Chapter 18
Various People
Before I resumed my work, one day a thought came into my mind: "Actually why did I begin to learn English?” Yes, to be able to apply for a TESCO expert mission somewhere in the world. Why the hell then do I sit here and do not try to get a mission.
I took the telephone register and looked up the phone numbers and address of TESCO. I caught a bus and then limped to the office building. The gate-keeper showed me to the responsible clerk and she offered me a place to sit down. She was very busy and made me wait. When she finished her typing she asked:
"Are you looking for an assignment?”
"Yes”, I said, "is there a possibility?”
She informed me that she was organizing new assignments for two countries, Libya and Iraq. There were others in charge for other countries, but no English-speaking experts were needed that time anywhere else.
She informed me that there were good perspectives for me, only I had to choose between Iraq and Libya. Not long before there was an air raid by Israeli planes that resulted in the damage of an Iraqi nuclear facility. That meant, Iraq was not safe enough for me. I chose Libya.
I had to give in translations and copies about my certificates and my CV. They accepted my application, and permission process – first by my employer, then by the ministry in charge – has been launched. In a couple of months I was called to a week-long training course about the unusual conditions. It included also the lecture of an interior official about intelligence and counter-intelligence. In special briefings we have got the necessary every-day information from experts being at home on holiday from Libya.
There remained a waiting period of some months until in 1975 we would be sent to the spot. At the finish, as our passports would be under issue, Russian foreign minister Mr Gromyko would visit Libya in the spring of 1975. It would be followed by a refusal from the part of Libya to all our experts’ missions.
After two months at home on sick leave I began to carry on activities in the shipyard construction bureau. There were a lot to do, as my tasks have been piled up rather than solved. Besides, there was a conference on shipbuilding organized by the Szczecin shipyard in Poland. Three of us had been nominated to it in the previous year by the Scientific Society for Mechanical Engineers, where I had been a member for four years. My fellow participants were my colleague, Steve, who had been doing his study at the Technical University and Otto, a riverboat captain, who had come to work with us a short time before. His story is worth for a few lines.
In 1956 the uprising had found him on board his tug-boat in Vienna. He was her commander. Hearing the news, he assembled his people and told them freedom had come and everyone was to go where he wanted. He himself would stay in Vienna, he said.
He went ashore. But, after a walk he turned it over in his mind and made a U-turn. As soon as he reached his boat he took command again and the boat returned home. He was unaware of certain happenings. Well, after his going ashore the radio operator reported all to headquarters. For this reason on arrival he was arrested and taken into custody. In a couple of months he was released, but he was stripped of his rank and he was fired.
He began to work as a porter in the shipping company’s duty-free harbour. After about ten years of manual work, he was found by our shipyard, and they offered him the job of internal captain that was to command the moving of hulls after launch from the launch-site to the embankment and to command ships on their running trials. He did it for some years, until my boss discovered a talent for precise work in him. He was named head of Documentation Department.
His knowledge about shipping and "havaries” had earned him a job as expert for the municipal water police. He is a good example for a man fallen down from a high position and gaining appreciation again by his honest strive. Well, we spent the four days of the conference useful, I with my English understanding keeping place there and they, walking in town.
One of the engineers of the machinery department, a woman, Clare, had an uncle in the U.S.A. He nominated her to the National Geographic Magazine and she took it to me to read every month. It became my favourite reading and it has been ever since. In 1976 my wife would suggest to me to pay for the next year’s periodicals and since that time I am a member of the society.