大象传媒

My personal story Written for: bbc.co.uk/WW2 People's War

In the Contributions, which I have posted on this site, I write about my wartime and early post-war experiences. Those, I feel, may be of some interest to some people in the future. Especially because they are first-person stories. At the time of writing I am 81-years of age. So many other stories here are already from the pens of grand children, even great-grand children of those who long ago participated in the war. The other reason why, I think, they should be of interest is the fact that I saw the war, or my very small part of it, from the opposite side. No one is strongly disputing the much-repeated saying that History is being written by the Victors. This site is intended to become a bank of information for those, who will be writing and re-writing the story of WW2 for the generations not yet born. That history will be closer to the truth if It records the full range of experiences by the participants, both soldiers and civilians, from both sides of the conflict.

I was born in 1924 in Slovakia, at that time a part of Czechoslovakia. My father was a country schoolmaster and he brought me up, and also my four younger siblings as good Slovaks. I have enjoyed a happy, even idyllic childhood, until the age of 15, when suddenly the war broke out and the whole world changed. Germans have rapidly spread out all over Europe and impacted not only on the affairs of other nations of Europe, but also on private lives of millions of people.

In March 1939 Slovakia became an independent Republic, though very much subject to German 'guidance'. My father, being a public servant, was required to document his Aryan descent at least three generations back. It would surprise many people to find out how much research is necessary to find all the records even for such short trip into family history. My father, by the time he satisfied the demands of the Authorities, found himself caught up in the whole exercise and kept probing as far back as records in Slovakia were accessible. The end result of his efforts was the finding that our forbears on fathers side came from Germany some centuries ago, when the Hungarian king of the time needed to import a certain number of families of German miners into the ore-bearing highland areas of his Kingdom, the present-day Slovakia. The local Slovaks were cold to the idea of working underground. They liked their peasant lives in fresh air and sunshine too much.

The unfortunate by-product of my fathers search for his Roots was his sudden desire to 'return to the fold'. He decided to register as an ethnic German, a 'Volksdeutche'. Even though my father succeeded in convincing himself (as it turned out only temporarily) that he is a German, it was way too late for us children, especially for myself and for my two teenage sisters. He had made too good a job of bringing us up as good Slovaks. In, what to us children seemed like 'no time at all', he learned to speak German, language which I never heard him speak before, and in September 1941 he began actually teaching at a German Primary School. During the following few years even our family name was spelled the original German way Lohrmann. I have managed to revert to Lorman (as written on my birth certificate, which is to this day in my possession) in 1948, when, after arrival in GB, I was being issued new documents as a Displaced Person.

My wartime and early post-war experiences, as I said in the opening lines, are told in my Contributions.

After spending four years in England just long enough to get married to an English lady we emigrated to Australia in 1952. I was at fist working in a sawmill in Tasmanian 'Bush' and later drove trams and trolley-buses in Hobart. Jean, meanwhile busied herself bringing into the world and caring for our first three children. Life was good and stayed that way ever since. In 1957 I have signed up for a six-year engagement with the Australian Regular Army. I was then 33 years old and keeping up with 18 to 20-year-olds during the basic training was not easy, but the rest of my service time was given to training as a cartographer and actually producing maps and charts for the Army, the Air Force and also for the Bureau of National Development. During this time we were living in Bendigo, State of Victoria. It was the home base of the Royal Australian Survey Regiment as it still is, I believe, to the present day. In Bendigo we have added three more children to our family.

When my service engagement ended in 1963, we pulled up stakes and travelled in an overloaded little car north to Brisbane, Queensland. Here I have spent the rest of my working life as a Mapmaker for various employers. For five of those years I even helped teach Cartography at the (as it was then) Queensland Institute of Technology. It is a University now.

These days I live in quiet, modest but carefree retirement, with the grandmother of my grandchildren, even great-grandmother of two, and Life is still Good. Not Great, but Good. And we are thankful for that.

P.S. In case anyone would wish to contact me here is my e-mail address (at least for the time being): milanl@bigpond.com