Right after Christmas Ed and I were wondering what to do for New Year’s. It would be 1972. The year I would go home. It was the year of the Olympics in Munich. The year I would get married. Many changes were going to occur. I would give up my global view for the narrower view of living back home without the power to travel the world. Kind of makes one want to consider the alternative to re-enlist, but I didn’t think Julie would want a military life so I wasn’t leaning that way.
Our thoughts on New Year came without having to put any plans of our own into motion. The Sergeant who was Charge of Quarters when we took down our young drug abuser came to the office and invited Ed and I and a few other of the guys to his house to celebrate the New Year. Of course we weren’t going to turn him down. He was a great guy and we figured right about his family too.
New Year’s Eve he came to the barracks and picked us up and took us to his place in the military housing area close by. It was a good start to a good evening. It was also probably the last time I remember getting drunk while in Germany. There were party favors, finger foods, music, Latin style, but still great. His wife and daughters were fixing a full fledged meal for the midnight meal. I’d never seen anything like this. It was a big thing to them. The Sergeant fixed us a drink I’d never tried before. Apparently it was a Panamanian style drink he called a Cuban Flea. It was a mix of Coke and Rum. I couldn’t taste the Rum, so that’s probably why I ended up somewhere between a buzz and completely smashed. I held my own that evening.
At the midnight hour we got out the fireworks and I was good enough to let someone else do the lighting as I wasn’t sure I could do that without blowing my fingers off. I did get a sparkler or two, though. Then we all sat down to a huge meal. I remember the meat was a huge roast beef. There were plenty of other things with veggies and all, but I was I don’t remember what all was on the table. I had a somber, sober moment though when the Sergeant asked everyone to let him give a toast and then say a prayer for the meal. There I sat drunk at the table of a gracious guest, who gave his toast to the New Year and then offered a prayer for the food and his guests and all I could think of was that this was great, but God was probably going to take a swat at me for sitting there like that during a prayer. Wonder if he would have heard me if I prayed. Oh well, I wasn’t offering one, so after the prayer I went to passing the food and filling my plate and enjoying a good meal in spite of the fact it was almost 12:30 in the morning.
When all was said and done, Ed and I thanked our gracious hosts and he took us back to the barracks where we went to bed full and drunk. Overall it was a good evening. I didn’t do anything stupid. It was an eye opening time for me and like I said I don’t think I got drunk again the rest of my time there. I might have drank something, but no getting drunk. I actually believe those days had had their time and I’ve never done anything like that since. I still took in a beer or two since that time, but about all I drink now is non-alcoholic beer. It gives me the taste without the buzz.
I did pick up a nasty habit while I was there that lasted for about seven years. Ed was a smoker and I had little to do some days and I would pick up one of his cigarettes and have a smoke and next thing I knew I was buying my own and the only cigarette was Marlboro Reds. I was up to about two packs a day back then. Growing up on the farm raising tobacco didn’t get me started. It was some nerdy guy from West Haven, Connecticut.
The month of January also had a couple of events that I remember. I got my timeline for going home and I sold the Model 26 Marantz AM/FM stereo amp and bought the one I have still that I mentioned before. I began preparing for my transition back home. Two and a half months would go by quickly. One of the biggest problems I had was how to get all of my stereo stuff back home.
Since I was the alternate mail clerk I knew the guys down at the main post office so I took out down there one morning. Just a side here thought here. I would walk to the post office most mornings to pick up the mail in the snow. I never work a jacket. I would just go down there in my fatigue uniform, yet a lot of the time there was snow on the ground to the order of about six inches most of that. The humidity could be so low the cold never really bothered me for the distance on these walks. Okay, back on track here, I talked to the guys at the post office as to how I could get my stuff home. They told me I could mail it all and insure it. So about the end of January I drug all my boxes out and packed up all my stuff and wrapped it in paper and taped it all together real good and then tied string around it. And off to the post office I went with the bus this time so I could get it all there at once. I got it all mailed and insured like they said and sent a letter ahead to let Julie know what to expect since I mailed all of it to her house. Her tiny little house. Were it would probably fill her tiny little bedroom. Now she would have a good bit of my money in her savings and my most valuable asset.
On her end of the trip she told me she was home the day the postman came to her house to deliver the boxes. Imagine this. There was four speakers, a reel-to-reel tape deck, an amplifier, a turntable and another box of seven inch reels of tapes of all the music I had taped. She said the postman wasn’t real happy about all the boxes. It had his little postal delivery truck loaded down. So, she signed for it and took it all inside and there it sat until the end of March.
During this time my dad started lobbying for me a job at the DuPont site. The were building a DMT plant next door to the Dacron manufacturing plant. DMT is short for the chemical material that makes Dacron fiber. Since I had worked at the Diamond Shamrock site in Castle Hayne as a Field Engineer tail chainman and rodman, my dad was able to land me a job as soon as I got home on the DuPont site. So the job was there. Dad also talked to the guy he rented a small trailer from and got me my own little trailer across the road from him in Winnabow, NC, south of Wilmington. I took it but planned to stay there only until I got married. So all was set for when I got home.
My Captain had other plans he wanted to present to me. One day he asked me into his office. So I came in and sat down and he closed the door and sat as well. He asked me was I interested in staying in the military. This had not been on my radar, so I didn’t know what to say. The then backed that question with a statement. He said with my scores I would qualify for Warrant Officer’s Flight Training and he could get me into flight school to fly helicopters. I was flattered. But I thought. Julie might not be interested in military life. And there was the question of my eyesight. I was bat blind without my glasses. He countered with the latter, though. He said he knew the flight surgeon and could get me past that issue. Contacts perhaps. I told him I’d consider it and let him know, but I wasn’t leaning that way, especially since I knew that meant Viet Nam. Of course now in retrospect by the time I’d have gotten through flight school the war would have been over and I wouldn’t have had to go.
How about that? I could be raking in some big bucks flying a medevac helicopter or something now. Life isn’t always smart enough to let you know what would or could be, especially if you’re a country bumpkin without a broader vision. You see, in later years Julie and I talked about what I decided to do and she said she wouldn’t have minded being a military wife. Life has so many choices in hindsight. I came from a family who lived paycheck to paycheck and I didn’t really know there was much of anything else I could do other than that.
My last couple of months were upon me and counting down now. I was “short”. And I lived like it with one exception. Our mail clerk did a bad thing. In February the Inspector General was doing an inspection of the Honest John rocket unit next door to us and they didn’t miss a thing. They even when into their dumpsters and guess what they found. Our wonderful mail clerk decided to take it upon himself to dispose of non-forwardable mail into their dumpster instead of returning it to the main post office for proper disposal. That’s a Federal offence. Now he was going to get a very personal and practical application of how you get into trouble with postal regulations if they were not followed.
He was arrested and charged with improper handling of mail. What made this worse for him was the fact he was supposed to go home at the end of February and now he was being held in the brig until his court martial on the offence. I was now the new mail clerk till I left. Oh boy, was I going to follow the rules by the letter. I wanted to go home. I didn’t want more three hots and a cot in a Federal prison at most.
I don’t remember exactly when this happened, but Ed wanted to go to Frankfurt on time before I left, so we got Pops, Hochsang together and hopped a train for a weekend in Frankfurt. Of course Ed wanted his little foray to see a prostitute. I was only willing to check them out. Really. You can believe what you want, but I wasn’t willing to throw money away that way. We took a good walk around the city that Saturday though. We did our usual stop ins at the bakeries and got some pastries and coffee. We did do a little shopping, but nothing big. It was mostly souvenir stuff. We did visit one of their premier sex shops. We Americans are way too prudish. Here you see people sneak in hoping not to be seen by someone they know, yet Europeans go in like it’s nothing any different than going to the grocery store. It was more humorous to me to watch the people in the store than it was to look at what was offered. This particular one had an upstairs and the stairs were kind of winding upward around a bend and had glassed in displays along the trip up. I saw two old ladies, and I mean old ladies standing in front of one with a variety of toys laughing and giggling like a couple of teenagers. It was so out of place to me and it made it all the more humorous to us.
Later after dark we went to a place we’d heard was quite famous called the Crazy Sexy. It had a neon sign out front to catch the eye, so it wasn’t hard to find. We went in and the girls were sitting in ceramic booths like shower stalls in a huge gym shower room type setting. You’d go negotiate a price and go upstairs. Of course we had to wait for Ed.
Once this little aside, we were back on the streets with a Saturday night crowd with an added twist. We turned a corner and found ourselves almost in the middle of some sort of protest. The street was completely engulfed in people from the building on one side to the other building on the opposite side of the street. They were chanting something in German and hoisting signs in German, so we knew we didn’t want to get involved in that, so we turned around and headed back a few blocks over to avoid any possible confrontation.
From there we went back to our hotel room, got a good night’s sleep and got some breakfast the next morning and caught our train back and my final weekend trip was complete. Now it was time to finish up getting ready to go home.
Surprisingly battalion headquarters was on the ball. My replacement came in rather quickly. He was a black guy who was fitting in rather well. He and Ed appeared to be hitting it off from the start. I spend most of my time instructing him on his duties, including being the mail clerk for a season. As he picked up on the duties I began to back away and let him take charge. I watched and hung around between the office and my room putting things in order for when I was to leave. I had only two or three weeks and I would be gone.
The First Sergeant came in one morning about two weeks before I was to leave and posted a new guard duty list on the board, which I checked off and found my name on it. What was this all about, I wondered? It was customary to not have any duties the last two weeks. They were reserved for out processing. I had gathered my papers with the checklist and had gone to the battalion and run those checks through there. I had to be out briefed by the security section where my clearance was held. I also had to pick up some records and my orders. Everything was in place. So why the guard duty assignment? The First Sergeant knew I was leaving, so I went bravely into his office and asked why. He sat there for a moment, humming and heehawing with my question and then came his answer. He said since I had already “quit work” for the last month I might as well take my name off the list. Sarcasm wasn’t his best trait. He knew I had been instructing the new guy and my backing away as he picked things up was interpreted as being slack I suppose, but what was I to do? I can’t do the job for him once I left, so why coddle him in the meantime? So I took my name off the guard duty roster and put someone in my place. I was clear of any further responsibility in the battery for the last two weeks.
I know we went out for a going away party with Ed, Pops and Hochsang one last time the week before I left. I don’t remember this one as a surety, but I do know one of my favorite places to eat downtown was a small eatery just around the corner from The Keller. It was just wide enough for two rows of booths on each side and a moderately wide isle way to a takeout counter. Even with its fast food luncheonette look they had the best cordon bleu you will ever encounter. I would think this is where we had our last outing together with my well traveled friends. We laughed and knocked back a few. This was going to be a very missed group of guys at least for a while, yet still today I miss that comradery. I have to this day, not had even one close male friend for more than a few months at a time. They come, they go.
The day came. My train ticket in hand, Ed helped me load my duffle bag and a couple of other smaller things. I had garnered a small suit case not much bigger than a brief case. I still have it 37 years later. It’s now used to carry my IT repair tools and cables. So, there I stood at the train station in my Class A’s looking sharp with my bags saying my last goodbyes to Ed. Pops and Hochsang had said theirs back up at the battery. They were on duty. I boarded the train and found a compartment and sat down on the side facing the station platform and waved to Ed and we pulled away. This part of my life’s journey had ended. I was going home.
