My father's early years

I'm mostly writing down these (somewhat random) observations for my children and grandchildren so they won't be forgotten. Others may find it interesting (or not). And I'll probably revise it from time to time as I remember (or decide to forget) things.

My father usually identified his birthplace as Hungary, although it was technically Yugoslavia due to the 'carving up' of the Austro-Hungarian empire after WWI (shortly before his birth).

His paternal ancestry (and hence mine) can purportedly be traced back to the Hungarian Order of the Dragon (leaders of the crusades against the Turks during the 1400's).
BTW - The Hungarian word for dragon is dracul, and the father of "Vlad the Impaler" was a member of the Order, hence the name Dracula. So, apparently one of my ancestors used to hang with Dracula's daddy. But I digress...

His mother's ancestry purportedly included Michel Ney (AKA the Prince of Moscow and Napoleon's Field Marshall at Waterloo). I don't recall if the ancestry was directly from Ney or from his parents or grandparents, but it was 'close'...

Although he occasionally talked about an aunt and an uncle, I cannot recall my father ever mentioning his parents (my mother told me their names were the same as her parents - Julius and Elisabeth). He only mentioned his older brother (also Julius) when talking about how much he hated him. (The brother died at age 30.) And he had no contact with any of his remaining relatives in Hungary after WWII. So there was obviously some deep-seated issue but I have no idea what it was.

In the first grade his teacher told the class to try and draw a straight line without using a ruler. He was incredibly proud of his freehand line but when the teacher saw it she smacked him in the back of the head and said "I told you not to use a ruler!".

His happiest childhood memories were the summers he spent sailing on Lake Balaton. My stepmother spread his ashes there after he passed away in 2000. It was a symbolic 'returning home' since he never returned to Hungary after WWII. (He was in Romania on a trade mission for the State Dept during the 1970s but didn't cross the border. I think he simply couldn't bear to see what the Communists had done to his homeland.)

When he was 13 he built his own sailplane and a couple of years later spent over 30 hours aloft (almost a world record at the time).

As a child he used to hang out at his uncle's factory. The uncle gave my Dad a motorcycle for his 16th birthday. He made it 2 blocks before wrecking it and breaking his leg.

At his high school graduation his math teacher told him that he'd never amount to anything. Personally I think the teacher was trying to motivate him, but my Dad thought he was just an *sshole.

Part of the admissions test to the Royal Hungarian Air Force Academy was to run an obstacle course as many times as you could. One of his friends ran the course 7 times and figured that was enough. On my Dad's 3rd pass he couldn't get over one of the walls. He kept trying until an administrator stopped him because his hands were torn up and covered with blood. My dad got into the Acedemy and his friend didn't. He graduated late in WWII as a mechanical engineer and fighter pilot.

When the Americans and Russians were closing in from opposite directions my father managed to get captured by one of General Patton's 'spearheads'. (I think it was one of those 'unauthorized' incursions Patton was famous for. One mile left or right and dad would probably have ended up in Russian hands - a less than desirable outcome.) He was a great admirer of Patton for the rest of his life.
He ended up in a makeshift POW camp for officers in southern Germany. The situation was somewhat chaotic and the local Germans who were paid to supply the camp were mostly 'faking it'. A lot of the prisoners (particularly the non-German ones) who had been there the longest were underfed and in poor health (some had lost toes to rats). My Dad and a few others would sneak out under the fence at night and steal food and supplies to bring back to the ailing prisoners.

After the war he ended up working for the US Army Corps of Engineers in Stuttgart, which is where he met my mother.

There's one more thing that my father told me in his later years that explained a lot. It was (in my opinion) his 'tragic flaw':
A some point during his childhood he consciously decided that his 'wants and needs' were what mattered most in life. Everything else was secondary.

That's pretty much the exact opposite of my philosophy... And that's my 'tragic flaw' :-)