I'd fought in the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, having left Oxford to do so.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
It would have been amazing to have been a student at Oxford during that golden moment in the 1910s, rubbing elbows with the likes of Aldous Huxley and T.E. Lawrence, before World War I shattered everything forever.
I had fought for my independence and fought for my freedom to do as I chose.
I didn't even have a clear idea of why I wanted to go to Oxford - apart from the fact I had fallen in love with the architecture. It certainly wasn't out of some great sense of academic or intellectual achievement. In many ways, my education only began after I'd left university.
I would fight for my liberty so long as my strength lasted, and if the time came for me to go, the Lord would let them take me.
But I would have executed much greater things, had not government always opposed my exertions, and placed others in situations which would have suited my talents.
I knew that as a pharmacy student I would obtain military deferment. As I was of Jewish origin, this meant that I would not have to serve in a forced labor unit of the Hungarian army.
If I hadn't left Czechoslovakia, I would have been dead.
Could I have but a line a century hence crediting a contribution to the advance of peace, I would yield every honor which has been accorded by war.
I fought for peace in the fifties.
I'd come out of the army after five years as a medic. I was a medical administrator and we ran hospitals, and I was a Captain in the army at the end, in 1945.