When Michael Ondatye’s book «English patient» and the followed film – Oscar’s owner have helped out Almasy’s name from oblivion, in both cases it has been presented as the romantic hero which love to the spouse of other person has caused their destiny and left it to die from burns on a country house in Italy. The real history differs, not least therefore a little that Almasy in fact was a homosexual.
Laszlo Ede Almasy was born in 1895 in Borostyanko, Hungary (at present – Bern Stein in Austria). In a boarding school in Great Britain he has learnt to fly. During the First World War it was the fighter expert, and then the assistant to the last monarch of a dynasty Gabsburgov (which once it "count" by mistake called – the title which has stuck to it), served as his driver during 2 attempts which have appeared by the farce to return for itself a throne in 1921. Then Almasy became the trading agent of the company for production of Steyr cars off-road vehicles. He has won on them many races, and in 1926 has gone on Steyr in the first of many expeditions across Sahara about which he has written some books. Bedouins called him Abu Ramlekh – the Father of sand.
In February, 1932 it initiated expedition to Zerzura in Gilkebir, the first in what cars and the easy plane were together used. Together with it lord Robert and lady Dorothy Clayton Ist Clayton (the invented heroes Jeffrey and Catharine Kliffon), the Irish researcher of deserts Patrick Clayton (not the relative) and the major of aircraft Penderel have gone. Unlike the novel, lord Clayton was lost from unexpected diseases, having come back home, to Great Britain, and though his widow has come back to the desert for continuation of searches of Zerzura, it did not meet more Almasy and has not divided his opening of the Cave of swimmers. It as well was not lost there in 1939, and has broken, having dropped out of own plane in Great Britain in 6 years earlier. Therefore the motive of cooperation of Almasy with Germen in «The English patient» is absolutely invented.
As the officer reservist of the Hungarian Air Force Almasy hardly it could be released from mission in Rommel’s African case which made use of his experience in quality of air observing and its photo for official management – to fury of his former friends in Egypt, many of which served now in LRDG. Thanks to codebreakers in Bletchi-park, Englishmen knew that Almasy has entered into Egypt 2 German spies whom it has carried out through Gilv an oasis of Harga in 1941. Later he has visited Patrick Clayton in the Italian camp for prisoners of war and has helped it in transition to camp with the best criteria. Almasy has got to Russian camp where has lost teeth from a scurvy before the National tribunal has acquitted him from charges of support of nazis after certificates that he hid the Jewish neighbours in own flat in Budapest. The last years it has carried out lives in Africa where flied on gliders and arranged a safari. Having caught in Egypt dysentery, it was lost in policlinic in Salzburg in 1951.