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A Personably Speedy Episode of Twentieth Century Drama

Omar Alansari-Kreger

Born in 1920, he grew up beneath the clout of confusion matched by bellows of
social disarray. His father died from an injury he received when working at Hamburg's
once bustling shipyard. His mother sent him to work at the age of seven to feed a family
of five. As a child he remembered walking past politically inspired fliers that chanted out
slogans expressing great anger at society. Political orators would randomly speak and
everywhere he went people were trying to build a revolution; the only problem is that in
the beginning they didn't know how. The entire nation was in uproar and no one really
knew what was going on.
He worked six days a week and went to school for three. Due to his limited
amount of time in school he had to pay close attention to his studies in order to
successfully prepare for examinations. Despite his limited attendance he managed to
achieve exceptional markings. As a teenager life didn't seem fair. After the passing of
his father the family started to break apart. There were no uncles left. The ones that
survived World War One ended up dead or turned into deranged drunks out of touch
with society. He stood there looking into the autumn sunset as he sat in his hometown
of Merseburg Germany. The wind blew the leaves underneath the park bench in which
he was sitting and he suddenly felt cold air all over his body.
Life seemed so bland and he knew that the world was in fact bigger than the
narrow walls of Merseburg. While rubbing his hands together for warmth he heard a
sharp series of cracks coming from the air above his head. For the first time in his life he
saw an airplane fly over the city. He thought that the man flying the craft was a true
purveyor of the world. Things kept on changing in the nation; a new revolutionary group
that fought its way to the top seized power and outlawed any opposition. It almost
seemed so surreal to see how much of the nation transformed overnight. Despite these
changes great opportunities were put forward without political affiliations involved. He
wanted to become a pilot and the original Lufthansa Airline was looking for young and
eager pilots. At age 17 he left Merseburg for Hamburg where he had enrolled to attend
flight school.
His mother suddenly died a week after he left and maintained casual contact with
his siblings until his death much later; however, after World War Two it took 15 years to
reestablish contact. After passing flight school with flying colors he was fully initiated
into Lufthansa as a pilot. He flew all across Europe with the occasional visit to Iceland
and Greenland. He couldn't get over how captivating it was to have a bird's eye view of
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the world. Suddenly, in 1939 and having been nominally apolitical (largely due to the
conditions of the nation at the time), World War Two broke out. The Third Reich
selected numerous pilots from Lufthansa to fly in the newly reformed Luftwaffe. He was
part of that selection. After going through the Luftwaffe Flight Academy he found himself
flying missions over occupied France until the invasion of the Soviet Union went into
effect.
His first combat missions were fought against Soviet forces deep behind enemy
lines. The winters were cold and the conditions were tough, but in this campaign he
made a name for himself and rose to the rank of colonel. Once the war shifted against
the Third Reich he gradually requested transfers to the Western Front up until the point
he was assigned to assist with the defense of the Siegfried Line; that line partitioned
Allied forces with those of the Third Reich. 1945 approached quickly. He stopped
counting the days, months, and years because hope seemed to be a lost concept
because everyone knew that they had already lost; it was just going to be a question of
how bad. After flying a bombing run mission near Ghent in Belgium a single antiaircraft
battery shot and struck his aircraft.
His three o'clock wing was split in half and he spiraled out of control back down
to the Earth. He remembered the crash, but nothing afterwards. He blacked out, but
survived. Several hours later, with blood dripping down his head and a bad headache,
he awoke to the noise of an approaching enemy patrol closing in fast. They were British!
He could tell by their equipment and he spoke conversational English to help with their
identification. Most officers serving within the ranks of the Third Reich were outfitted
with capsules of deadly poison; that was supposed to signify the honorable thing to do
when captured by the enemy. He pulled out a capsule and his service pistol stowed
beside his right hip. Lead command officers would often demonstrate how to properly
commit suicide in an honorable fashion so that enemy capture could be avoided
outright.
He sat there and tried to decide the hardest question of his life. A rush of energy
came to him, he put a capsule in between his teeth and pointed the pistol to his right
temple and kept both objects in place for a minute. He had to make a choice; will it be
life or death? After that tensest minute of a lifetime his life prevailed. He spit out the
poison capsule from his teeth and threw the pistol into the cockpit of his destroyed
aircraft. He took his white scarf off worn beneath his flight jacket and started to
approach the British patrol on foot. He surrendered. They apprehended him with
respect, but with the treatment of a prisoner of war. They interrogated him at British
Command Headquarters in Antwerp a day later. A British military tribunal sentenced him
to five years in captivity without a trail! The notification of his imprisonment was as
sudden as it was swift.
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They transported him to Great Britain where he would serve the duration of his
sentence. Within the compound he served his sentence with fellow German officers and
they formed a little community together in a gated compound not far from the current
location of London's Heathrow International Airport. After his sentence he didn't know
what destiny had in store for him, but he knew there was nothing back home in
Germany; word spread past that Germany was in complete ruins after the war. From the
United Kingdom he decided to immigrate to the United States; he wrestled that with the
proposition of expatriating to the United Kingdom. He felt that the idea of the United
States epitomized the very notion of a fresh start. After a long process he made the
move.
In 1951 he arrived in New York City, but predetermined from the United Kingdom
that Chicago was where he wanted to be. There was a significant German community
there with plenty of postwar opportunities for immigrants. In mid February of 1951 he
arrived in a wintery Chicago wearing a grey suit, black overcoat, and dark grey hat. In
his arms were his only possessions in the world; one briefcase and one suitcase. He
found a room to rent for a period of time after working several odd jobs that ranged from
night watchman to evening bookkeeper.
In the spring of 1951 he applied and was later accepted into the Chicago Police
Department; provided at that point he still had to put himself through the police
academy. After graduating from the academy he volunteered to be a motorbike cop and
pursued the American dream doing just that. He finally got his second chance to start a
new life.
He was many things to many different people and ended up in Minneapolis to sell
insurance and industrial publishing equipment simultaneously up until his retirement. He
died in 1999. He wanted his writings burned or kept with his eternal resting place. As
much as he wanted to run from the past he couldn't escape it and that presented itself
as a final lesson in which he taught to his loving grandson.
His name was Fredrick Russell Kreger.