FROM UMBRELLA TO DIVE BOMBER
1924: My home is the
rectory of the little village of Eiferdau in Silesia: I am eight. One Sunday
my
father and mother go into the neighboring town of Schweidnitz
for an “Aviation Day.” I am furious that I am not allowed to go with them, and when they return my
parents have to tell me over and over again what they have seen there. And so I ask her about the man
who jumped from a great height with a parachute and came safely down to earth. This delights me,
and I badger my sisters for an exact description of the man and the parachute. Mother sews me a
little model, I attach a stone to it and I am proud when stone and parachute slowly drifts to the ground.
I think to myself that what a stone can do I must be able to do too, and when I am left alone for a
couple of hours the following Sunday I lose no time in exploiting my new discovery.
Upstairs to the
first floor! I climb on to the windowsill with an umbrella open it up take a
quick look down, and before I have time to be afraid I jump. I land on
a soft flower bed and am surprised to find that I have twisted every muscle and actually broken a leg.
In the trick way in which umbrellas are apt to behave, the thing has turned inside out and hardly braked my
fall, but nevertheless I abide my resolve: I will be an airman.
One of
my sisters is studying medicine, and consequently the possibility of finding the large
sum of money needed to have me trained as a civil air-pilot does
not even come under consideration, so I decide to become a sport instructor when I am 17 years old.
Quite
unexpectedly the Luftwaffe is created, and with it a demand for applicants for
a reserve of officers. Black sheep that I am, I see little hope of
passing the difficult entrance examination. Several fellows I know have been accepted but they have high grades.
To be continued…
DR. KARL WALLACE D.D.S.
