Karel Kuttelwascher family name Kuttelwascher
Early life
Kuttelwascher was born in 1916 in the village of Svatý Kříž in Bohemia, now part of Havlíčkův Brod in the Czech Republic. He was the third of six children. Their parents Josef and Kristina Kuttelwascher were ethnic Germans from Bavaria. The family name means tripe washer.
Aged 17, Kuttelwascher started work as a clerk at a flour mill in Kladno northwest of Prague. On 1 October 1934, aged 18, he joined the Czechoslovak Air Force. In March 1937, he qualified as a pilot and was posted to 4 Flying Regiment at Kbely airfield near Prague. There he trained as a fighter pilot, completing his training in May 1938. He was posted to 1 Air Regiment, which assigned him to the 32nd Fighter Unit. The unit was posted to defend Czechoslovak airspace over Moravia and Slovakia, but after the Munich Agreement in September 1938, it returned to base at Hradec Králové in northern Bohemia.Germany occupied Czechoslovakia on 15 March 1939 and dissolved the Czechoslovak Air Force the next day. On the night of 13/14 June, Kuttelwascher and six other Czechoslovaks escaped in a coal train from Ostrava in Czech Silesia to Bohumín, a former Czechoslovak town which Poland had annexed in October 1938. The group reported to the Czechoslovak Consulate in Kraków and was accommodated in a Czechoslovak transit camp at Bronowice Małe that had been converted from a disused Austro-Hungarian Army camp.On 29 July 1939, Kuttelwascher and his group went to the Port of Gdynia, where they embarked on a Swedish cargo steamship, the Kastelholm, to travel to France. In Gdynia, a group of Polish officials belatedly tried to persuade the Czechoslovaks to stay and join the Polish Air Force. A few, including another future RAF ace, Josef František, agreed to do so after tossing a coin. The remainder, including Kuttelwascher, stuck to their decision to leave Poland. On 30 July, they disembarked in the Port of Calais in France.
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