AN AFTERTHOUGHT.

 

I started writing my "book" in July 1983 and finished in October. I hurried, because I wanted to be ready for Christmas with a bound copy for my wife, Joy, two more for my two children and their spouses and one each copy to be sent to my Mother and brother in England. I also had to write it in secret, because I wanted it to be a surprise to them all. In this I succeeded, it spite of the fact that almost all of it was written on my word processor at home, ostensibly watching TV with Joy in the family room.

Not knowing what was going on, Joy expressed her surprise at the amount of work I had to bring home from my business and the hours I kept. I usually hammered away on the keyboard until midnight and after 4 hours of sleep got up to do some more. She decided that I must be getting on with considerably less sleep than I used to, - a sign of my getting on in years.

I found it quite easy to write the story. It caused me no anxiety to relive those days in the forties and it was only when I finally read the whole of my own story from beginning to end, that I became quite nervous and almost disbelieving that I was reading about myself. It was as if I consciously shut out of my mind the period of my life which I did not enjoy and not until I was confronted by my own story did I once again start to react. In fact for the first time ever I started to have nightmares and woke up to wonder what it must feel like to be shot.

We in Budapest were extremely fortunate, because our turn to be destroyed came so late in the war, - our enemies run out of time to kill us all. For this reason I never considered my whole story of interest, and some episodes were of interest only to my closest friends and my family. Not until I read my story did I realise that my experiences and my survival were not ordinary, yet I still believe it to be just average.

Yet, reading certain parts of my own story made me emotional and I had tears in my eyes reading what I wrote without any feelings and with a detachment, which I could hardly believe afterwards.

Only when I read my story and seeing my life as a "whole" and not as isolated incidents, did I realise how many were the coincidences and close shaves. This worried me because I feared, that people will not believe what I have described. But since then I read some other books from better writers and one: "By my own Authority" which has an even more unbelievable story than mine.

There are no stories of those times which I do not believe. Some of the stories cannot have been invented by amateurs who decided to write their story. I also believe that the best stories will never be told, because the people who could have written them are not alive. The miracles which kept the survivors alive, happened not just to us, but also to those who perished. We all had miracle after miracle, every day alive was one. However, it seems that all the miracles worked for me all the time, - the losers had just one miracle too few. One failed miracle was all you required for death to catch up with you.

When on Christmas Day in 1983 the presents were handed out by my grand-daughter and my children and wife realised that my parcel to them was a book I wrote for them, their reaction was very enthusiastic. When my son retired for a rest after the gigantic Christmas lunch we consumed and emerged three hours later, during which he read the book, his tearful eyes made my efforts of surviving and writing about it worthwhile.

It is interesting that ever since I wrote my story I became interested in what went on during the Holocaust in places distant from Hungary as well as within the country. In May 1985 I attended a three day gathering in memory of the 40th anniversary of the Holocaust and accompanied by my daughter attended a memorial service and the dedication of a park and statue for Raoul Wallenberg. I also volunteered to speak about the Holocaust to members of my Rotary Club.

During the past 40 years or so it was attempted to belittle what has happened. Barely have the bodies in the camps been covered by soil, efforts began to cover up what went on. I was never mistreated during the war, I was not more hungry than the rest of the population, yet I saw what has happened and it is my duty to talk on behalf of those who cannot.

I spoke to my Rotary Club on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Holocaust, not on my personal experiences, but on the enormity of the Holocaust itself. In my speech I said:

 

                  "While I do not consider that my story is one of particular horror or sadness, two years ago I felt duty bound to write it and present my story to my children and grandchildren, so that they and their descendants may know what happened to one of their forebears who was lucky or resourceful enough to have survived."

                  "It is of interest to note that it took me 39 years before I could write this book. Straight after the war, when everything was fresh in our minds we simply wanted to forget the horrors, which we could not then (or even now) comprehend. Then came a period of time when we wanted to tell our adventures to other survivors."

                  "But after a while there came a time when, we the survivors, felt our duty to tell about the Holocaust to others, so that all should know what happened and benefit from it. There is this overwhelming compulsion to tell, to tell, to tell, - before it is too late, because few were the survivors and day by day, like the original Anzacs, the witnesses are dwindling."

 

During 1984 quite a few people read my book and I had a number of comments. Most of the people who were not participants in the Holocaust were impressed, not so much with the literary effort, but due to the fact that they knew me and it must have been quite a surprise to them that their relation by marriage or the suburban friend they knew had a past so unlike their own. Some of them were very kind and suggested that it should be published. Some were even kinder and offered to help me rewrite it. If I agree with them it is only because I still feel it my duty to make available my story to those who come after us and who can benefit by reading it.

Some of the readers thought that I should have given more details of what happened to me after the war. In the original version I closed my story with the statement that I married a New Zealand girl in 1952 and lived happily ever after. This closed a chapter of my life on a happy note and I could have left it at that. Indeed with marriage to Joy and with the arrival of our children I became content and happy to a degree which I could not have described properly in writing and certainly could not have foretold during the horrors, just 8 years before I was married.

But I can understand those who said that the story is not complete if the rest is not told. After all, my experiences in Budapest and how they influenced (or did not) my subsequent life could be of interest, especially to those, who are not survivors of the Holocaust and who have difficulty in understanding how former inhabitants of concentration camps or people who lived at a constant risk of being murdered, can live a normal life after their experiences. I like to assure people who ask that question, that I found that quite easy. Yet I understand the problems of those who were survivors of the murderous Burma railways or who were fighting in Vietnam.

I often heard it said that the greatest revenge the Jews inflicted on Hitler is the success of Israel. This is true, but in my view, the success of the Jews in surviving the Holocaust and yet staying normal; assimilating to become part of the nations where they re-settled, (be it Israel, Australia or Scotland) is not only a slap in the face of the nazis, but also a sign of their vitality. Maybe, there is such a thing as atavism, maybe being persecuted for centuries teaches people how to become good survivors.

I have now decided to rewrite my "book" to describe my "normal" life and I hope that this will be appreciated by those tolerant few who reached thus far in my story.

January 17th, 1986.

 

GREAT BRITAIN

 

For an Englishman to arrive home to England after years in war and away from home must have been quite an experience, but for a Displaced Person like me to arrive for the first time to England was an indescribable shock. Quite apart from seeing my parents after a parting of over two years and noting that all the vehicles were travelling down the wrong (i.e. left) side of the street, it was the first time in my life that I was in a country where I did not understand what people were saying.

However, the greatest shock was democracy in practice. The first Sunday afternoon I was taken to Speakers Corner in Hyde Park and I was petrified that I would get into trouble just for standing around, while some soap box orator was berating Prime Minister Attlee and in the same breath declaring Mr Churchill to have been a traitor to his country. The girl who took me there on behalf of my Father, for the express purpose of showing me democracy, could not understand my panic of wanting to get away from the place, where I believed the police would soon make arrests of all who stood around. She was brought up in England and that is why she could not comprehend my fears.

Later that afternoon I learned more about democracy when a very casually dressed 17 years old Vera and 22 years old Steve decided that a cup of coffee would be acceptable and we bowled into a hotel, where maharajas, sultans and other notables were milling around and we asked for a cup of coffee and were most politely shown towards the area where it would be served. However, seeing the cost exceeding our budget, we did not stay and thus my first and probably only chance of having a meal at the Dorchester was thwarted.

That first week in England is one of my most cherished memories. My Mother arranged a couple of tickets for the closing ceremony of the London Olympics, and having been always interested in the Olympic idea, I could hardly believe that it was I who was in Wembley stadium watching the King of England standing while the Hungarian anthem was played in honour of a Hungarian gold medal winner of the 1948 Olympiad.

( Photo of all the Kalmans at Piccadilly Circus.) To welcome me into England my brother John and his wife, Gilly travelled from Scotland and spent the weekend with us. We all went into the Westend of London and visited the Top of The Town Theatre where Tommy Trinder managed to make me laugh, without my understanding a word he was saying. We went to Piccadilly Circus, where, it is said, if you wait long enough you would meet someone you know. Sure enough there were two meetings, I met a school mate of mine and he met me.

We had a cup of tea at the Regent Palace Hotel, where all musicians of the Palm Court Orchestra were ladies. While we were there, John went off to search for some cigarettes and found that a shop was selling handmade Piccadilly cigarettes for the outrageous sum of 3/1d for 25. I rushed out to buy a box, and we even talked Father into buying some for us. There was still quite a shortage of fags, - three years after the war!

On my last day in London, I decided that I wanted to see Hamlet with Laurence Olivier. Mother was less than interested and thus I stayed in town on my own and made my way to Leicester Square where I managed to buy a ticket for the next performance. When I realised that I would have to wait over two hours I sat down in the large cinema's lounge. The waitresses kept asking me if I would like something, so I succumbed and ordered a cup of tea. When the tea arrived I realised that there is a difference between a cup of tea and high tea and from then on was careful to ensure that others knew exactly what I meant. The cost was 8/-, which must be compared with the 2/9d my ticket for Hamlet cost. However, it was all worth it.

Soon I travelled to join Gilly and John in Scotland. The train journey took all day and was very civilised. I actually had a cushioned seat all the way, which would have been in itself exceptional for someone who was used to travel in cattle trucks or on hard slats in Europe, but to have a dining car, with food and waiters and no food coupons to hand over, was almost too good to be true.

Although there was food rationing in England until 1956, food was sufficient even during the war and there was never any rationing in restaurants. During the post-war years the British were better off than the Germans, however by 1950 the West Germans had no need for ration cards, while the poor old victors were still queuing for their miserly meat ration.

I went to Scotland to assist in putting into production my Father's hammer mill, which was to have been manufactured under license there. Although Father handed over the complete Hungarian drawings, in the course of these being re-dimensioned in inches, a few changes were made here and there and as a bye product of these changes the machine ceased to work in its re-designed form. In the end it was realised that it would have been better to leave the design without trying to improve it and when I arrived, the first of the machines in its original form were ready for testing.

My Labour Permit allowed me to work as a Development and Outside Demonstration Engineer at the Ayr factory of the Scottish Mechanical Light Industries Ltd. The Works Manager was my brother and the Technical Director was Paul Sandor, whose brother was the Managing Director and owner, Dr. Bela Sandor. Under the circumstances it would not have been surprising if some of the employees of ScotMec would have been less than enthusiastic at the arrival of another good example of nepotism. However, at no time did I ever encounter anything but kindness and my colleagues went out of their way to be as helpful as they could.

At the same time my brother was trying to ensure not to be accused of favouring me and I was banished to develop and demonstrate and test hammer mills in a lean-to shed beside the factory building. After all I was an "Outside Engineer", and therefore would not mind having to cart hammer mills between the shed and the factory. Although it was mostly raining, in August this was quite acceptable, but when the chilly winds of November made Scotland into a good copy of Siberia, even my fellow Scottish workers were feeling sorry for me huddling in my outside shed. I was invited to have my morning and afternoon cups of tea in the toolroom and that is where I learned most of my conversational English.

The factory foreman was Sandy McPherson, a friendly smiling man who bred and raced greyhounds. I never heard of such a sport and could not envisage trained dogs chasing an artificial hare and that grown men should be interested in this. I just had to see this. Sandy suggested that I come to the race course, but he warned me not to bet on his dog because he was going to "feed" the dog before the race, making sure that he does not win. When I got to the race venue that evening I could hardly believe my eyes. (Photo with Sandy, me, Mr. Nitupski, the hammer mill and two of my friends from the toolroom.)

There were hundreds of people milling about, a large totalisator board was showing the total bets and likely winnings and long queues were forming in front of the betting windows. I decided to bet half a crown and in my halting English asked for a two and six pence ticket, but before I could say on which dog I already got my ticket for a combination of dogs No 2 and 6, the latter being Sandy's dog. I started to explain that I wanted 2/6d and not 2 and 6, and my bets were for numbers 4 and 5 as tipped for me by Sandy, but there was a crowd behind me and I was too embarrassed at my bad English, so I took my ticket and left.

Needless to say No. 2 romped home, closely followed by Sandy's dog. They were both outsiders and I collected 5 guineas (105 shillings) for my 2 shillings and sixpence. This was 4 shillings more than my weekly wages of 5 pounds and one shilling (101 shillings). I decided that dog racing was a capital idea.

Next week I went to the dogs again and this time I was hoping that I get the wrong ticket. Sure enough, I collected almost 9 pounds on the first race and I left immediately to buy myself a hat, two shirts, a suit and a pair of shoes and take home a bottle of sherry, all for my 9 quid!

When John heard of my beginner's luck he explained how to make money on the dogs and I was looking forward to my third visit and some more easy money. Something appeared to be wrong with his system, because I lost all my weekly wages on the dogs and from that evening on I have never bet on a dog again, although I been to the race course a few more times.

Not being a proper tradesman I had no handtools of my own and had to rely on Sandy to lend me the tools I required in the course of my work and on one occasion I needed a cold chisel, the English word for which I did not know. Sandy was willing to lend it to me, if only I could tell him what I wanted. Finally I demonstrated it to him and he decided that what I wanted was a hammer.

"No, not a hammer", said I and proceeded to draw it.

"Och Aye, you need a screwdriver?" and so we went through quite a pantomime before I got my chisel.

Overlooking all this was Jock Taylor, a not too bright giant of a labourer, who used to help me in lifting hammer mills. When I left with my chisel, he turned to Sandy and said:

"Don't nobody tell me that he is a bloody engineer, if he doesn't even know what a f...ing chisel is."

No amount of explanation by Sandy and others helped Jock to understand that my ignorance was due to a language problem.

We must have been a fairly cosmopolitan factory because in addition to the four Hungarians, we had a Canadian and an ex-RAF Pole. The two standard questions by any Scot on meeting a foreigner was firstly:

"How do you like our country?, followed by :

"What do you think of our weather?"

Ben Carlin, always answered the second question in his Canadian drawl:

"Your weather is just the same as at home, we have summer, fall, winter and spring, but in Canada it comes in this order and over one year, here we get it all in one day and you never know which comes next."

Mr. Nitupski was a bachelor and had a motor bike, which he allowed me to drive on the disused airfield of Turnbury, where we sometimes went to see the sea. He used to go for a drink after work on payday with Sandy McPherson and the tool room foreman and one day I was invited to join them. It was carefully explained to me that it is very important to buy a drink to everybody who bought you one and at that point I should have made some excuse and left to go home. Having drunk ample German beer with absolutely no alcohol content, it never occurred to me that I cannot cope with 4 pints of beer. As it happened, the 4 pints of beer were just the chasers, the real drinks were double nips of whiskies, four of them.

I have been drunk before and (once more) since, but never to that extent. I was put onto the bus in Ayr and the conductor was told to put me off the bus at Prestwick. He probably did. How I got to Boydfield Avenue, where I lived with John and Gilly, I do not know. All I know is what I was subsequently told by Gilly, who, seeing my state, sent me upstairs to bed. I got up to the landing, turned round to say good night, collapsed and rolled all the way down. Gilly was on her own, covered me up and left me there. I could not understand next morning, why I was still dressed and why I was sleeping on the floor.

John and Gilly had a semidetached house in Boydfield Ave, Prestwick, which was famous in Britain for being the only place where they never have fog. Consequently, a big airport was built there during the war and Prestwick became an all important stop for the planes which were ferried from USA. After the war it was still important because most of the planes from Europe stopped there prior to flying to Newfoundland and hence to Canada or New York.

Father was in London and went into partnership with an old established company of millers and grain merchants to manufacture and market some of his agricultural machinery. Almost nightly he was ringing us asking John to join him in his business. John was not too keen because he knew that it would mean the end of his independence.

On the other hand Father did need someone to assist him. He spoke no English then, nor did he do so in later years. Yet he managed to establish a business with the help of two people whose sole contribution was that they interpreted for him. Seeing that Father made considerable progress, John finally decided to sell the house in Scotland and move to London and work in the City where the offices of Mitchell, Colman & Co. were.

I moved to our next door neighbours, Mr and Mrs C. Brown. What their name was I might have known, but never used during the 6 months I lived with them and their two children. The children were young, but old enough to be taken to Sunday School, during which Mr & Mrs Brown stayed in seclusion in their bedroom and were never disturbed. Sunday morning occurred with the same regularity as did Friday night, when Mr. Brown came home after work to change and then left for the Gaiety Theatre in Ayr, where he and his 7 or 8 friends saw the same performance sitting in the same box every week for four or five weeks until the new month brought a different troop, but the same type of vaudeville acts. Two or three times, when somebody was to be absent from the group, I was invited to attend and I enjoyed the typical Scottish variety, but I would have refused to see it more than once.

I went to London for Christmas 1948 and had the interesting experience of having had too much money. What happened was that I saved money for my holidays and just before travelling to London I asked the bank to send me to the factory 25 pounds from my account. They did so, but instead of giving me Bank of England notes they gave me just one note for 25 pounds, issued by some obscure Scottish bank. It was a huge piece of parchment on which the denomination was hand written and signed personally by the Governor of the Bank who issued the note.

Luckily I already had my ticket and I had some change as well so that I made it in the overnight train to London without trouble, but there I could not find anybody who was prepared to change it. Finally I found a bank where they gave me real money for my Promissory Note, albeit I had to pay something like a shilling for the privilege.

Paul Sandor, who was a Director of the company I worked for and I became quite friendly and when his marriage broke up he suggested that I move into his house in Ayr as a lodger. We worked in the same factory and we cooked for ourselves, we went to the movies frequently and we were courting two Finnish girls who worked in the same school. Surprisingly, we did not go on each other's nerves. He had two children and while, during the week they boarded in a school, I assisted with them during the weekend.

Around mid-1949 I had to undergo an operation. Britain has just recently introduced the National Health Service, which meant free medicine and health care always provided you were healthy enough to be able to wait for it. I was in pain, which was insufficient grounds to jump the queue and eventually my parents suggested that I should go to London, where they knew a doctor who worked in a hospital. I did so and had the operation, after which I became interested in leaving Scotland and joining the rest of the family in London.

I left Scotland with mixed feelings. I was looking forward to what London and England would offer and at the same time I was sorry to leave my mates, who made me so welcome and who made my transition from a stateless DP to a resident of Robie Burns' town of Ayr so much easier. Contrary to their own propaganda, the Scots are generous to a fault and have a better sense of humour than they admit. I continued to think of Scotland and the Scots with a great deal of affection and I was grateful to have had the opportunity to commence my British life in Scotland.

Living with my parents in Richmond, I travelled to the City every morning with crowds of people carrying umbrellas and wearing bowler hats and with Father who spoke business to me on the train right upto to Bank Station. Since none of the other passenger spoke Hungarian, we were given a few looks, which never disturbed Father. He, John, Mr. George Rudolfer and Miss Sari Ignotus and I were the full staff of Mitchell, Colman & Co. Ltd and we were the foreigners in the midst of a large office, where Pyke and Sons Ltd. conducted their old established business importing and exporting grain. Our English colleagues, who sat only feet away from us in the communal office, quietly buying tons of wheat in Canada and selling it over the phone in Japan, must have been quite surprised at the antics of Father, who was screaming in Hungarian at his sons and his two other Hungarian victims. This caused us a great deal of embarrassment and there was nothing we could do to cause Father to turn down the volume.

He often insisted that his sons accompany him to business luncheons, where his Hungarian eating habits of slurping soup were most disturbing to us, but caused no sign of being noticed by the polite Englishmen with us. We tried to tell him, that there is no soup on the menu, but he could spot another diner having some and triumphantly ordered soup for himself.

Another habit of his was to tell a joke in Hungarian and suggesting that we translate it to the Englishman who sat there, understanding not one word, while Father was killing himself laughing at his own story. Usually it was an un-translatable joke on words and when we told him that, he simply started the story in his English and when he got one-third through it, and found it impossible to finish it, he shouted at us in Hungarian, that we should continue it for him. After a while we became quite expert at inventing endings to his jokes.

Soon after I went to London, Father imported a German gentleman who was a grain drying expert. He was accommodated in the Strand Palace Hotel and in his room, I was to have helped him to draw up the design of what became known as the Dryvent System. It turned out that Herr Gronert was not the expert we thought he was and there were large gaps in his knowledge and experience. He was becoming more and more homesick for his secretary, whose every action in bed was described to me daily in preference to grain drying by ventilation. Eventually he left and I remained the sole expert in the United Kingdom of an art, which was not as yet invented nor proven.

However, with Father realising a genuine need for grain drying in England, he was pushing ahead regardless and I was young enough not to see the dangers of my being unskilled and inexperienced in the then rather inexact art of grain drying. We sold our first installation to a Mr John Warburton in Shillinford in Oxfordshire, who was a well known identity and had confidence in those crazy Hungarians. The problem was that my Father and John also had confidence in my knowing what I was doing in calculating the size of the fan, the loading of the heater, the amount of air required and the maximum height the grain should be before it rots or catches fire due to spontaneous combustion.

I am afraid, I did not share their confidence, but there was nothing I could do, but set up the trunkings on the floor of the warehouse, connect the fan and wait for the trucks to deliver the grain. This they did and I watched with a heavy heart as the 200 tons of grain piled onto the trunkings of the very first Dryvent System. At the time a ton of wheat cost 33 pounds and I could see a claim for damages for at least 6600 pounds at a time when the expensive Landrover I was driving cost 450 pounds!

I did not give the impression of being scared out of my wits when, after starting up the fan and heaters, I accepted Mr & Mrs Warburton's invitation for dinner. I said good night to them after dinner and having a last nonchalant look at the grain, left in my car. However, unbeknown to them I travelled but a mile or two and stopped, waited till darkness and than quietly tiptoed back into the warehouse to check my installation and take the temperature of the grain throughout the night, - snatching a few minutes of sleep in a corner of the warehouse. In the morning I disappeared, washed my face in a pub and returned to the Warburton's asking them casually if they knew how the drying of the grain was progressing.

I must say that all was well with this first and subsequent installations, (except one in Ireland, where the farmer decided to save electricity by not switching on the fan and was surprised when the grain did not get drier), and if the Dryvent System did not become the success it deserved, it was because once again Father was too early with one of his ideas and much too early in giving it up. The method of drying with the aid of ventilation became the standard throughout the World and the method I devised then, and the book of instructions and explanation of the Dryvent System I wrote in 1950 is still as true as it ever was.

Later that year I commenced studying agriculture at the Harper Adams Agricultural College in Newport, Shropshire. I was interested in the subjects, especially because I was not required to sit for exams at the end of my shortened course of one year. Yet I learned sufficient to be able to understand farming practices and connect these sciences to the agricultural engineering I learned at Universities in Hungary and Germany and through my Father and his incessant reading of trade papers.

It was not possible for me stay at College and therefore I lived in one of the many pubs of the village. Many years later I read in a booklet my Mother-in-Law wrote about the origins of her family, that my future wife's Huguenot forebear was the vicar of the church I overlooked from my window in the tiny village of Newport.

While I was there, we celebrated the 100th jubilee of the College and Princess Elizabeth, the future Queen came to visit the place. There were a lot of preparations leading to the visit and it was suggested to Mr Price, the Principal that he should introduce some foreign students to the Princess. There was only one student who actually came from overseas to attend the college, Mohammed Nemjoo, a middle aged Iranian and so they remembered me, who was at least born in foreign lands. When the Princess came past us, the Principal introduced us as "the foreign students" and Mohammed had a little discussion with H.R.H., who turned to me and asked me:

"And where do you come from?" expecting that I would tell her about some exotic place, but she was totally flabbergasted, when I replied:

"From Richmond, Surrey, Mam" which proves that if you are given a role to play, prepare yourself for all eventualities. For the rest of my life, and probably beyond, I will regret that I did not say that I came specially to the College from Katmandu, Alaska or at least Hungary.

In 1996 this handshake was being re-played, at the exact spot, but one of the originals was unavailable.

While I was in College during the week, Father met me for the weekends in Grantham, where in cahoots with Dick Bates[1], we were designing a forage harvester. It was an interesting idea and with a lot of ingenuity and the use of some outlandish improvisations, it actually worked. A combine harvester, designed to thrash dry grain grown on dry stalks was to be converted at the end of the harvesting season into a forage harvester, capable of chopping up wet, clinging grass and kale and other gooey matter which felt and looked as if they would have been created for the sole purpose of clogging up everything they were in touch with.

It did work in a reasonable fashion and in fact was good enough to be entered in the International Forage Harvester Competition against such great organisations as John Deer, International Harvester and Massey-Harris, etc. Unbelievable as it may sound, it won first price in the Prototype Section and was certainly the peak of my achievements as a designer of agricultural machinery.

The forage harvester was not the only design in which I was involved. There were such machines as the Strobust, an adaptation of the old Robust chopper which in Admiral Horthy's farm used to have the name of Robur. As the name may suggest the Strobust was used to chop up straw. Its choice of name was better than the product, but it worked. It was made in a Kingston-on-Thames factory and when after 3 months of work, it was wheeled out into a neighbouring lot and started to pick up the straw strewn specially for the occasion, one of the onlookers, who must have been taking bets that it would not work, threw down a handful of money and exclaimed:

"Good God, the bastard works."

In 1950 Father was 58 years old and had a tremendous drive. While he was frustrated because of his inability to make himself understood, he did not allow this to slow him down. The fact that he could not understand what others told him, was his eventual downfall. The fact that he was told in Hungarian what problems there were, was of no interest to him, because the information came from his sons and employees, who, according to him, did not have his experience and therefore could not know. Photo shows Mitchell, Colman stand at the Royal Show.

The Company was so busy searching for new items to make, believing that the next novelty would finally take off and be a goldmine, that only the accountants noticed that the meagre sales were not sufficient to keep paying for the ever increasing staff and for the development costs. As the accountant could not speak Hungarian and in any case used to be employed by the partners, Father could and would not listen to him and he regarded him as a superfluous panic merchant.

When the crunch came, the partners allowed the major supplier to take a small portion of the shares in the Company in exchange for outstanding invoices. Later the capital was increased and Father was invited to either put in his proportion of the money or accept a smaller share of the total or failing this the Company would be bankrupted. Father could not raise any money and the threat of "his" Company being made bankrupt could not even be considered by him. In this fashion he lost his interest in the Company, although he obtained an agreement according to which the new owners of Mitchell, Colman were to pay in his own or his wife's lifetime a percentage on the Company's turnover.

John was invited to stay on as the Marketing Director and he and the Company moved to Manchester. Father was receiving his commission payments and he continued to negotiate on behalf of the Company with overseas suppliers. I was the only one who was without a job and started to read the Positions Vacant ads in the papers. I was looking forward to obtaining a proper job as I had not been paid a salary or wages during the many months I worked for the Company. It never occurred to either me or Father that I should be on the payroll and at the age of 24, working for him, I had to fight for every gift of pocket money I was given. On the other hand I was quite used to this, because from the age of 17, whenever I worked for my Father, I was expected to do so in the interest of the family and not for money. In fairness, I was always given pocket money, albeit never without being told that I should spend less!

Getting a job was not as easy as I imagined. I wrote to all the major manufacturers of agricultural machinery and offered my services. Having been involved in the design of the price winning forage harvester and other well publicised implements I was sure that the recipients of my letter will try to beat each other in obtaining my services. Indeed, I was invited to quite a number of manufacturers between Dagenham, Kent and Kilmarnock in Scotland, with such people as Ford, Massey-Ferguson and International Harvester all wishing to interview me and offering a job. However I always managed to talk myself out of getting the job, - I either insisted that I get more salary than they offered or I felt that I should start at a higher position than they wished to place me.

Suddenly I realised that I ran out of big manufacturers and it was time to lower my sights. I went to see the Labour Exchange in Richmond and they sent me to the specialised executive office in the City, where they could only offer me the dole payment until such time as they found a vacancy for me. I returned to Richmond where, after completing a few forms they gave me my first dole payment of 37/6d.

Once I walked out of the Labour Exchange I realised the mistake I made in accepting the money. At the time I was in England just three years and although after three years I was allowed to change jobs without first obtaining the approval of the Home Office, I was still not free of their control and I was certainly not a British citizen or even a resident. I feared that when I apply for citizenship I might be handicapped because I became a burden to the taxpayer and of course I came to Britain with a Labour Permit to work and not to draw the dole.

Within minutes I returned to the Labour Exchange and asked to see the man, who so kindly arranged my dole payment during the past hour. I asked him to accept the return of my money. In the true spirit of the public service he first tried to talk me out of my rash action, then explained matters to the Manager, who came to ask me to be sensible and please go away with the money.

Next they spent an hour or so on the telephone enquiring as to what course of action they are to take and finally drew up a document which I signed, the cashier accepted the money, gave me a receipt for it and members of that Labour Exchange presumably dined out on the story of having had the first ever dole payment repaid in the history of the British Isles.

Next day the Richmond Labour Exchange rang me and offered me a job in Surbiton in a tractor factory. I accepted. I was to be a fitter's mate, i.e. an unskilled labourer in a large workshop where they assembled imported Allis Chalmers tractors and bulldozers. Here, but for a careless crane driver I would still be, but he put a two ton engine on my index finger, causing my very welcome retirement from becoming a professional assembler of bulldozers.

 

FUN AND GAMES

 

In addition to my accident another event during my four months at this factory stand out in my memory. I refer to a dinner invitation I had from George Konig, a photographer friend, whose girlfriend was sharing a flat with some other girls. George and his Mother organised a dinner party to which all the inhabitants of the flat, together with some fellows, were also invited. To make up pairs I was included and I had a pleasant evening with George and his various friends and an excellent meal. (Photo taken at party in September 1951.)

Some weeks later, in August 1951, I was invited to a party the same girls were giving in their flat and I was again utilised to make up numbers; this time I was to be paired with George's girlfriend's sister who was visiting from Scotland. However, before I even had a chance to be introduced to my blind date, George told me that he now prefers the sister to his girlfriend and would I please look for somebody else amongst the multitude of guests.

One of the girls from the flat, whom I already met at George's dinner party I found attractive and good fun, but she was being attended by a New Zealand guy. When later in the evening we all adjourned to Battersey Fun Park, I made some enquiries and found that this fellow was just a friend, keeping an eye on Joy on behalf of her ex-boyfriend in New Zealand. I decided that if someone needs to keep an eye on her it may as well be me and thus a friendship commenced, which seemed to have withstood the ravages of time.

Joy Marshall was visiting England from New Zealand with a girlfriend, Theda Christensen. They were both school teachers and were working during school terms and sightseeing all over the British Isles and also on the Continent during their holidays. They lived in a fifth floor flat (no lift) in Weatherby Mansions in Earls Court and spent a lot of their time in "ye gods" i.e. in the top galleries of the theatres of London.

Even though we started to go out together, their visits to the theatres continued without my participation, because during the week I could not get myself clean enough to be able to take a girl out. Thus, during the week we conducted our love affair on the 'phone while we spent most of the weekend in each others company. There were parties, romantic dinners in the Czech Restaurant where the Chef was Tommy Lorand, an old army friend, gypsy music in the Hungarian Csárda and pub crawls along the Thames. For culture we visited galleries, theatres and the odd opera and concert.

That our backgrounds were completely different may have helped our falling in love with each other. The only similarity was that our mothers were better educated than our fathers, both of whom were self made and self taught. But that is were the similarity ended. Her family life was tranquil, mine was not; her parents respected each other and their children, mine never ceased to criticise; they lived in the country and in a peaceful happy World, we lived in the City and we never knew peace. Their country was God's own New Zealand and we were Stateless. However: she was woman and I was man. Vive la difference.

After my accident I had to get myself a white collar job and an engineering consultant required a junior draughtsman in his office in Richmond. I accepted the job more for the experience than for the salary. Little did I know that the salary will only seldom be paid by our boss, who did not receive his consulting fees from Allard Cars, whose expensive cars were not selling very well. It was soon realised that Allard and my boss and his employees are all in need of an income. It was suggested by Father that a friend of his and I establish a Company to import and market some agricultural accessories, which he will find on his frequent trips to European machinery shows. We started off as a mail order business marketing a farm mower sharpener. I worked on a part time basis and earned £4 per week, while my other boss continued not paying me my wages of £6 per week.

Joy and I were keen to listen to classical music and when one of her flat mates moved out with the only radio they shared, I suggested that she and I buy a radiogram together. My salary, even when paid by my boss was just enough for me to live on, provided I continued to live free of charge at my parent's flat and I could certainly not pay half of the £52 the radiogram would cost. However, Joy could advance the money as she was earning well, especially because due to a New Zealand - Gt.Britain reciprocal agreement she did not need to pay any income tax during her two years visit[2].

So we bought the radiogram (78 rpm of course) and I was paying it off at the rate of a quid a week. I just finished paying my half, when the time came for her to return to New Zealand. This caused a problem for me as I was to loose both my girl friend and also my half of the radiogram. To overcome my problems, I started to make cautious and very tentative enquiries by asking Joy what her reaction would be if I would one day, - not now, mind you, but one day in the future, always provided, etc. ask her to marry me and thus avert the problems of having to decide who gets the radiogram.

Joy didn't say yes in so many words, but allowed me to think that should I pop the question properly, her answer would not be in the negative and we left it at that. Poor lass, she did not know me well enough to realise that I will never ask her to marry me, but arrange matters in such a way that she never noticed being railroaded into becoming my wife.

It is said that during a leap year girls are allowed to ask men for their hand in marriage. I waited patiently until mid-February in the leap year of 1952 and when no request came I purchased a ring with two tiny sapphires and an equally tiny diamond and arranged to take Joy out to dinner on the evening of the 29th February 1952. Impatience was burning a hole in my pocket where the ring was and thus once we had a couple of drinks at the Denmark pub in Old Brompton Road, I could not resist stopping Joy on the pavement and putting the ring on her finger outside the pub.[3].

That she accepted me as her fiancee was made obvious by the pride and excitement she showed her ring to the lady in charge of the cloakroom and toilets at the 96 Club, where Tommy Lorand's girlfriend, Jacqueline was performing as the resident singer and dancer.

The very next day Joy's cousin, Isabel Paterson arrived from New Zealand and soon I was writing a letter to her parents in which I asked to be allowed to marry their daughter. Having had some experience in writing applications for jobs, my letter to the Marshall's was in the form of an application for the job of son-in-law. To their credit they entered into the spirit of things and although they must have been disappointed that Joy married while away from New Zealand and a foreigner at that, they gave me the job and their blessing. I am glad to say that as years went on our relationship became stronger and ever friendlier.

Being engaged was great and while I was keen to be married, I was quite slow to suggest when. It never occurred to me to even discuss it with Joy, we were too busy enjoying ourselves. Joy lived with three other girls in a flat on the fifth floor of Weatherby Mansions in Earls Court (also referred to as Kangaroo Valley) and although there was no lift in the building, we were young and did not mind the exercise. I was living at home, but we spent all of our free time together.

There was lots to do in London and with all our friends being young, unmarried, carefree and broke, we had a great deal of fun. We went to the flicks (movies) and to the theatre, - mostly to Richmond Repertory on Mondays, when the actors did not as yet knew all the lines and thus the cost of a ticket was more affordable.

One evening Joy's cousin Gold and her flat mates were entertaining us in their Hampstead flat when after dinner we all went to nearby Hampstead Heath for a walk. We had a few drinks and thus I was not at all surprised when our group of girls started to fool around and I found myself on the grass and being held down until I was to name the date of the wedding. It was no excuse that I had no calendar available, because the girls brought one along and thus we all agreed that the 30th August would be the Saturday to get spliced.

Naming a date and preparing for it were two completely non-related matters. One was easy and the other was not. It did not help me that the first wedding in my life I was to attend was to be my own and therefore I knew very little of the customs and conventions of any wedding, not to mention an Anglo-Saxon type. But I was ready to learn.

I also decided to change my name from Kalman to Colman. I knew of the complications of changing a name through Deed Poll and was prepared for all the problems and expenses to save Joy from having to spell her new name every time. I wrote to the Home Office and to my amusement all I had to do was to "assume" a new name and ask for a new Ration Book from the Food Office. Had I been British born or at least naturalised I would have had to go through the rigmaroles of the Deed Poll, but not being a "natural born British person", I could do whatever I liked with my name. There you are, being unnaturally born had some advantages.

Joy's parents from New Zealand sent us 50 Pounds Sterling and their regrets that they could not attend our wedding. They suggested Mrs Marshall's cousin as a suitable person to give away Joy and on their suggestion we visited a church in the country as a possible venue. However, we decided to marry in Richmond, where Father Chambers at St. John's was prepared to marry us, provided we became proper church goers. We were prepared to give it a go, but even than I could not become a sincere believer and since those days, I have never made the absence of religious beliefs a secret.

I even received a charming letter from my Mother-in-Law-to-be, suggesting that I should give up my Roman Catholic religion and become an Anglican for the sake of all the little Colman children to come and for her peace of mind. In an equally charming letter, I assured her, that I will not mind the children becoming good Anglicans, but I will not change my religion, since I feel it of no great importance which church I am not attending.

We booked the church and we booked our reception in a Richmond hotel and arranged for the printing of our invitations. No sooner did we start to relax, the hotel cancelled the reception and we started all over again. This time we booked in a Cafe/Reception place situated on the same round-about as the church.

We started to look for somewhere to live and we rented the first flat we looked at. It was referred by the owner as a "garden flat" since the back door led into a garden. In the event it was a basement flat, as used by the servants of the house in the days, when a well to do family in 3 Royston Road, Richmond, Surrey would live upstairs and "they" would be "downstairs".

Joy moved in and started to clean the flat 2 weeks before the wedding and during one of my visits, while relaxing to the tune of Mozart my eye caught a toilet-brush under the settee. I was quite disappointed to notice that my future wife should leave such piece of equipment lying about in the sitting room and was wondering how I should tell her, when I perceived that the toilet-brush moved. After a while it moved again and my disappointment gave way to admiration while I watched Joy coaxing with a trail of milk the little hedgehog, which our toilet-brush turned out to be.

The week before the wedding Joy and Gold moved out of London to stay with her relations, Pat and George. Group Captain George Watt, CBE, AFC, etc. was stationed at Slough and the plan was that on the day of the wedding they will drive to Richmond where they will dress at my parents' flat.

In the morning of Saturday, 30th August 1952 I left Richmond and took delivery of the cheapest hire Ford Anglia at the other end of London and joined Gilly and John Kalman in their flat to change into our Moss Bros supplied morning coats, commonly known as monkey suits.

With my best man, brother John, we did not need to wait long before the organ sounds suggested that my bride is coming towards the altar and to this day I am enchanted with the picture my beautiful bride and George made as they walked down the isle. All went well, neither of us fluffed our lines and we were well and truly married at 4 p.m. on the 30th August 1952.

The only problem, which could have marred proceedings was the fact that one of the fairly large guests got stuck in the doorway of the church while the guests were waiting to exit. It was while we were photographed prior to us entering our Rolls-Royce for the 100 meter trip to Matthiae's Cafe, where afternoon tea, sandwiches, cakes and Hungarian wine from Tokaj were served. Although the majority of guest were friends of ours or my parents', the Kiwi group included two of Joy's cousins[4], 4 of her classmates, her "mate" Theda and many others including one lady who was present at her parents' wedding.

 

On my side of the church were my friends and all the friends my mother could muster, including some people she invited by phone on the morning of the wedding. Also I had the interesting experience of one fellow, whom I last saw or heard of in 1943 ring me and tell me that he will come to my wedding. I have not heard from him since, which worries me, as he promised to bring along his wedding present.

 

 

  Click for next Part.

 

 

 

or

 

 

 Click to return to Contents Page.