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Only when a man knows his roots can he make sense of the course of his life.
I don't know if it has always been so, but in these our times, when the future is becoming the present every day even before the sun goes down, young people are, with rare exceptions, not showing any particular interest in the past. And that is a pity! We oldies, around my age, feel that something of value is lost forever when any part of the future is forgotten. And even greater calamity happens when into the memories of people is implanted some distorted version of the past.
I am similarly guilty in that I have not 'pestered'� my father during my childhood years to tell me more about his early life's experiences and beyond. Still, I am thankful that at least something about him and the Lorman family was entered into my memory banks, most probably second-hand, by my mother. So, if I now begin to tell the story, I shall start in the seventeenth century. Please don't go away, after only two or three sentences we shall be in the twentieth.
The rulers of Hungary have decided to open until then rather dormant mining activity in the mineral-rich northern highlands of the kingdom, in the territory of today's Slovakia. When they found that the local inhabitants could not easily be persuaded to dig like moles underground, they proceeded to invite and settle in the most promising mining areas families of experienced miners from German Lands. It was then that the Lorman family came from Westphalia and established their new home in the district of Gelnica. Over a few generations they have spread into nearby towns and, as human nature will have it, inter-married with Slovak families. Some branches of the Lorman family still live in the Gelnica area. My grandfather, František (read:Frantishek) was, according to the limited amount of information available to me, the first Lorman who has decided to earn his and his family's living in the fresh air and sunshine. He became a postal official.
My father was born in Bardejov in the year 1894. He was one of three brothers. The fourth child in the family was his sister Elizabeth. The eldest of the boys lost his life when about 25 years old in WW I on the Eastern front, somewhere in the north-east of present day Poland. He has no gravestone, not even an unmarked grave, because he simply disappeared together with thousands of his comrades in the endless, bottomless swamps in the polish-russian borderland. My fathers younger brother, František, named after his dad, worked at first as customs officer at a border crossing to Hungary and later looked after the export contracts for the salt producer Solivar in Prešov. From the last occasion when I have visited his family I remember most vividly one Sunday morning when their god-fearing Baptist family was preparing to go to church. I was ready and waiting, sitting on the lawn in front of the house, when I suddenly noticed a four-leaf clover . Naturally I picked it and not having anything better to do, I set out to find another one. I was very lucky that Sunday morning. When the family was finally ready, I held in my hand twelve four-leaf and three five-leaf clovers. Alas' it became obvious in time that I have used up my luck just finding that unusual bouquet. Nothing particularly lucky happened to me in the following few years. Then again, on reflection, perhaps even the absence of any particularly bad luck is a form of good luck. And maybe they were a promise that I shall survive the looming war with only a few minor scratches.

My father, after graduating from High school has opted for ecclesiastical life. He signed-up as a novice in the Franciscan seminary in KoÅ¡ice. But he didn't keep it up for very long. He abandoned his plans involving priesthood and enrolled in the teachers college in Sárospatak (read:Shaarosh-patack) in present-day Hungary. On completion of his studies, however, he had to postpone the taking up of a teaching post because WWI was raging and he had to enlist in the Austro-Hungarian imperial army. In that outfit, in those days, even his modicum of academic education gave him an immediate rank of sub-lieutenant and after a brief accelerated training he found himself facing the Russians on the Eastern front. Of his frontline experiences, to my knowledge, he never spoke to anyone. The only keepsake from the war, with which he didn't want to part, was a saber. It stood, propped up, in the corner of the wardrobe. We children, on occasions, were allowed to admire it and play with it, under supervision, of course. I remember that it was not sharpened, obviously father had ever carried it only as part of his officers uniform.
The only part of his war-related experiences, which he ever spoke about, and then only very rarely, was the time he spent as a prisoner of war in Siberia, at first in some un-named camp on the Trans-Siberian railway. He spoke of the day when in the camp arrived a General wearing a French uniform, but with a Slovak name, Milan Rastislav Stefánik. In my original story, written for Slovak readers, there is no need to present the man, but in this English translation, I feel it will be helpful to insert a few words. At the end of WWI the victorious allied powers were re-drawing the map of particularly Central Europe. Among other changes a new country was taking shape made up of historic Czech lands, until then part of the Austrian empire and the Slovak districts of the Hungarian kingdom. It was to enter the world scene as Czecho-Slovakia. Of the three most prominent 'fathers'� of the new state, Masaryk, BeneÅ¡ and Stefánik, the last named was the only Slovak. Large part of his role in the liberating struggle was the creation of a nucleus of the new Czecho-Slovak army. And that was the purpose of his trip to Siberia. He traveled from camp to camp, recruiting, as he went, volunteers and legionaires, Czechs and Slovaks from the ranks of Austro-Hungarian POWs strung-out along the Trans-Siberian railway. The volunteers were gathered together in Vladivostok and as respected units of a new army they have returned to their liberated homeland by boat to Trieste and the rest of the way by train.
After his return from the war sometime in 1919 father started teaching at an elementary school in a small village of Kra�unovce. In the 1920s it was a cluster of not more than perhaps 40 houses. The school 'boasted' a single classroom shared by children of all ages and grades. Under the same roof was also the accommodation for the teacher. It must have been a roman catholic church-run school, because it was situated barely a stones-throw from the church, in which my father was also the organist. As such, he was a regular visitor at the parsonage and it was there that he got acquainted with a comely young lady, Helena Vasily, when she came with her mother to visit her uncle, the local priest. The old man was fond of my father and fully trusted him, so much so, that although Helena was at the time only 16-years old he blessed their marriage in the year 1921.
In the spring of 1924, April 27-th to be precise, there appeared in this world a boy, whom the proud father had christened Milan, after his general. And it is here that my life's journey finally begins.

So much for the family background. For publication in this forum I'll take up the story after leaving school at the age of 18.

In September 1942 my parents have found for me my first job with the Danube Steamship Navigation Company. Not in Bratislava, but in Vienna. The idea was to force me to learn to speak German. As we all know, the foreign language one learns at school is little more than an introduction, on which it is necessary to build by living and conversing with its native users. In my last year at school I had in fact better marks in French than in German and today I barely remember a dozen French words. But, that's how it goes with languages. The first ship, to which I was posted as a trainee purser was M.S. March (read the 'ch' as in Loch). It had a complement of four officers (plus myself as a cadet) and a crew of 18. The responsibilities of the purser were mainly paying everyone's wages in the currency of whatever country we were in at the time when people wanted to go ashore, attend to customs and other formalities, like water police and health checks, whenever we crossed international borders and in each port through the Company's agency communicate with the Head office in Vienna. The Head office also required the lodgement, once a month of a detailed graphic report on the ship's and crew's activities in half-hour time segments day and night. Where and what and who and why. I am especially mentioning those monthly reports, because they have eventually proved to be my undoing. After the first six weeks, one round trip to the Romanian port of Giurgiu and back to Vienna as a trainee, I was sent to really start working as Purser aboard M.S.March's sister ship, M.S.Kamp. To look at the two ships, they were identical twins, but there was a huge difference in general atmosphere, mood and working conditions. Not only because now I had to do all the work of a purser by myself but mostly because the Captain and almost everyone else on M.S.Kamp were Hungarians, while M.S.March was run by Austrians. The main thorn in my side was the Captain. He was a drunkard of the roughest kind and it seemed to me that from the moment when I introduced myself to him and he found out that I was a Slovak, the main aim in his life became making my life as miserable as possible. The first round trip from Vienna to Giurgiu was bad enough, but things were about to get worse. Sometime in the first half of December the Captain told me to prepare and send to the Head office outstanding monthly reports for as far back as March that year and this had to be completed before the end of December. It turned out that my predecessor in the job of Purser, his bosom buddy and fellow alcoholic was dismissed and I was sent to replace him, because his last report was dated end of February that year. When I recovered from the shock I said to the Captain that it is quite impossible for me to cope with such burden of additional work in such a short time, that as a beginner I am doing my utmost performing my own normal duties and that he can't complain about my work. He yelled back at me that HE shall decide what my duties are or are not. I would not give in and the result was that in the nearest port, southern Hungarian city of Mohacs he set me ashore, without my passport and without my paybook. Danube just started to freeze over, he has decided to tie up for the few winter weeks in Hungary and I started to 'hitch' upstream to Vienna aboard whatever ship was still battling the thickening ice and as the guest of whichever Captain lent favourable ear to my story. My recollections from that trip back to Vienna and eventually home to Mnišek are very foggy. What I do remember though is the feeling of helplessness and hopelessness as I trudged through foreign land, 18-year old lad in wartime, without documents and penniless and not speaking the local language. Even so, eventually I managed to reach Vienna. There it took a few days before the bureaucracy arranged the necessary paperwork and I could travel on to Slovakia. To be fair I must mention that my ogre of a Captain was decent enough to forward by mail to the Head office my Passport and Paybook.
I was at home about two months, doing nothing in particular, when one day my father handed me a letter, which he had just received from some German source. As I have mentioned earlier, he was at that stage teaching at an ethnic German minority school. To put the content of that letter into condensed form it 'reminded' my father that one member of his family is a son of military age and that he is expected to contribute to the war effort by persuading me to 'volunteer' for service in the German armed forces. Being a Slovak national I could not be drafted into German Army (the Wehrmacht). But 'volunteering' unfortunately meant automatic enlistment in the ranks of the Waffen SS, which, by then, was rapidly becoming the German equivalent of the French Foreign Legion. The letter ended by saying that in case I should not do what is expected of me, they (whoever 'they' were) would assume that our family was not sufficiently patriotic and would no longer continue receiving the social benefit payments from the Reich. Without that money my father's budgeting would have come crashing about his ears, but he still said to me, that he does not want to influence my decision beyond letting me know that my refusal would mean the end of any further studies for my two sisters. They were at the time attending Business Academy in Bratislava. I had before me two choices: refuse to volunteer, which would cause serious hardship for the family and what was quite likely - within a few months be drafted into the Slovak army and still end up fighting on the Russian front, or submit to this blackmail and join the ranks of the Waffen-SS. It does not seem to me to be unreasonable to remind my readers at this point, that in 1943 the sound of the name of that organization did not produce in people's minds the same images, with which it became overloaded in the post-war decades. I was joining an 'elite' organization, not a 'criminal'� one.
In the event, about one month later, 23-rd March 1943. I have reported in the town of Poprad at the recruiting office and from there, with about sixty others, 'volunteers'� to a man, travelled by train to the German city of Dresden. Here, on the outskirts, in the suburb called Dresdner Neustadt (Dresden New Town) stood a large complex of barracks, which were, I believe, exclusively used for the training of Waffen-SS Field Engineers (Sappers).

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