Brandy: Portrait Of An Intelligence Officer

By Chuck Render

This book will take you along on a historical odyssey throughout the world and into many little-known and unpublished events that explain, for better or for worse, why the world situation is what it is today. Frank M. “Brandy” Brandstetter’s incredible life is as an exemplar to the generations to follow as they take up their flag and rendezvous with destiny.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elderberry Press
• Release date: Nov 5, 2010
• ISBN: 9781458145468

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Brandy: Portrait Of An Intelligence Officer

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Render and Frank M. Brandstetter

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(Table of Contents at end of book)

Note from the Author

My conscience compels me to acknowledge the influence five fine gentlemen had upon my life and upon the contents of this book. My father, Ferenc Brandstetter, saw to it that I was educated as he was with strict military discipline and the Maria Theresian sense of pride, integrity, justice, and dignity beginning when I was a small child. General Matthew B. Ridgway ingrained his philosophy that loyalty is paramount and if you disagree, you speak up, but you salute and carry out your orders as long as you are in uniform. My father-in-law, Hartley Fiske Peart, taught me the power of politics and commitment to ensure that this country is led only by those who are honorable and able. Bishop M. Joseph Green strengthened my religious faith. Don Carlos Trouyet was my partner, not only in business ventures, but in providing for those who desperately needed help to survive, thus strengthening both the United States of America and Mexico.

Dominic J. Monetta was the one who urged me to put my stories onto the pages, and he worked diligently for more than ten years to assemble my papers and documents and to see that it was done. Peter B. Lane and Richard L. Himmel have been of immeasurable help, storing and retrieving my collection at the University of North Texas. Finally, Armand E. Rock Reiser and Charles R. Chuck Render were the ones who ultimately made it happen, and I am deeply indebted to Chuck for the many months and miles he devoted to this project. Mission accomplished, Chuck. Well done.

Colonel Frank M. Brandstetter, U.S. Army Retired

Introduction

Brandy: A Portrait of an Intelligence Officer is the life story of Frank M. Brandstetter, a man who gathered the dots and their connections for more than a half century. Frank M. Brandy Brandstetter was born into Polish-Austrian nobility and immigrated to the United States when he was a teenager. As a U.S. Army volunteer, his command of multiple languages made him perfect for an intelligence career. After graduating from the U.S. Army Intelligence School at Camp Ritchie, Maryland, he was trained by the British MI in the London Cage before he jumped with the famed 506th Airborne Infantry Regiment (Band of Brothers) on D-Day and led his IPW (Interrogation of Prisoners of War) team into World War II. He served as General Matthew B. Ridgway’s trusted aide with the XVIII Airborne Corps until the end of the war and then with General Ridgway when they were assigned to the Mediterranean Theater of Operations and the fledgling, original, five-nation United Nations Organization. After his release from active duty, Brandy continued his 40 years in uniform as a U.S. Army Reservist feeding intelligence information to his big brothers in the Office of the Army Chief of Staff for Intelligence (ACSI) in the Pentagon, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the FBI, and the CIA.

As a civilian, Brandy earned his way up the ladders of responsibility and wealth through his investments in the hotel business and real estate development. This would take him to exotic and informative places from coast to coast in the United States, then to Jamaica, to Cuba, and to Acapulco, Mexico where he remained. Although his positions in the hotel business would serve as perfect fronts for a spy, they were legitimate. At his San Souci Hotel in Ocho Rios, he entertained and listened to learned travelers and British MI officers. Brandy was manager of the Havana Hilton when Castro came to power in Cuba in 1959 and set up his command headquarters in the Conrad Hilton Suite where they participated in the televised Jack Paar interview. Brandy assisted a Frenchman named Philippe de Vosjoli in escaping Cuba. Their mutual trust and friendship would lead to another escape years later when Philippe defected from his job as a spy with the French SDECE because the KGB had infiltrated the de Gaulle government. Brandy provided Philippe and his wife a safe house at the Las Brisas Hotel he was running in Acapulco. The Las Brisas also became a safe house for Raya Kiselnikova, a Russian decoder at the KGB-infiltrated Soviet Embassy in Mexico City. Both Raya and Philippe would provide priceless information through Brandy’s pipelines and connections, and there were many others. Brandy’s adventures would take him completely around the world to China, Greece, Cyprus, Morocco, South Africa, Spain, Argentina, Yugoslavia, and many other intriguing places at times when security threats were fomenting.

Mexico has its own deep-rooted problems, but somehow the motivating influences and conflicting interests have been obscured by partisan political rhetoric. There’s been a lot of finger pointing and laying of blame for years, but little published first-hand observations and knowledge from somebody who has been there and successfully worked with some of the good guys in Mexico for nearly a half century. Brandy is such a guy—the same guy who hosted Admiral Burkhalter and 29 agency representatives on the president’s U.S. Task Force on Border Control at his home in Acapulco more than twenty years ago.

Finally, we’ve all heard about connecting the dots and the apparent failure of our Intelligence Community in recent years. Indeed, some of the critiques and explanations we have seen broadcast were from the very culprits who destroyed our capabilities—the Massacre of the 800 that gouged out of the eyes and plugged the ears of the intelligence community—all in the name of misguided morality, self-serving interpretations of the Constitution, or some other nonsense. Brandy’s stories describe the art of intelligence gathering and networks. He spent millions of his own money gathering information because he knew it was critically important to the security of his country and nobody else was there to do it. The deceptive dots sometimes led to what would prove to be surprises when the whole picture was revealed. This book tells some unpublished facts that enlightened decision-makers and future decision-makers need to know so they can understand the effects of our past follies, avoid making these mistakes again, and maybe repair the damage.

Contents of this book passed inspection by some of our key critics—guys who were also there in history and lived to tell about it. Cartha D. Deke DeLoach offered a few trivialities which were treated as imperatives. Mr. DeLoach was formerly Herbert Hoover’s FBI Deputy Director. His Royal Majesty King Juan Carlos of Spain had no suggested changes to the Spanish Connection and sent his thanks for the opportunity to review it. Tom Polgar, a member of the OSS during World War II who continued as a career CIA officer, allowed his first-hand knowledge of unpublished history to fill out the background behind some of Brandy’s mysteries. This, and many of the other stories from Brandy’s incredible life have been suppressed for security reasons—until now.

Forward

During the Second World War, I was only a small lad in rural Southern Illinois, but I remember many things on the home front including those small flags with the stars that were proudly displayed in the front windows of the homes where loved family members were away in combat. I also remember the pall that descended over the neighborhood like a dark cloud when one of those flags was taken down and replaced by a black one that told all who passed by of the grief within the home whose soldier had perished. The generations to follow were expected to remember and to carry on the honorable traditions of those who had suffered and died for their freedom.

After more than a half century, long after I had taught in public schools and universities, had completed my doctorate, and had retired after 40 years in the military, I was awakened to the fact that I actually knew embarrassingly little about our nation’s history, the peoples, and their dedication and sacrifices. This awakening began several years ago when I was privileged to become acquainted with Colonel Frank Brandy Brandstetter, a highly decorated intelligence officer who had survived that world war, had continued to serve for decades on call as an Army Reservist, and then persisted in this service to his country even after his mandatory retirement from the military in 1972. Brandy showed me the contents of a document he had carried to Field Marshal Walter Model in the Ruhr Pocket in April of 1945. General Matthew B. Ridgway had written personally to Model appealing to his sense of responsibility, and had compared the Field Marshal’s situation to Robert E. Lee’s in April of 1865. He spoke of honorable capitulation, but according to my own naiveté, this was a strange thing to say to a man who had been portrayed as the epitome of the hated Nazi officer. How could Field Marshal Model be an honorable man when his army had served a nation that had tried to establish Aryan supremacy and to exterminate or enslave all others?

My questions led us to examine the moral imperatives by which a soldier could determine if his actions were correct or if he should refuse to participate—to serve the cause or to rebel—the distinction between a patriot or a traitor. I learned that Philippe de Vosjoli, the French Freedom Fighter, had been faced with this agonizing question twenty years after the end of World War Two when he chose to resign from his position in French Intelligence and to leave the country he had loved and fought for. Philippe had learned that his government—even his own SDECE—had been infiltrated by his arch enemies the Communists. Brandy was there to take him in, and the United States would soon learn how deeply it had also been infiltrated. Raya Kiselnikova, a young woman who served in the Russian embassy in Mexico City, was forced to make a similar painful decision when the KGB was in the process of turning Mexico into another Cuba. Brandy took her under his protective wing. These were but two of the many historical incidents that had escaped my attention. I would soon learn of dozens of others including some that had also escaped the attention of noted and respected scholars and historians.

This book is not just a biography of an individual. This is a portrait of a life against the backdrop of history. A biography of an intelligence officer would tell only a portion of the story—the many escapades when the man traveled the world over, formed his trusted ties, and collected valuable human intelligence (HUMINT). What happened after his reports were submitted was not within the realm of a data collector’s responsibility, so the resulting policy decisions and planning would appear in somebody else’s biography. Merely recounting these stories through the intelligence officer’s eyes would present the man’s life in a vacuum, void of the world situation around him. This portrait will show history in the making over a period of more than ninety years and the motivations and human factors in the background.

My journey since we started the project has been not only fascinating but could best be described as mind blowing. During the project, I often paused to remember that I was working with real live people who were there in history and were telling me unpublished facts few if any other people in the world know—people and stories rapidly disappearing from the earth. Brandy was anxious to reveal details as he knew them—the whole story—so the next generations would better understand their histories and legacies and never forget. I am anxious to share my findings with the older generations who somehow missed them as I did.

Chuck Render, Ed.D. Colonel, USAF (ret.)

Chapter 1

Forging the Character of a Citizen

Drag-Sas Hubicki

Baroness Maria Louisa Drag-Sas Hubicki was the daughter of Polish-Austrian nobility. She left her exquisite family villa overlooking the city of Pozsony to marry Ferenc Brandstetter, a warrior in the Hungarian Hussar Cavalry. Ferenc was with his wife in the city of Nagyszeben in Transylvania on March 26, 1912, when she delivered their first-born, a son they would christen in the Catholic tradition with their family names: Maryan Franciscus Otto Josephus Wladyslaw Brandstetter Drag-Sas Hubicki.

When Maryan Franciscus was two years old, Archduke Franz Ferdinand von Habsburg, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was assassinated by a Serbian nationalist while visiting Sarajevo. This ultimately led to the start of the First World War. Ferenc was sent to fight the Tsarists on the Eastern Front, and Maria Louisa volunteered as a nurse in Germany. Maryan Franciscus stayed behind in the care of a nanny who insisted on speaking French, which the child learned as his primary language. Two years later Maryan Franciscus was transferred to a boarding school run by the Sisters of Charity for a small group of officers’ children who had been temporarily orphaned by the war. The Catholic sisters ran a tight, tough, militaristic schedule that awakened the children at four o’clock in the morning, sent them to mass before breakfast, and immediately started their classes.

The First World War ended with the Armistice on November 11, 1918. By that time, Maria Louisa and Ferenc had celebrated the arrival of their second child, a daughter. Maria Louisa returned to her devastated homeland and retrieved Maryan from the nuns. She tried desperately to survive in their immense family home, but the struggle was like nothing they had ever experienced. The tiny daughter was not growing and developing as she should.

Maryan remembers an odd, little man with the long sideburns who was wearing a distinctive black hat and black suit and leading a horse-drawn, two-wheeled cart. The man often brought milk in large, ceramic crocks with the round, wooden stoppers. Maryan could not understand everything his mother and the man said as the man bartered, but he remembers the tinkling sound of silver knives, forks, and spoons when his mother unrolled a soft, purple cloth and displayed heirlooms from generations of the Drag-Sas Hubicki family. When the transaction was concluded, Maryan watched the man in black roll the silverware in the soft cloth and carefully hide it in the loose straw beneath the milk crocks in his cart. The young boy watched the man un-tether the horse and lead it toward the gate, but his attention was suddenly directed elsewhere—back to the hallway where his mother sat with a small crock of milk on her lap.

Maria Louisa Drag-Sas Hubicki continued her struggle to save her young daughter by sacrificing everything of value to buy precious milk to make the child’s bones develop. Maryan’s little sister would no longer cry. Her cries would fade away with faded memories, but another sound he heard that day would stay with him forever. He would never in his long life forget the sound of his mother weeping.

Maria Louisa lost the advantages of her noble status, and her family wealth disappeared in the turmoil when her homeland sank into anarchy. Maryan and his younger sister could hardly understand the political instability of the world, but they were deeply moved by the violence they witnessed when uncontrolled Communist mobs and returning Russian soldiers raped and pillaged. Those, whose hands were smooth, such as the priests and nuns, became Bourgeois enemies of the state and were executed. Maryan witnessed what no young child should ever see — innocent victims stretched by their necks with wires so the public could see them. It made a lasting impression upon him. At the age of seven, he had already developed utter contempt for Communists that he would remember the rest of his life.

Young Maryan Franciscus would soon be confronted with many other things he could not understand. Ferenc and Maria Louisa divorced in 1919 forcing the seven-year-old boy to make a choice. Prospects of a close family relationship had been dashed forever, and the youngster chose to remain with his father, the heroic, wounded, Hungarian officer he admired and respected. His younger sister, Marie, remained with their mother, Maria Louisa.

A peace treaty between the Allied nations and the defeated Hungarians was signed at Trianon on June 4, 1920. Its protocols forbid the Habsburgs from occupying the throne and exiled the emperor, Karl Habsburg-Lothringen I. Hungarians were forbidden from training or maintaining a standing army. No longer in uniform, Ferenc became the operator of a newspaper owned by the small landowners’ party. Freedom of the press was limited under an early and crude form of Communism where the government distrusted the former military officers and kept them under constant surveillance. Ferenc’s job was precarious and his duties were demanding so he placed his son in residential schools and summer camps in Austria, limiting their personal contacts to occasional visits. A dialect of High German became Maryan’s day-to-day language.

Formal Schooling

Maryan Franciscus Brandstetter

In 1921, young Maryan Franciscus was enrolled in the Maria Theresa academy, a school established to teach the next generations to carry on their allegiance to God and country. This was the traditional schooling for sons of military officers, but the school’s very existence was counter to what the new ruling government had in mind. After a year there, Maryan Franciscus and the sons of other military officers were forced to halt their military education according to government decree and to experience hard labor to which the aristocracy was unaccustomed. These young men were forced to learn the languages and customs of the working class Communist families.

Maryan was placed in the custody of what he described as a burly Czech coal miner who came home each day with every exposed inch of his body covered in pitch black. The exhausted head of the household bathed before sitting at the head of the dinner table and beginning the meal with a prayer. This was a trying time for Maryan since he was forced to learn yet another language to add to his abilities in French, German, and Hungarian, but the family treated him well, and he became friends with the miner’s son. They shared an austere living space in the attic and attended school together near Pribram, not far from Prague.

As soon as he could, Ferenc Brandstetter placed his son in an Untergymnasium, a middle school in Freistadt, Austria. After that, he transferred Maryan to a school in Cegled, Hungary that specialized in preparing boys and young men for military school. Clearly, Ferenc planned for his son to be an officer in the Hungarian Army as he had been, and as his ancestors had been for generations. Twelve-year-old Maryan Franciscus left the Untergymnasium in 1924 and entered the military academy, the Hunyadi Matyas Magyar Kiralyi Realiskola, at Köszeg in Hungary, near the Austrian border. Hungary had been forced to refrain from operating military training schools under the Trianon Treaty, but the school at Köszeg quietly defied this agreement. Training under the watchful eyes of former German officers in civilian attire was strenuous. The officers pressed the young men relentlessly to develop obedience, good study habits, muscular development, endurance, and stamina—physical, mental and emotional.

The New World

Ferenc Brandstetter was declared an enemy of the state and was arrested in 1926 because of his connection with the rebel rural land owners in Hungary and his part ownership of a local newspaper supporting the renegades. Fortunately, he had useful connections with one of his former classmates, General Gömbos, who had become Minister of War. His friendship was strong enough to avoid being shot. Instead, General Gömbos arranged for Ferenc to obtain a diplomatic visa and leave the country for the United States of America, ostensibly to study animal husbandry and farming in Wisconsin. Ferenc was also directed to locate and arrange for the purchase of horses for the Hungarian Army.

Maryan Franciscus Brandstetter remained in the academy at Köszeg for almost four years, but did not graduate. His father sent him a round-trip ticket, and he immediately sailed for New York carrying a visitor’s passport and thirty dollars in pocket money. He crossed the Atlantic Ocean aboard the SS Majestic steamship, and his father met him on the docks on July 28, 1928. A taxicab ride took them through an astounding city.

Maryan followed Ferenc into a small apartment, not knowing what to expect. He knew that his father had been in the United States for four years, and that he undoubtedly would have made some friends there. He expected to be introduced to a business associate, but his attention was immediately fixed upon a young woman who reluctantly stepped from the kitchen and stopped just inside the room. She stood there in expectation. A maid, Maryan surmised. My father has a pretty maid, and she’s about my age. Maybe he’s found me an American girlfriend. He stared at the girl from top to bottom, and her face became flushed.

Ferenc introduced the young woman as his wife, pulled her in a close embrace, and added that she was Maryan’s new mother.

Maryan was shocked. He did not know what to say. He stood stoically and studied the young woman before turning to stare at his father, eye-to-eye. Maryan firmly rejected the idea that such a creature would replace his real mother, Maria Louisa, whom he still dearly loved.

Ferenc released the young woman, stepped squarely in front of his son, and demanded that Maryan accept her — that the young woman was indeed his new mother. When Maryan exclaimed that he would never do that, Ferenc was livid. He slapped his son soundly, stunning him for a moment. Maryan suppressed the immediate impulse to strike back, and denied his father the satisfaction of watching him rub his stinging cheek.

Ferenc had always commanded, and had received, his son’s respect as an exemplar of duty, honor, and faithful service to God, family, and their fatherland. These same aspirations had been instilled into Maryan throughout his schooling. His respect for his father was suddenly dashed. Ferenc’s bride was a young girl only a few years older than the teenager himself. Maryan had never been able to comprehend his parent’s divorce, and he had never experienced a family unit, but he loved his mother dearly and the idea that she would be replaced by a young girl was absolutely unacceptable. He grabbed his bag and they parted in anger.

Sixteen-year-old Maryan was suddenly alone on the sidewalks of New York, on his own in a strange country where he could not speak the native language. He had no personal contacts and no marketable work experience. He had learned Hungarian, Romanian, Austrian, Czechoslovakian, and German customs and languages, but what he was seeing was entirely new and different. He had a return steamship ticket, and he could use it, but he was troubled. He had been taught that it was his duty to loyally serve his country, but he had watched his beloved homeland fall under the control of an oppressive leadership whose precepts and practices he abhorred. His parents had seemingly disregarded the moral imperatives they had taught him and they had separated. His father had bonded into a new union that made Maryan question: duty, honor, service, and loyalty to whom, to what, and to where? Where could he go? What should he do? He must choose.

Then the thought occurred to him. He was free to choose. Free! There was something enchanting about that word. Free! There were no strict nuns or priests to accost him and strike him with rods. There were no gruff former German officers to force compliance and to deride him for any sign of weakness. He had no schedule. There was a feeling of liberation on the streets of New York that appealed to him. This freedom was compelling. He would try it. He chose to stay.

Street Schooling

This strange new world was filled with immigrants of many nationalities, so the language barrier was soon penetrated when Maryan found a Slovak-speaking widow who ran her own boarding house. He encountered many like himself. Some were more naïve, but many were streetwise and welcomed newcomers like brothers. He began at the bottom like everybody else who had come over on a boat. His first job was in one of the infamous sweatshops owned and operated by a Jewish family that had been forced to flee Czarist persecution in St. Petersburg, Russia. Most of his fellow workers were Poles, Hungarians, and Slovaks. They were immigrant men and women who were mostly older than he was and many appeared to be emotionally beaten. They toiled in the almost unbearable heat for six full days each week, and felt fortunate to have the opportunity because there were many on the streets outside who could immediately replace them.

There were few other opportunities for those who could not speak English, so Maryan enrolled in night school where he struggled to learn the language. He soon became acquainted with a small circle of friends in the Hungarian community. By Christmas of 1928, he decided to abandon what he considered to be a dead-end job and moved on to a cleaner position as a soda jerk at a local pharmacy. By a strange turn of fate, Captain Curt Meisner, a German Air Ace who had been stationed in Sassnitz, Sweden while Ferenc Brandstetter had been there with his family, recognized the young man he had known as a child called Muky Pasha. Meisner had been employed along with dozens of Russian exiles by Igor Sikorsky, whose fledgling aircraft manufacturing plant was only a short distance from where Maryan was living and working. In early 1929, Maryan became an apprentice aircraft mechanic on a track to become a skilled professional. He worked long hours as assistant riveter and he remained in that job for a year until Sikorsky was bought out by Wright and the plant was moved.

Maryan landed his first job in the hotel business in 1930—a start that led to his ultimate civilian occupation as hotelier. He began at the bottom again as a roll boy with a high, puffy, white, chef’s hat, passing hot rolls from table to table in the restaurant. By 1933, he had climbed slowly through the ranks to become dining room captain at the Paradise Show Boat in Troy, New York during the fall season and took another step up, though a temporary one, working under a Hungarian maitre d’hotel at the famous kosher Laurel-in-the-Pines Hotel in Lakewood, New Jersey. He was assistant captain at the door for the 1934 New Year’s holiday. His excellent language skills had been attractive, but the job at Laurel-in-the-Pines was short-lived, and Maryan was back in New York looking for work again along with thousands of others in the mid-depression winter of 1934. Like thousands of others, Maryan moved from scarce job to scarce job as businesses struggled with the weak economy and many closed. In the Carlyle Hotel he served as a busboy collecting dirty dishes, then moved a step higher as the comie who traveled back and forth from the kitchen carrying the heavy trays with hot food. Maryan worked well in this system where the waiters were regarded as chef du rang (literally, chefs of rank) reporting to the table captain who reported to the maitre d’hotel. This highly structured organization with clear lines of responsibility and uniforms and ranks had a natural feel to a young man who had been schooled in military academies with the sons of military officers. His fluency in five languages set him apart from the rest and got him into places few others could go. He made face-to-face contact with some of the world’s most prominent businessmen, industrialists, and government officials, and those who traveled with them. Maryan enjoyed their company and he became popular with those he met and served.

In 1937, Maryan was on duty and standing in the lobby of the St. Moritz Hotel just across from Central Park in New York City when he recognized one of the former guests he knew to be an agent of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. The man was there to inform Maryan that the name Maryan Franciscus Brandstetter was not found in the new social security system during an FBI investigation in preparation for J. Edgar Hoover’s visit. A further investigation into the files of the Immigration and Naturalization Service indicated that Maryan was in the country illegally. An astonished Maryan produced his visa which had been issued in 1928, but it had indeed expired many years ago. He was subject to deportation back to his native country.

Maryan argued that since his father had become an American citizen, his son should automatically be awarded citizenship, but Maryan had been seventeen years old when his father had filed his papers—too old to be considered a part of his family.

The agent suggested that Maryan might find an eligible, young American girl, marry her, and claim citizenship as the husband of an American National, just as Ferenc had done. Maryan recalled the bitter exchange with his father, and now it all began to make sense. Was Ferenc using that girl? Probably. He didn’t know.

Maryan was still officially a citizen of Hungary, but he could not return there because he had dropped out of the military academy at Köszeg when he left for America. He had been sixteen years old then and did not sign up for the draft when he was seventeen. Since the draft was compulsory for all Hungarians, Maryan could go to prison if he returned to his native land. Or worse, he could be drafted into Hitler’s Nazi army.

The FBI agent warned Maryan that he would have only ninety days after receiving the deportation order. Luckily, the annual quota of for Hungarian immigrants not been filled since 1924, but Maryan would be required to apply for a visa at an embassy somewhere outside the country. He could remain there for a short time, get his new visa, and then cross the border back into the United States where he could apply for citizenship.

Maryan left the country without delay, traveled to Montreal and checked into the Hotel Mount Royal for three weeks of relaxation and celebration. After returning to the United States on October 1, 1937, he began the application process he should have started many years before.

Fatherlands

Hitler reasoned that war was necessary because the German Fatherland needed Lebensraum, vital living space. Since he considered the people living to the east of Germany to be subhuman, he determined that they were to become servants to the Aryan master race. Jews were simply to be eliminated. On March 12, 1938, the Germans moved against Austria and began increasing pressure on Czechoslovakia. During the following spring of 1939, the Germans marched in and seized control of the whole country. When Hitler handed out huge monetary gifts to his generals, some invested in real estate, including the purchases of large estates in Poland and other Eastern territories. Estates that had been the homes of Maryan’s Drag-Sas Hubicki ancestors were among those taken by the Nazis.

Maryan’s contacts through the St. Moritz revealed an opening at the Roney Plaza in Miami which would be a step up professionally, so Maryan made the long trip southward by train and went to work for hotel manager Eddie Jouffret who had been a cavalry captain in the French Army during World War One. Maryan worked there for two seasons before making the trip northward again to enter into a new venture—one that would find him as a part owner and not merely on someone else’s payroll. In May of 1939, Maryan and his former roommate William Willy Palmer formed the Champlain Corporation which assumed the lease of the failing Bluff Point Hotel on the beautiful Lake Champlain near Plattsburg, New York. They reopened it as the Hotel Champlain and drew many influential and famous customers down from Montreal and up from New York, including columnist Walter Winchell who mentioned their business in syndicated newspapers—international advertisement that money could not buy.

Lieutenant General Hugh A. Drum, chief of staff to General Blackjack Pershing, held a formal military dining out which was featured in Life magazine. Conversations around the tables that evening were in French, Italian, and German. Lieutenant General Friedrich von Boetticher, the German military attaché, and Colonel Vincenzo Coppola, Italian military attaché might have felt alone in their own world when they spoke to each other in their native languages, but they were not. Maryan understood every word and was fascinated when he heard General Boetticher claim boldly that the Americans would present no threat when the war began. Boetticher and Coppola chuckled at the idea that the Americans were drilling with wooden rifles and dummy tanks. Maryan was troubled and confused as he poured their wines and listened, but the world would soon learn what they were talking about.

Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, without a declaration of war. Two days later, France and Britain declared war on Germany. A second world war had begun. Thousands of miles away, business at the Lake Champlain Hotel in Plattsburgh, New York became an early casualty of the war in Maryan’s former fatherlands. By the summer of 1940, the German blitz of London had begun and daily radio reports were ominous. Reservations were cancelled and the rooms were left vacant. Maryan’s livelihood was in jeopardy, so he and Willy Palmer salvaged as much of their investment as they could and closed down their business.

Maryan returned to New York and renewed a friendship and partnership with Dr. Eugene Hegy at the St. Moritz Hotel. As the war in Europe escalated, U.S. Navy sailors and officers in full uniform frequently visited the hotel and told Maryan many tales to lure him in, but naval service was counter to his family tradition, so he rejected the idea.

New Fatherland — New Name

Maryan Brandstetter proudly volunteered and was inducted into the U.S. Army on January 15, 1941 as a Buck Private. He was not drafted, as millions were when the Selective Service law came into effect later. By that time, he already had his uniforms and was waiting for his official reporting date.

Within a short time after Maryan enlisted, Dr. Hegy crossed the St. Moritz Hotel lobby to where Maryan was sitting and told him there was a visitor who had chosen to remain outside on the street—a visitor who claimed to be Maryan’s father. Maryan shook his head. He hadn’t seen his father in years and doubted that Ferenc could have located him.

Ferenc Brandstetter was indeed waiting on the street outside the St. Moritz Hotel and got straight to the point, demanding to know for certain if Maryan had joined a foreign army. Maryan confirmed that he had joined the United States Army and asked how his father had learned of this, but Ferenc had other things on his mind that day. He called his son a Dumkopf—an idiot—and warned that Germany was bound to win.

Maryan argued that the United States was not a foreign country, that the United States of America was Maryan’s fatherland now, and asked his father if the same country was not Ferenc’s fatherland—the fatherland he had married into.

Ferenc did not have a suitable answer, and he was fuming angrily when he growled that Maryan’s bones would rot on the steppes of Russia. Ferenc then left abruptly without another word, and the two men would never see each other again.

Dr. Hegy was watching from just inside the door to the St. Moritz and stood aside when Maryan approached with his head down, staring ahead like he was in a daze. There was a place on military records identifying somebody to contact in case of an emergency. Since his father did not seem to be a part of Maryan’s life, he needed a name and address to put there. Dr. Hegy agreed to serve in that capacity and Maryan was most grateful.

Maryan reported to Fort Dix, New Jersey for processing along with hundreds of others, most of whom were considerably younger. He and the others were proudly wearing the ill-fitting, light tan uniform of Army Private soldiers, but Maryan was not yet a legal U.S. citizen. That was unfinished business he felt compelled to attend to, so in March of 1941, he waited his turn in a long line of like-minded individuals until he finally appeared before an overworked and impatient Federal Judge Knox who sat high above him like a god wearing a long black robe and exuding authority.