Interesting Characters I have Known

 

Interesting Characters I have Known

 As I watch some of the historical specials about the Second World War, my memory is taken back to people that I have met through the years who lived through parts of it and other parts of history.  I’ll relate a short anecdote about several such past friends and acquaintances.

 Mark Raczynski was an engineer that I met at Caltex New York.  He was also a member of the Polish lesser nobility commanding a horse cavalry unit in 1939, trying to stop the Nazi panzer attack into Poland.  Later, he was a defender of Warsaw.  Mark had a pictorial of Warsaw before the Nazi’s levelled it, and could point out defensive positions the Poles used against the Nazi invaders.

 Jan Baazer was a Dutch engineer who was a carpool buddy of mine in Rotterdam, Netherlands.  Jan was an ant-Nazi student during WWII, who was captured by the occupying Nazis and sent to a slave labor camp in Germany.  Jan and a friend escaped, made their way through Vichy France into Spain, and eventually to England and the U.S.  Jan joined the Dutch military in exile and trained Dutch marines in the U.S.  He got his engineering degree from MIT after the war and went back to Holland.

 Jan Mienstra? (sp) Was another Dutch engineer that I knew in Holland.  Jan was an engineer a a refinery in Pekanbaru, Dutch Sumatra when the Japanese invaded the Ditch East Indies in their quest for oil for their military machine.  As Jan told it, they drew straws as to who would stay back and sabotage the refinery before the advancing Japanese.  Jan got the short straw, helped damage the refinery, and was apprehended and tortured by the Japanese.  He eventually escaped, but still walked with a limping gait from the damage done by his captors.

 Ray Driksna was my age, and he escaped the Soviets, not the Nazis.  Ray replaced me as supervisor of the Process Engineering Persian Gulf Group in New York, when I moved to another department.  Ray at that point was an American citizen, but he was originally from Latvia, lost his family to the occupying Russians (he never said how), made his way to France where he continued his education, and thence to Australia, where he got his engineering degree.  He eventually came to the U.S. and became an American citizen.

 Through the years, have known European captains of gunboats on the rivers of China during that period of gunboat diplomacy.  I have known an industrial helicopter pilot drilling for oil in Somalia, and we had common friends in Lebanon.  I’ve played golf and partied with an Australian pilot flying for Middle East Airlines. And many other characters through the years.  Maybe I’ll try to write short paragraphs as memory gets tweaked. 

Ray Gruszecki

November 11, 2020