THREE FLIGHTS TO ZURICH

Briggs recalls the time he spent in Germany during the 1960s as a soldier in the United States Army and his subsequent search for the child he gave up for adoption there in this memoir.

After he graduated from the University of Arkansas in 1962, the author enlisted in the U.S. Army, eager to fight the looming menace of communism in Europe. Candidly, he admits he was also in pursuit of adventure and pretty women. Stationed just outside Mannheim, Germany, the author became close friends with a group of English-speaking Scandinavian students attending the University of Heidelberg and impregnated a Swedish woman named Mia, whom he barely knew. A deeply conservative woman, Mia wanted to keep the baby, but Briggs was not interested in settling down and persuaded her to give the boy up for adoption in Zurich. At that time, in his early 20s, the author admits to leading a shallow emotional life as the result of his mother’s alcoholism, a condition which killed her. In moving, thoughtful terms, he captures his wounded barrenness: “I could feel carnal concupiscence but not the emotion of romantic love. I had no inkling I had been crippled. But from that moment I said I had to stop crying, I was handicapped. Damaged. Limited. Everything seemed as it was before.” 24 years later, in 1988, he returned to Zurich in search of the boy and, with the help of a local attorney, was able to track him down—but his son was unwilling to meet him. In 2012, as a 72-year-old man, Briggs made one last attempt to make contact with his son and succeeded, beginning a relationship with Tobias Diener and his family, a remarkable denouement to years of guilt and longing on the author’s part.

Briggs paints a lively picture of Europe in the 1960s, depicting a continent still reeling from the catastrophe of World War II and beleaguered by the encroaching Cold War but also enlivened by the sexual revolution and the emancipatory promises of modernity: “Things were different. We began to want it all and want it now. It was not important any longer to be responsible. After all, we were only having fun, we said to ourselves. Besides, everybody was doing it. The bikinis. The pill. The music. Playboy. The books.” However, he came to regret not only the indulgent excesses of the age, but its moral licentiousness as well, and in his 50s he turned to Christianity for solace and guidance. Briggs led an eventful and fascinating life—he discovered a world of art and culture studying at the University of Heidelberg after he left the Army and became a very successful businessman after returning to the United States. He even served as a White House Fellow during the presidency of Gerald Ford. But the heart of this memoir is the author’s search for his son, a mission motivated by love and a need for redemption, expressed in exceedingly intelligent terms here. This is a touching memoir, personally candid and philosophically reflective.

A personal and affecting remembrance that raises provocative questions about the consequences of the sexual revolution.