Before I transition to my new digs, I must tell one memorable story that happened while being the ace reported and newspaper editor for the battalion.
It seems our battalion had a bit of benevolence about it and liked to contribute to the local economy. There was a van load of non-perishable groceries that had been contributed by various members of the unit and the chaplain was the designated presenter of these food stuffs to an orphanage run by a group of Catholic nuns. This place was a ways outside of town in the countryside. Since I had a military license to drive from basic I was to do double duty. The food stuffs were loaded into the back of the van and the chaplain, another soldier and myself struck out for this orphanage in the van. I took my camera along with pen and paper to get names and places and some smiling faces on film. Mind you by this time, I’d been to Paris and developed a taste for not only German beer, but now French wine, some of which I’d brought back with me.
After about a twenty five mile drive out into the rolling hills of the pasture spotted countryside we saw our destination. We arrived and I would believe someone had called ahead as someone was waiting to greet us when we stopped in front of what appeared to be the main building. Two or three nuns in full habits speaking broken English greeted us and escorted us inside.
To give a little background on our chaplain, he was a gung ho sort of guy. He was a Captain. His denominational background was Baptist. When he entered the headquarters he would usually yell at the top of his lungs something like “Go Army!” and run up the stairs to his office skipping ever other step on the way. I remember he was from Dunn, NC. Knowing that should clue you that drinking may not been in his vocabulary.
Okay, so we have gone inside and communications between them and us takes a bit to get ourselves understood, but taking them outside and opening up the van and showing them what we brought them was sufficient to alleviate any of the gaps in our understanding. The nuns were thrilled, clapping their hands and then putting their hands to their faces in amazement and to wipe away tears. Help was dispatched to carry the food to their kitchen pantry. There were probably forty or fifty children at this home. Any and all food was welcome.
Now came the fun part. The nuns brought us to a parlor of sorts were we were seated. I got pictures and names as they broke out a bottle of wine and some glasses. They poured and we talked as best we could and when my glass emptied they immediately refilled it. I wasn’t going to stop them. Geez, hospitality wasn’t going to be turned down, you see. After a bit, I noticed my nose and ears starting to get warm and I was feeling kind of fuzzy. At some point the Captain turned to me and then back to the nuns and explained to them we must leave, because I was driving and he wanted to get back safely. Apparently my buzz was showing and I didn’t mind.
So after another round of thank you and your welcome we left to return safely to the headquarters. It made a good story. I just left out the part about the friendly rounds of wine.
Now, on to my new home. I took the shuttle bus out to Kitzingen to Larsen Barracks, my new home. There to greet me was probably the toughest, yet most understanding 1stSgt one could ever ask for. He was overweight, gruff, big nosed, with a white haired flat-top hair cut. He looked like he was born with a uniform on. And then there was our pot smoking short-timer batter clerk. He had about a couple of months left. His name was Kleis. He was a Spec 4 like me. He had a cocky attitude and I knew right from the start he didn’t like me. I also knew I didn’t like him and would have to watch my back, but I wasn’t into giving him any slack either. The Commanding Officer was a Captain and we had an XO who was also a Captain. I had come to think most XO’s at this level would be 1st Lieutenants. I don’t know why he was still there at that rank, but I wasn’t asking. New guys don’t get that freedom.
Larson Barracks - Btry B, 6th Bn 52nd ADA, Kitzingen, Germany
I spend my first week getting to know people in the battery. I was bunked with three other guys. One was our battery medic or “doc” as we called them. The other two guys were named Craig and Rod. For some reason I called them by their first name. I settled into my bunk by the window in the left corner of the room. I later met the battery mail clerk and we had a contingency of cooks for the kaserne’s mess hall, which I never set foot in to eat. Somebody told me the cooks were queer and they did bad things in the mashed potatoes. Who knows, but I wasn’t taking the chance on mashed potato day.
It didn’t take long to find out we had at least a hundred and twenty people in this battery. This was 1971 and racism was hot and heavy, there were no pee tests for drugs and most of us were draftees. What a combination for trouble. Half the guys smoke hash, took downers or uppers and add that to the rest of us who drank and we were a classified wild bunch.
At the time I reported into the unit there were two other guys who came along with me. I’d been there for about a week or two and the First Sgt decided one day that he had to give us our orientation speech. Being I was his new reports clerk and sat in an office right across the hall from him he got to see my smiling face every day. So sometime that afternoon he told me to come back to his office after work and sit in his office and wait for the other two to show up.
So after work I knew I had a few minutes so I went to my room. It was the first one on the left just past the main entrance. My office was on the other side of the main entrance, so it was just a few steps away. I sat down on my bunk, pulled out my gallon jug of wine I had brought with me from France and sat there and took some big swigs out of it and let the buzz take hold. It had been one of those days contending with Kleis. He was being a bastard. I would be glad to see him go. Anyway, after about a half hour I went back to the First Sgt’s office and sat down on the couch and one of the two other guys soon showed up, but still no third guy. The First Sgt kept on doing some loose ends as we waited. After about another fifteen or twenty minutes I was buzzing pretty good and the First Sgt wasn’t happy the last guy had not shown up. Finally he came back into his office after taking a look down the hallway to see if he was coming and looked at the guy next to me. He then told him that since the other guy had not shown up and Rowe probably wouldn’t remember anything he said we were free to go. Apparently I wasn’t too good at hiding a good wino buzz. It was okay though.
Let’s take a break here for some home stuff. It seemed my brother Danny had been driving my car a bit and mom wrote me to tell me he’d almost gotten into a wreck with it when one of the ball joints broke loose and dropped the front spindle. Oh well. As long as he fixed it I didn’t mind. Not too much I could’ve done about it anyway. I’m over five thousand miles from home. Vickie’s antics were still being reported to me, but it was becoming less of a thing to me to the point I really didn’t care to hear about it. Julie and I were coming together more and more. One thing I wouldn’t advise though. In the days before internet email and cheap phone calls snail mail was the only going thing. By this time I’d already said my first wrong thing and mad Julie mad with me. Don’t ever start and argument through the mail. It takes weeks to work that back to smooth times. But, we were okay. I started calling her Sugarbritches. Ain’t that redneck if you every have?
It seems now that the riots had subsided things had gotten back to normal. It appears my dad had taken to Julie. He would stop in and visit at least once a week and got to know Julie better. I suppose he was taking to her. He knew they were poor. Julie was seventeen, going on eighteen and didn’t have a license, let alone a car. Her dad had died when she was twelve or thirteen from a heart attack. He had been an alcoholic until the last couple of years of his life and turned to God. She said it was the best two years of her life. But with him gone, she and her mother lived off of Social Security benefits in a little run down foreman’s house. Her dad had been the foreman of a saw mill behind the house. They lived there because he ran the place, but after he died the mill closed and the owner just let Cinnie and Julie live on there for little or nothing.
Back to Germany. I thought by this time that wearing BCGs was about all I could stand. I can’t say for sure when, because I have pictures while in my first room at the battery with my BCGs, but I went to the base optical shop and found two things I wanted. One was a pair of wire framed glasses with regular lenses and a pair of the same frames with sunglass lenses. I was set when I got those. I was no longer branded as Army. To me black horn-rimmed glasses were the most obnoxious things a man could put on his face.
About this time I started hearing rumblings of a trip to the field for an exercise. As you know I’d not experienced this type of thing and I was kind of hoping I’d avoid this type of adventure. But for now, just let it be a rumbling, even though I knew all it would take would be a phone call to my office saying to bug out and we’d be gone. And it was coming.
