THE RECORD
November 29, 2000

Fiat Lux

by Ed Deak

Well, the Canadian elections will be over in one day by the time these lines get into print, but the USA will still have no President after three weeks of legal maneuvering, now in front of the Supreme Court. I hope they drag it out another few weeks.The funniest part of this scenario are the offers from Africa, the Balkans and South America to send election observers to America for the recount and even UN peacekeepers to ensure that no fraud takes place. Remember the hullabaloo only a short time ago when Serbian President Milosevic was called all kinds of dirty names by the USA for not relinquishing the office after he was beaten in the polls?

How dare we compare the dark Balkans with the bastion of the free world's market driven democracy? I'm sorry to say, very easily. Now, anybody who criticises US policies is automatically labelled as "anti-American." Well, if we criticize Canadian policies, does it make us "anti-Canadian"? I don't think so.

There was a time when America couldn't do wrong . Especially in Europe, where we looked upon the USA as one rung below Heaven. Where people had lots to eat, wore good clothes, were free to choose their destinies, the foremen weren't allowed to kick or beat workers and so on and on.
I was sentenced to death by the nazi Hungarian Army in the last days of World War 2 for high treason and espionage and the war ended just a day or two before my execution. We never saw anything so beautiful as well fed looks, the uniforms and the first Jeeps of the US Rainbow division. Admittedly, they stole my watch and cheap fountain pen at gunpoint and some of the soldiers had wrist watches on both arms up to their elbows, but it was a good bargain in exchange for my life.

In the first winter after the war millions of Europeans would have starved to death had it not been for the food shipments by the US government of Harry Truman. After I left the army hospital in 1946 I went ot work for the US Army at their largest supply depot on a former Luftwaffe airfield in Wels, Austria. The money of our wages was worthless, but they gave us dyed uniforms and a couple of meals a day and most of us would have done anything for that extra food and to get rid of our old German uniform piece.

The corruption of the place was something else, but we were used to powerful people exploiting others, so we just closed our eyes. Most of us were hoping that war would break out between the West and the Soviets and we could join the US Army to fight. We were searched every time we left work and our quarters were also periodically ransacked by the Military Police. A lot of people were caught stealing and left the job in handcuffs, but I restricted my activities to the blackmarket deals of stolen goods. The blackmarket was the only way one could get just about anything over and above the starvation rations, the two lousy cigarettes a day and no clothes, or shoes in any store. Everybody had to do it to survive.

A funny thing happened one day.... The troops used to wear brightly coloured scraves of some silky looking material as part of their uniforms. Red for the artillery, yellow for the infantry, blue for the constabulary and so on. One day a small wooden box of green scarves arrived on a special order for the staff of the Supreme Commander General Mark Clark in Vienna. As the box was transported from one hangar to another it disappeared. The MPs and the Hungarian camp police went nuts. We were body searched several times, our quarters and beds torn apart, but they never found the scarves. But when I went to visit my girlfriend, now my wife a week or two later I took one of the green scarves for her.... Who knows, It may have been the one General Clark never wore? She had the scarf for many years. After we moved up here we heard the Clark was still alive and we thought we'd send the scarf to him, but it must have been lost in the move and we never found it.

My first disillusionment with the American ways started in 1947 when I came down with appendicitis which went badly wrong. We had no antibiotics and I was lying in hospital, across from the camp, with an open wound for 7 weeks. One day I received a letter from my department head, a greasy, fat little jerk by the name of Major Martino, ordering me back to work, or face dismissal. I wrote back to him explaining my situation, well known to my carpenter crew who came to visit me regularly. The next thing I knew I was fired.

That was the time when I first started thinking about what kind of a system would fire a seriously sick person, lying in hospital? Slowly, our American dream began to fade and never returned. We had a chance to move to the States in 1951, but cancelled out the last minute. It took us another 4 years before we could come to Canada, but we never regretted it.

More on this subject next time......

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