanded by the US State Department, as the Department of Defense promoted him at the same time.

As an aside to this tale, father expressed complete satisfaction at having taken a situation and defused it without the taking of human life.  Since the wire was now even unclean, no one attempted to scale it again.....

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?

Sports

I have to admit that one thing I never did understand about father was his complete disregard for anything related to sports.  I am not sure he actually ever played a sport, even as a child!  He was a terrible runner and though he boasted of having been a skier - he actually couldn't even do the basics.  So, I think he must have watched skiers, not actually ever skied himself.

When I was 8 years old, I was growing at the rate of just over one inch a month!  My parents hauled me into the doctor's since I was getting really tall for my age - his advice: buy the kid a basketball.  Of course, had I any coordination that might have been really good advice but I was an utter klutz and more than once was beaten up by the ball.

Sports never did play an important role in my life, but I did play for all of the schools I attended.  Soccer teams in France and Germany, baseball in Germany, basketball and tennis here in America.  And for all of those games, across all of those years, want to guess whom never came to a single one?  Yeah, father.

I know in his mind it revolved around work being first, wife second, then friends, then children.  But you would think that in 8 years he could have made one game!  Especially true for the ones on Saturdays.

So, I think you are getting a picture of the man I really did not know very well.

Fishing

My grandfather, mother's strep-father, loved fishing.  If he was not working, then he was fishing.  I never caught anything but it was a fun activity.  Somewhere, father got the idea to take me fishing.

Now we lived on top of the bluff, on the northwest side of the Willamette River valley, overlooking Swan Island.  So, off we marched to the little road which wound its way down to the water.  Father of course was in shirt and tie, his most basic of all leisure dress.  His shoes were inappropriate for hiking on a muddy road with a steep incline.  Yes, you guessed it, he went a tumbling sliding down the length of that road!

Oh was he ever so angry over that mud bath!  I think I picked up swear words in five languages during that one!

So he ordered me back home and I had to wait at the top while he slipped and cursed his way back up to the top of the bluff.  That was to be the end of all fishing trips for him.

Luckily, two of my friends were old enough to walk with me and so we would go together.  No we never caught anything but then I am not sure that is the point of male adventures or bonding.....

Camping

Usually, when we went hiking, we were also camping.  Through the years, father bought some very nice tents and we really got our money back out of them!  During the time in Oregon we camped often along the coast  - particularly in fall when the storms could bring Japanese floats to shore, in the California redwoods, Crater Lake, the woods around Mt. Hood and the Warm Springs Indian Reservation!  And often mother's mother and step-father would come with us and camp as well.  It was good times for this little camper when my grandparents were there!

These were times of much fun for me - father and I got along hiking and I would try and help father set up camp or tear down.  But, father unfortunately was a perfectionist, and perfectionists are not pleasant people to be around!  Especially when you are camping and it is supposed to be an enjoyable time!

Yeah, well, you can only try for so long - even a kid will eventually learn to give up when abused enough.  I rapidly learned to do as little around camp as I could and to avoid him as much as was possible at all times.  I took to fishing.

Apparently, he never even noticed.

Hiking

Outside of work and mathematics, father really did not have any interests.  But, he did love the out of doors.

When I was really young, we would go hiking as a family.  My earliest of the hikes being a drive up Sandia Mountain and then walking around.  I can remember father loving the view, mother fussing over my toddler sister and my thinking the dirt/sand/whatever it was, was most interesting.

Through the years in Portland, we did go on a great many hikes: on beaches, along the river, to parks, on the glacier at Mt. Hood, Mt. Bachelor area, etc.

My favorite hike was in a place we called "Mosquito Lakes", no idea what the real name was but those mosquitoes were sure memorable!  I had taught myself how to whistle and so father would be singing some opera and I would be whistling along. It was a great few days with him.

Sometimes he would see something which reminded him of hiking in the Bernese Oberland - a beautiful mountainous area of Switzerland, and then he would talk about his sister and hiking with her.  Things he thought I would never remember and yet those were the things which were the most important about him to me.  It was our one point of communication.  And to beour great point of dispute later in life.

Spooky Story

Being as we just had Halloween, it is the perfect time to tell something spooky and of course about father.

Now, something had gone terribly wrong with my sister and she was rushed off to California for surgery accompanied by my mother, so that left father and I as bachelors, and yes, we were a bit bored.  So we planned to take a Saturday and building something fun with my father's Erector Set.

The day started out normally enough: father made Rosti - a Swiss potato dish he made for us kids on Saturday mornings.  We cleaned up and set up to build something with the cool erector Set!

Only, there was this HUGE explosion which rocked the house and we ran outside.  All of the neighbors were also coming out as well.  The blast was still echoing around the Willamette River valley below us.  Dad called the police but there were no explosions they knew of.  Next he called the Portland Air Base and reported the sound.  They had heard it too and had already identified it as a super-sonic blast.  Only problem - there were no aircraft anywhere over the area on radar.....

Everyone went back to their homes scratching their heads over that one.

So, father and I returned to our construction and built an elevator which would lift a marble, drop it onto a rail, where it would run around for a while and then hit the elevator at the bottom just in time for a ride back up.  Mesmerizing.

Father took a bathroom break and I went and got some water for us.  We both walked back in just about the same time, I just a few feet ahead of him.

In the center of the room, in the corner of my eye I saw something, to this day I have no idea what it was but it went from hanging in the air to a blur of acceleration in  a fraction of a second!  I yelled at father to duck and threw myself backwards.  Father did the same and the what ever it was streaked within inches of his face was he was falling.  It then buried itself into the hallway wall.

Father was naturally quite shaken.  We both just stood and looked at the hole in the wall and eventually father reached in with a pair of pliers and pulled out a little car build out of Erector Set Parts.  We looked at each other and ran to the table where our marble carrier stood.  It was still completely assembled - only the marble carrier was missing from the elevator shaft!

A hoist engine and wheel sat directly over the elevator shaft.  There was no way the little car could have been removed - and yet IT WAS!

No question something para-normal had occurred, no question there was no natural explanation, no question it had happened, no question it could have killed father, no question about that hole in the wall either.....

On base, the police had a good laugh until they came out to the house and saw the evidence.  Of course, everyone thought I had thrown the item, but I had two cups of water and was a might small as it was.  The hole in the all looked like a bazooka had hit it.  One of the guardsmen even tried to punch a hole in the hallway wall with his gloved fist - but it was a lath-wood wall and all he did was break a bunch of fingers.  Literally!

We left the house for a few days and I think went camping.  Father was to never mention this again to anyone, even me - aside from one comment one time - "It must have been done with magnets....".  And I think we are at the point where what existed of father's religious faith had died ...

Back To Portland, Again

My father was able to calm down after moving the family back to Portland, Oregon.  From here on out he would often be gone for extended temporary duty assignments (TDY).  But, when he was home he was occasionally the man I wanted to remember but mostly the man I do not.  He absences were so pronounced that in our little town that father was believed to have abandoned the family!  And when he was around it was not pleasant on my backside, punishments were meted out whether earned or not.  Something was really wrong with him internally, I was to realize as an adult.

Every summer, I would be able to go stay with my great uncle, whom I still admire and have to give him the nod for being the major contributor in forming my inner values.  He was my real father, the man whom visited our family I no longer knew.

Of course, my great uncle was ancient and only lived until I was 10 but those were important years for me.

If from father I learned to appreciate opera and Wagner, hiking and nature, the stars and space.  Then from Leonard I learned fishing, boat building, self subsistence, dairy herd management and everything there is to know about chickens.  But, he also taught me about wealth, generosity, helping the poor and honoring the dead.

Yeah, between the two of them I was shaped to understand technology and dream, as well as, to have my boots ground in the cow-pies and how to milk a cow.  Combined, this created a bit of a challenge for my future teachers......

Back Home

This part has now been rewritten several times.  It is hard to write this part and not say what I have promised myself not to say.....  So, long post has been mostly parred down:

What was to follow for father was now to spend the next several years in some special classes to catch him up to date with the state of the art in mass destruction.  To do that he was sent down to Sandia Labs, as well as, Lawrence Livermore Labs.  And though I was but a small boy, I remember those labs well - which would be much to the shock to everyone whom just wrote me off as "that curious toddler".

Yeah, I can remember those years very well, the odd characters whom floated in and out of that creative scientific community.  But the names are long gone.

My strongest memory was of one of the scientists whom always carried a spare zipper in his pocket.  When some particularly interesting problem was poised, he would dig out that zip and just zip and un-zip it!  "Kris, notice this zipper, how the teeth fall together with such ease.  How could someone have conceived of something so simple and yet so strong in holding our pants together ..."

And there was another scientist I remember whom loved reptiles and always had one in one of his pockets to play with while he thought.

Yeah, they were an odd bunch, but they loved having me around and all of those meetings were stored in my memory, which would bite me later in life.  But, although I might remember them, I could in no way understand until I was much older.

:^)

Spies Like Us

55,000 in this Protest

Now in the world of politics, Hungary was to stage a rebellion against its Soviet occupiers.  The previous year Austria had gained it freedom, from the Soviet Union, and Hungary, a country long associated with Austria, wanted its freedom as well.  The Soviets thought otherwise.

Much of the blame for the two uprising in Hungary and later in Czechoslovakia can be blamed directly on Radio Free Europe - they openly encouraged citizens of those two countries to rise up in revolt, even promising US aid - which was never to come.  It was just a political ploy to give the Soviets a headache - and those games killed a great many innocent people whom trusted the radio voices.

No Russian Sense of Humor

Now, if Hungary was in revolt, the US Military Intelligence community really wanted a chance to get their hands on some of the Eastern Bloc Scientists and find out where the Soviet Union had gone with its nuclear capabilities.  But, in order to do so, one would have to find someone whom had a first hand knowledge of the subject and spoke the languages.  Getting an idea where this one is going?

Back in Iceland, father had been blinded in an explosion.  No real idea what he could have been doing that time!  He was blinded for a while but when as his sight returned he had to wear glasses to correct for the permanent damage.  He really hated those glasses but seeing is a nice activity.  He was issued a pair of normal everyday PINK military framed glasses.  I never could understand why the US military would only issue pink frames - like it was most men's favorite color?  Gees!  They were horrid.

Father in Budapest.

A few years ago I was researching a completely separate subject and I stumbled upon the first photograph in this post - 55,000 Hungarians in peaceful demonstration.  But, something puzzled me concerning the photo and I could not put my finger on it.  So I blew up the photo.  There, flanked by two of his lifelong friends and almost as long co-workers, was father in his US Military issued glasses!  I actually kept the camel hair full length coat from his estate, he never left home without it - unless he was wearing its grey twin.

So, although officially in Iceland for several more months, he was also on the world stage playing spy.  And if you think of it, what are the odds you are going to be where you are not supposed to be - and end up getting photographed in the wrong place, at the wrong time, by a photo-journalist?  Makes you wonder. 

It also was the first hint that maybe there was a great deal I did not know about father.....

Reunion

Road To Keflavik

How was the US Military to deal with the issue of father's past, much less that for all of the post-war Germans in the US Military employment?  They transferred him from sunny, balmy, California to the frozen wastelands of Iceland.  He was made a part of the Iceland Defense Force.  Based out of an old WWII Naval Air Station, near Keflavik, Iceland - the IDF was composed of Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force personnel as well as local Icelandic civilians.  In addition, there were a few Army and Coast Guard personnel attached to this command.

Actually, the base was loaded with ex-Germans at this time.  The official reason?  To do paperwork searches on each of them to confirm their role(s) in WWII.  Oh ouch!  For father this was going to be trouble now.

Iceland had had a moderate sized Nazi presence before and during the war.  This did not go well with the Jewish population of the island nation.  Though I can find no writing concerning open warfare between the two groups, before the end of the war in any event.  There were two rabbis on the island, so twin congregations - which I expect father was faithful to - if for no other reason than he was very motivated keep the US Intelligence Officers in the dark.  Just one little problem - guess whom else was in Iceland!  Yeah, his three buddies he had been captured with by the British patrol back in 1945!

No Shorts in Summer?

So, the military had suspected, the military had brought them back together, the military was looking for mistakes.  Eventually, they did cough up part of their past - but only  in respect to having worked with Heisenberg.  Heisenberg was dead as far as they knew, the atom bomb was now passe and they thought they were 'safe'.  No one could blame them for hiding the fact they had worked on the research to build a bomb.  As for the concept of the multistage rocket they had designed - well let that one lay, after-all, no one had one of those - yet.

But, as you will shortly find out: they were to be risking their lives in ways they never would have thought possible.....

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.....

Joining The Military

So, for whatever reason, the sandwich shop failed and father took his friend's advice and joined the military.  I do not know where his basic training was at but I do know that mother went back to live with grandmother on the houseboat opposite Swan Island in Portland.

Having completed his basic training, father was stationed temporarily at a base in California - where I was then born.  Under the US laws I was born under, if your father was foreign and you were born on Federal property - not US soil - you were not granted automatic citizenship.  So, I was born a German citizen, since this was father's nationality at the time.  The state of California, wondering how to register the birth, ended up issuing me a permanent voter's registration card!  But, no birth certificate.  The hospital on the base issued me a live birth card, stipulating me foreign born - and a female.  (Thank you, you worthless military typist!)

Anyways, that little distinction - Federal property - not US soil, was to haunt me until I was 20, when I finally went through naturalization - even though I WAS a US citizen according to the US agreement father signed.  So, that closed that problem, mostly!

Probably the greatest of father's inabilities was the lack of knowledge as to how people behave.  He judged all by the standard of himself and though he was a world class liar, he was never sneaky.  A very odd combination.  You could not trust his words but you could his motives and actions.  If your life was in his hands, he would lose his first to save you (not me, I'm the troubled son, remember?).  Weird.

So, had father of been of just even average knowledge concerning human behavior, he would have looked at his first post and wondered - "Why am I here?"  Why would a foreign national have immediate access to weapons of mass destruction?  Had he of thought about it - he would have realized he was being tested and set up for the next step in the devious US plot to draw him out into the open.

But, in any event, father was shortly to find himself in hot water with the US Government.  We can call this one Cold War paranoia, however this time it was for all Germans in the US employ.....

And, I now am at a bit of a breaking point.  So far I have been fairly free to write about father's life - however, his work for the US Government was very hush-hush and I have no desire to go through yet ANOTHER citizenship hearing, with the threat of being deported - again!  So, we will ignore a great deal of father's professional life.  Sorry, I am not going to tell you how to build weapons of mass destruction - go to the library and read up on it, everybody else does.  Though you may find that libraries are more accessible on such subjects in other countries than in the US....

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.

Return To Germany

During father's free time in Portland, Oregon, he spent most of it visiting with mother's family on the houseboat.  Grandmother thought him charming and often commented in her later years that he was quite the "talker", ie: "real smooth".  Mother's brothers all hung with him and probably appreciated the male companionship, as their father had left them when they were all young.  As for mother, well, if she had been mine, it would have been over the knee with her!

She is now 14 years old and decided that my father was "it" and father had no problems with that idea.  But, he was after-all up for deportation.....

So, father was returned to Germany and faced court-martial hearings for his part in the mutiny of the SS Riviera.  In the end, the court ruled the mutiny to have been justifiable - however, his role as the leader of the mutiny was found to be inexcusable - he was after-all a German officer.  He was stripped of his captain's rank and removed from the seaman's listing.  So, he would never sail again.  It is interesting to note that they also had the power to remove his German Naval rank of Captain and did not do so.  Which he spoke of with pride - at their backhanded approval of what he did.

Father with Edi and Udi in Buchholz

Father returned to Buchholtz, to his wife Monika, Fritz and Irma. It must have been some reunion since my half-sister Martha was born in 1954.  As to whatever happened in Buchholtz, father would never say.  Fritz and Irma continued in their role as his friend and members of his "family".  Monika was to continue to write him weekly for decades - leaving me to assume he was writing her back.  And, again, one must remember that there was no divorce filed I could find in the German archives.  Did father turn over his bank account to her to keep her happy?  Even in his 80's he was still harping about having "lost" all of his money.  Makes one wonder what the real truth was.....

Back in Portland, mother set herself to raising the $100 immigration fee for allowing father back into America - she was determined to get her "man".  And let me tell you, when I found that out, me and Grandmother had a very long talk about where she had failed with my mother.  But, what I did not know was that mother was - uhm - a bit of a problem child it seems.

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.

Seizing Control

The ship was docked at Swan Island, on the Willamette River, in Portland, Oregon.  The Captain went ashore with the ship's papers and to arrange for the cargo unload - so that the required inspection could take place.  The time to act against the Captain was now or never to the thinking of the crew and the gangplank was withdrawn from shore.

The Captain was outraged, no ship had been taken from a captain in modern history, and he called the police. The local longshoremen, of course, became interested in the police arrival and so came along to the dockside where the ship sat.  Father made the formal charges against the Captain and negotiations began.  Unfortunately, the police stance was drop the gangplank and father's demand was the arrest of the Captain.  And so, a standoff which would last for months began.

Now the story becomes convoluted as, the Longshoreman's Union became involved.  Since, this was a ship and the Seaman's Union seamen aboard were involved in a "strike"  - the longshoremen blockaded the Portland facilities in sympathy.  Now to join with them were the truckers and like dominoes eventually everyone was on strike in Portland.

The police were far from sympathetic with the entire situation, the Immigration and Naturalization Service became involved in demanding the release of the ship and the arrest of the "mutineers".  The Oregonian newspaper, was the only real voice those on the ship had - and its paper ran numerous stories concerning the voyage and particulars.

However, the stand off was to change, as a human interest story was to grip the nation and father would meet my mother because of it ...

Sailing Into History

The SS Riviera returned back to India and father rejoined the crew, albeit with a very different face than what he had started the voyage with!  And he found that life aboard ship had once again become of an explosive nature.  You have to remember that he was third officer and the welfare of the crew was his duty.

The Captain, for some reason, had become dictatorial.  Food rations had been cut.  Salaries were cut.  It was as if the Captain actually wanted a mutiny on his hands.  The crew became belligerent and somewhere between India and the US, the Captain killed one of the German crew.

Probably the only thing which saved the situation, was the Indian Government filed a complaint concerning the physical condition of the vessel and the insurers of the ship ordered the Captain to report to the nearest shipyard for inspection.  This was based upon father's random conversations with others during his recovery in India.

So, the Captain was forced to put into Portland, Oregon.

What was to follow was to become a part of Maritime history and US organized labor history, with lawsuits going all of the way to the US Supreme Court and a bit of an uproar back in Germany as well.

As for father - it was to be his capture by the US Government - he had so long dreaded and managed to dodge for eight years.

India

The SS Riviera, rounded the Horn of Africa and sailed into the Indian Ocean.  According to father those few miles the ship traversed around the Horn were quite exciting.  Plenty of rough water and he said a great many questioned the old ship's ability to stay afloat!

Unlike the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean was much calmer and time could be spent working on repairing some of the worse of the deck rust.  Apparently, they carried extra steel plates for such purposes and using hammers, banged out rust until metal could be found and then welded replacements in.  Then, of course, all of those repairs needed to be painted.  Everyone was kept quite busy!

Life aboard the ship was boring, card games flourished as did the friction between the British sailors and the Germans.  By the time the ship made port in India the situation had become explosive.  The ship made port at night, so ship's leave was to begin the following morning.  Some of the of the British sailors took this opportunity to plan an attack on the most hated German and severely change his outlook on life - if not actually kill him.

They waited until he approached and then fell on him violently.  Accordingly, they were horrified to discover that it was my father in the dark and not the seaman they sought to kill.  Not that their guilt and apologies could change that the fact that father had taken multiple blows from a sap to the face.

The British sailors surrendered themselves to the captain, whom in turn, turned them over to the Indian police.  Father had to be rushed to a hospital for what was to become a six month ordeal of facial reconstruction.  And the ship left him in India as it went on its way around the Pacific delivering goods.

Back in India, father had time to think and wrote several letters to his mother.  In return, he found out about having a new brother and sister, even sending the sister a basket of seashells from India for her seventh birthday.  But, this was the last she was ever to hear from him.  Interestingly, she still has to this day that basket of shells, kept on her dresser to remind her of the brother she never knew.

By now father was healing well, however, a large blood clot sat behind his sinuses and there was nothing the doctors of that day could do about this.  A British surgeon commented to father that if he could go deep enough underwater, that the clot might be crushed and come out naturally.  So, father tried it.  There was a steel netted swim area, due to the local shark population, near by and perfect for what father needed.

It worked very well.  Father said there was this 'thunk' inside his head and then blood everywhere.  Also, there was in the same instance, a tiger shark trying to chew his way through the steel net to get at him!  His description of what followed may have been the only time he ever walked on water, as he fled back to shore!

For this entire incident, father was compensated several tens of thousands of Marks in fines to the British sailors, from the Seaman's Union and from the shipping company, all added to his bank account back home.  The British sailors were sent back to England in chains - for they had attacked an officer.  And father was to continue to recover until the SS Riviera returned from the US with a load of wheat.  With not much to do, father spent a great deal of time swimming (behind the nets!) and talking with those around the harbor.

His conversations were to land everyone in hot water, as you will learn.

The SS Riviera

Having regained his rank of Captain, father's first trip out was on the SS Riviera.  Although father held the rank of Captain, he did not hold the position of ship's captain.  Instead he was third officer - that would be the one responsible for the crew.  The Captain and Second Officer were both British.

The crew was composed of ex-British soldiers and sailors, with a few German's thrown in as well.  This detail will be come import later on - as there was more than just a little hostility between the two nationalities on board - at all levels.

SS Riviera 1946

Father had little good to say concerning the Riviera.  Apparently it was quite an old US built Liberty Ship from the war, with a tremendous rust problem - which will crop up in this disastrous voyage later.  A great deal of the crew's shipboard life revolved around painting over rust and securing plywood over holes in the deck.  Yeah, not your safest ocean going trip it would seem!  Ownership also was not quite what it seemed.  Supposedly, it had a Liberian registry and therefore wages were quite low and conditions poor, in truth it was really Panamanian and conditions were to be compared to an ocean going sweatshop - by the US inspectors!  But, none of this is important now, but will be later in this story.

In Rio de Janeiro, father was allowed the thrill of taking the ship out of port.  Unfortunately, he forgot to order 'cast off' - so tore the dock off of the shore and pulled it a quarter mile out into the bay!  He was terribly embarrassed but the captain thought it was one of the funnier things he had ever seen!  I guess officially, the responsibility belonged to the highly liquored Brazilian pilot.  So, his fault officially.  But, father was a perfectionist and was still beating himself up decades later over this goof.

The voyage continued around the horn and onto India, the beginning of the end for father's naval career.

Ports o' Call

Wouldn't you just know it?  I managed to loose father's highly fictionalize tome on his life.  Which is unfortunate because his sea voyages were by and large accurate!  Now I am stuck having to do this without his logs or pictures!

So, father was not able to get on a North Sea or Baltic based freighter, but instead made several voyages around the Atlantic Ocean for several years.  Havana, Cuba and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil were all ports they put into regularly.  Vera Cruz, Mexico was one of his favorites.  Apparently, the ship ran fruits and vegetables into Bremerhaven for distribution throughout Germany.

In his log he told about how the women of Veracuz had to walk one direction around the city square, while the men walked the other way.  I doubt this is still true, so much of tradition has been destroyed by modern western 'culture'.  In Havana he was fascinated by watching the 'devil fish' - rays covering the bottom of the harbor.  In Rio, well, it is Rio after all and lived up to its reputation of being a moral abyss.  However, he did hold the distinction of destroying the dock by not ordering the ropes cast off before putting the metal to the pedal, so to speak.

And, what became of Monika?  No idea, absolute silence from him about this period and from Uncle Fritz and Aunt Irma as well.  Mum was the word!  However, I believe that Monika's daughter was born in 1954.  So, obviously she was still in the scene and playing house - I imagine with my uncle and aunt were very involved in her life.  I also know that nothing was ever told to father's family about Monika - more than likely due to her being Jewish and I also know his family never heard a whisper about his conversion.  But, in his later writings he mentioned her by code name quite often and was very much on his mind during his later years.

And when in Bremerhaven, father was busy.  He started as a steward to the captain and each time in Bremerhaven, worked on regaining his status as a Captain through the Seaman's Union.  By 1951 he accomplished his task - a Captain's rating and time to ship out on an around the world cruise - the first of many he hoped.  But, the voyage was destined to become an international incident, which ended not only with him becoming extremely wealthy in post-war terms (for a very short period of time), but also a prisoner of the US Government.

What he feared most was exactly what was about to happen.....  And I will save that tale for next time.