Hungarian Fighter Pilot with a friendly sister behind allied lines

[Sheldrake]

I have just finished reading John Alexander Kent's Memoir "One of the Few." In 1943 he was Command Training Inspector of Middle East Command in which capacity he visited units in Cyprus and sampled the night life of Nicosia.

Some of the Hungarian caberet girls were most attractive.... One of our officers was dancing with a particularly good looking girl who asked why he had his top button undone. He explained that he was a fighter pilot. She said " Oh, I like fighter pilots, my brudder he is fighter pilot. Here was too good an opening to miss, so our young hopeful asked what squadron the brother was in, to which she airily replied. "I don't know the number, but he flies the Messerscmitt 109 on the Russian Front!"

How true? Any Hungarian pilots known to have a caberet dancing sister in Cyprus?

[Peter89]

I have just finished reading John Alexander Kent's Memoir "One of the Few." In 1943 he was Command Training Inspector of Middle East Command in which capacity he visited units in Cyprus and sampled the night life of Nicosia.

Some of the Hungarian caberet girls were most attractive.... One of our officers was dancing with a particularly good looking girl who asked why he had his top button undone. He explained that he was a fighter pilot. She said " Oh, I like fighter pilots, my brudder he is fighter pilot. Here was too good an opening to miss, so our young hopeful asked what squadron the brother was in, to which she airily replied. "I don't know the number, but he flies the Messerscmitt 109 on the Russian Front!"

How true? Any Hungarian pilots known to have a caberet dancing sister in Cyprus?

The export of dancer and party girls from Hungary to the Middle East was a famous thing in the interwar years. So far I have heard of Egypt
The chances are there that a girl's brother flew with the MKL. The Me 109 is probably something she picked up along the late night talks with the RAF personnel in Nicosia, because AFAIK the first Me 109 units arrived to the MKL in 1943. Or alternatively, she was very up-to-date, TOO up-to-date for a party girl residing in an enemy country.

In the summer of 1940, when Britain and Hungary were formally neutrals, the British achieved to expulse the Hungarian party dancers from Alexandria and the Suez base in general (including Port Said). Already in 1939, it was forbidden for military officiers to visit locales with Hungarian dancers. After the expulsion from Egypt (quite ironic given the large percentage of Jewish girls amongst the dancers), some of them settled down in Cyprus. But given how closely they were watched by the counter-intelligence agencies, I find it very unlikely that a girl in that business would openly brag about his brother's unit's new aircraft.

It would not be impossible to track down the brother, because the British intelligence office kept a tight record of the Hungarian dancers (officially artists) and there were only 16 in Alexandria, 2 in Port Saíd and 40 in Cairo, and the chances are, that there were new arrivals after this report (summer of 1940) is minimal.

[Peter89]

[Stephan]

An oddity is the young flyer, is asking the girl what division her bro was in... A dangerous and controversial question in war time, with the heavy propaganda against loose talks...
Her talking about her brother being in the enemy air force was a cold shower, but of course, she too would kept low about this...

So, I think its a made up scene, or at least, heavily colorized. But makes a funny scene to brag about!

[Peter89]

An oddity is the young flyer, is asking the girl what division her bro was in... A dangerous and controversial question in war time, with the heavy propaganda against loose talks...
Her talking about her brother being in the enemy air force was a cold shower, but of course, she too would kept low about this...

So, I think its a made up scene, or at least, heavily colorized. But makes a funny scene to brag about!

Men talk of all kind of stupidity in a proper environment that usually involve alcohol and women. Thus, my bet is that both the question and the answer was empty talk about nothing. Had these girls have anything to hide, they would be incarcerated.

Now that this topic came up, I started to read about some of these women, and it seems there has been an airlift, or some kind of transportation opportunity between Cyprus and Hungary after the summer of 1940 and before the Balkanfeldzug. I wonder what it could be, especially that the girl got back to Cyprus before Yugoslavia and Greece were overrun.