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March 19, 2024

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I don’t remember flying to Germany. I was a smoker at the time, and I remember that the ‘lamp was lit’ for most of the flight, allowing people to smoke on the plane. I remember that beer was free on the plane, but I have no real memory of the flight itself at all.

I have a false memory of SSG (Staff Sergeant) Urich picking me up from the airport in Frankfurt and taking me to Bamberg, but that’s not accurate as I also remember going to an in-processing base in Frankfurt, near the airport on a Friday morning, to be given bedding and a room key and told to report back on Tuesday morning It was a four-day weekend.

> Read the entire series of posts here: My Journey to Jesus.

What actually happened is that I flew into Frankfurt on the Friday of Memorial Day Weekend in 1994 and was picked up by SSG Urich the following Tuesday.

My first weekend in Germany is a bit of a blur. I remember being taken aback by the sensation of being in Europe. I’m a quarter German (technically Prussian, and the part of Prussia my forebears came from is now Poland), so I felt a connection to the place, and it was a warm and sunny day. I was also severely jet-lagged, arriving at seven AM local time, which is one AM at home.

I put my stuff in my room and took a taxi into town. I spent the day wandering around Frankfurt, spent the evening in a bar trying different German beers, and got really drunk – the bartender wanted me to try all kinds of German liquors as well. Every time I got another beer, she gave me a free shot of something I had not tried before.

Eventually, I took a taxi back to my room and went to bed – and by ‘eventually,’ I mean that it’s important to stay up until a reasonable bedtime. I was probably in bed by 8 PM.

I was mildly hungover the next morning and met another new arrival on the way to the chow hall for breakfast. He was a younger guy who had just finished AIT and was also a bit hungover. He actually was not going to have breakfast, but I told him he’d feel better if he got something on his stomach.

The two of us hung out together the rest of the weekend, checking out Frankfurt, and then Tuesday came, and SSG Urich arrived to take me to Bamberg. About two and a half hours away, relatively close to what had only a few years earlier been the East German border.

SSG Urich ran the barracks for single soldiers in Alpha Company, 82nd Engineer Battalion. As we arrived at the barracks, he brought me into the basement, where his office was to give me bedding and a room key. The basement hallway was filled with used furniture – SSG Urich spent much of his spare time collecting furniture German citizens had thrown away and then selling it to American soldiers.

I quickly learned that the German tax system encourages Germans to stay in debt and not to own much, such that Germans bought new cars as soon as their old cars were paid off and always had brand new furniture – throwing their old furniture away every few years SSG Urich had a pickup truck and would drive around every day in whatever neighborhoods had garbage pickup, throwing pieces of discarded furniture in the back of his truck. I was married and would eventually have my wife joining me, and SSG Urich wanted to make sure I knew he had furniture for sale should I need anything for my married housing.

SSG Urich gave me bedding and a room key. I was somewhat surprised by the bedding. I’d always had green military blankets before. Still, SSG Urich gave me a civilian comforter SSG Urich told me the Army had just instituted a program in which as long as single soldiers kept their rooms clean (Health and Welfare), they could arrange their rooms however they wished. Traditional Army blankets were a thing of the past.

Germany is a fascinating country, having been put together from pieces of the Holy Roman Empire (which was not holy, was not Roman, and was not really an empire) by Otto Von Bismark in 1871, after a period of Prussian conquest, Germany was only a little more than 120 years old when I arrived Warner Barracks (the name of the base in Bamberg) was an old Bavarian Cavalry base from WWI. In WWI, each German state still had its own army – all of the armies of the German states came together under the Kaiser to fight WWI.

All of the buildings in Warner Barracks dated back to WWI, and the 82nd Engineer Company barracks still had rifle racks in the hallways, some of which still had the wood inserts that had once held the rifles of Bavarian Cavalrymen.

The rooms varied in size. Some were quite large and were shared by two people. Some were small and were for one person. I was put in a very dirty and very small room. Even the walls were nasty.

I went through in-processing the next day and signed up for married housing, but learned there was a three to six-month wait.

I complained about the room. SSG Urich looked at it, apologized, and moved me to another much cleaner room at the very end of the third floor.

Alpha Company was not in Bamberg at the time, but was either in Holensfield or Grafenwoehr (the main training areas in Germany) for training. As a new arrival, I stayed back with the ‘rear detachment’ until the rest of the unit arrived.

The only other person in the barracks was a relatively fat PFC (Private First Class) named Pruitt Pruitt was as fat as a soldier can be without getting discharged but was a nice guy, and since he was the only other guy in the barracks, we became friends. There wasn’t much to do during the day, and I’d hang out in Pruitt’s room in the evenings, drinking beer.

We bought our beer just around the corner of the motor pool in a small gas station on the base. We both drank Miller Genuine Draft, which we bought by the case.

Pruitt was becoming a Mormon, and a couple of times a week, he’d have Mormon missionaries in his room, one of whom gave me a copy of the Book of Mormon, which I quickly read – and decided that the Mormon religion was a cult Joseph Smith put together for his own benefit, that somehow survived the cult leader’s death. The book starts by talking about how Joseph Smith was visited by angels who gave him twelve golden plates and told him he was the new messiah. Twelve people witnessed the plates, and then the plates vanished for all time, leaving only the twelve witnesses as proof of Joseph Smith’s position as God’s messenger.

I obviously did not convert to Mormonism (I tried to convert the Mormon missionaries to Christianity instead).

After reading the Book of Mormon, I remembered that in High School, my friend Deanna loved The Vampire LeStat, by Ann Rice, and I bought Interview with a Vampire (the first book in the series) from the PX (Post Exchange – like a mall for soldiers) By the time my wife arrived I’d read the entire series and quickly turned her on to it Ann Rice was an excellent author, and those books are amazing.

On the evenings when there were no Mormon missionaries in Pruitt’s room, there were always six German women, one of whom was fond of poetry. Being a bit of a poet myself, she and I quickly became good friends.

One night, after having my fill of beer and deciding to go to bed, I returned to my room and grabbed my shower bag. The showers were in an expansive open room with shower heads against the walls, separated from the rest of the bathroom by a door. The door was always open to prevent steam from building up in the showers.

The only female bathroom in the barracks was on the first floor, and on this particular night, while I was showering, all six of Pruitt’s female friends, not wanting to go down to the first floor, walked in on me in the shower. I covered myself with my hands, but the German girls laughed, telling me that only Americans are so prudish as to care about being naked, “You have a nice cock,” one of them said, “so you should let us see it.”

The German girls filled slowly past, used the bathroom, and then filled slowly past again. Most of the girls went back to Pruitt’s room, but the one who liked poetry stayed in the doorway and started chatting with me while she watched me sheepishly finish showering.

I thought this girl might want to be more than friends and was torn between attraction to her and wanting to be faithful to my wife (I won’t lie – it was arousing), but I didn’t need to be worried. I finished showering and put my pajamas on, and all she did was say, “Good night,” and head back to Pruitt’s room.

This experience was a pretty big culture shock, but the girls were right – nudity in Germany is fairly common. Public pools have some days where swimsuits are mandatory, somewhere they are optional, and somewhere they are not allowed. Beaches are filled with a mixture of people in and out of swimsuits, and even Germans wearing swimsuits often put them on and take them off in front of everyone. Many of the Hostels have coed shower rooms; by and large, the German people don’t think anything of it beyond finding it funny when an American is embarrassed. It’s even legal to pee on the side of the road as long as you turn your back to the street.

The next night the girls started to poke fun at me again in Pruitt’s room, and to show me how normal nudity was, my poetry friend took her clothes off for a few minutes. True to her word, she was not the least bit uncomfortable.

I hung out with Pruitt and the girls every night for about a month, but after that one time, the girls respected my privacy and did not walk in on me again.

I’ve always believed God was tempting me that night in the shower. My poetry friend (whose name I have long since forgotten) would probably have gone back to my room with me had I made a move on her, but I did not make a move. I would probably have taken her back to my room with me had she made a move, but she did not make a move either. She just watched me shower, dry off, and dress, and bade me a good night. After showing me that she too could be naked the next day, the whole thing blew over, and I was safely where a married man belonged, in the ‘friend zone.’

As you’ll read through the rest of this blog series, I have a propensity for emotional affairs that never turn physical. I suppose my German poet girl was the first, but she was by no means the last, and while Beth did a great many things to contribute to our marriage failing, I was at times a very difficult man to be married to.

About a year later, Beth and I would go to the Bamberg public pool. When I came out of the locker room, I was politely informed that this was one of the days of the week when swimsuits were not allowed. There must have been fifty people in the pool, all naked. About five minutes later, my wife came out of the locker room and was also told that this was a no-suit day. Beth looked around, saw me in the water, and yelled, “WALLY – GET THE HELL OUT OF THAT POOL!!”

By this time, I had a ‘when in Rome’ attitude, but Beth did not. We never went to a German public pool again.

The Army, in general, started carrying a similar attitude as female soldiers began integrating into combat units (which happened while I was in Germany). When you are deployed somewhere with everyone sleeping in the same tent or the same room, over time, you just get used to it. It’s not like you can go weeks or months on end without changing.

Eventually, Alpha Company returned from training, and I found myself in A&O Platoon. I don’t remember off hand what A&O stood for, but we were the ones who drove tanks modified for Combat Engineers. The other Combat Engineers (12B) played with mines, barbed wire, and C4.

SSG Phipps was my squad leader. He was a great guy who took me under his wing. We remained friends the rest of the time I was in Germany, and I eventually met his wife, Dotty, who he had met in Germany.

Life started to become routine. We had formation at 4:45 AM to do Physical Training (PT) at 5, PT lasted from 5-6, and then we had an hour and a half to shower, dress, and eat before formation at 7:30. We got an hour and a half for lunch. We typically worked until 4:30. Some days, we worked longer, and occasionally we worked really late.

After a couple of weeks, First Sergeant Roland (Alpha Company’s top Non-Commissioned Officer) told us he had a petition from the American Legion to ban flag burning he wanted everyone to sign. It was a Friday. He told us we would not be released for the weekend until everyone signed it.

First Sergeant Roland was an intimidating character who had lost his right arm below the elbow while serving as a Drill Sergeant at the hand grenade range.

I never went to the hand grenade range in the Army, but I’d thrown a live grenade in Marine Corps Boot Camp, and I remember it well. We spent the entirety of Boot Camp preparing for the Hand Grenade Range, practicing for it whenever we got something to drink in the chow hall. I was trying to put on weight, so I’d always get chocolate milk (which we called ‘Brown Cow’). Whenever we filled a glass, we had to hold it with our left hand, cover the top with our right hand, and as we turned around to head to our table, we had to shout, “Gangway, live grenade!”

When it was our turn at the Grenade Pit, we would pull the grenade pin with our left hand, drop the pin, and then throw the grenade with our right hand. Every platoon would have one guy who would get it wrong, pulling the pin, throwing the pin, and then dropping the grenade. The Drill Instructor’s job was then to throw the recruit out of the pit and jump on top of him while the grenade exploded.

The process in the Army must be very similar, and First Sergeant Roland lost his right arm below the elbow while throwing a private out of the Grenade Pit and jumping on top of him.

Typically someone missing an arm would be discharged, but First Sergeant Roland never failed a PT test and never gave the Army an excuse to kick him out. When it was time to do push-ups, he would have someone measure his feet (you were allowed to have them one foot apart) and crank out as many push-ups with one arm as the rest of us could with two.

I was summoned to First Sergeant Roland’s office around 3 PM that day. He had his petition in front of him, and I was the only person who had not yet signed it. First Sergeant Roland pushed it toward me and handed me a pen.

I refused to sign the petition. At first, First Sergeant Roland was nice about it, asking me why I was not against burning the American flag. I told him I thought it said something about the United States that ours was a country where the Freedom of Speech is considered so important that it was legal to burn our own flag and that as much as I disliked flag burning, I liked the Freedom of Speech more “Without the values the flag represents,” I told him, “the flag is just a pretty piece of cloth.”

First Sergeant Roland got pretty upset and eventually ordered me to sign the ‘damned petition.’ I told him I would need the order in writing. We both knew it was illegal for him to order me to sign a political petition.

I did not sign the petition, and First Sergeant Roland still released everyone for the weekend, but come Monday Morning, I found out I was in Charlie Company. First Sergeant Roland did not like me and threw me out.

I don’t remember what vehicle I was assigned to in Alpha Company. Still, as soon as I moved to Charlie Company, I was assigned to an AVLB (Armor Vehicle Launched Bridge), which was a modified M47 or M60 tank with a bridge on top of it. Mine was an M47, and Specialist Madrid, who husky guy who had been in the unit for a while, told me I needed to change the Flux Capacitator.

I spent about a half hour sitting in my tank, looking through the manual for some mention of the Flux Capacitator, when Madrid and the rest of the Platoon came over and started laughing. The Flux Capacitator was a fictional part of the time-traveling DeLorean car from Back to the Future.

Gags on new guys were pretty common…

Calling America from Germany was expensive, so Beth and I communicated primarily by letter (I never told her about the shower incident, nor my German girl poetry friend). I gradually started to settle into my role when one day, I was summoned by the housing office, which had a one-bedroom apartment off base, all the way on the other side of town. It was a twenty-minute drive from the base, and I did not have to take it if I did not want it – I rated a two-bedroom and could hold out until something closer to the base was available. This was the furthest housing the Army had from the actual base.

I actually liked the idea of living a distance from base; out in the German economy, I accepted the apartment and started arranging for Beth to join me.

Beth acted quickly, and I suddenly needed a car. There was a used car store just off base, so on the day before Beth arrived, I bought a green Volkswagen Golf.

I learned something when I test-drove the Golf. I could drive a manual transmission, so that wasn’t an issue, but I had never driven a car with a manual choke before and had to get used to that.

More importantly, I had not been far off base before and got lost. After a while, I pulled over and got out of the car to ask for directions, but I could not find anyone who spoke English. It was ‘Nein spreken ze English” over and over again, which was odd as most people under 30 did speak English, and that was primarily who I was asking.

Eventually, it dawned on me that nobody wanted to give me directions because they all thought it was funny. I was lost, so rather than asking for directions to base, I asked for directions to a movie rental store just off base and was immediately told how to get there.

I bought the car, and the next day I headed to Frankfurt to pick my wife up from the airport.

I greeted Beth in the baggage area, and Bandit (our dog) started barking excitedly from the oversize baggage. It had been months since he’d seen me, and he must have heard my voice.

I found Bandit in his travel crate, Beth’s luggage arrived, and I drove her to our apartment, which I’d only seen briefly once myself.

Beth had had a hard time packing, as our household goods would take a month or two to arrive, and she had to pack not only clothing, but whatever else we would need for our apartment until the rest of our stuff arrived. We must have bought a minimal amount of furniture from SSG Urich, and somehow we made due until everything else got there.

Charlie Company was going out for training the first weekend with Beth in the country, but it was on base in Bamberg – and I was shocked at how dark it was when I left the chow tent to head back to the tent where my squad was staying I could not see a damned thing.

I later learned that overexposure to CS Gas (military-grade tear gas) could destroy one’s night vision. We’d played with CS Gas like it was popcorn in my Marine Corps Reserve unit, and I’d had a leaky mask, so I’d been exposed to a lot of it, but all I knew at the time was that I could not see a damned thing.

I remembered that our tent was somewhere to the right and stumbled about until my hands found a tent. It was not our tent, but it was a tent. I fumbled around until I found the entrance, and when I opened it, there was enough light inside that I could see the right tent, which I blindly headed toward.

Night blindness would be a recurring problem in Germany as we would train in ‘light discipline’ conditions at night.

Next week I’ll get deeper into my time in Germany with Beth over what would prove to be the high point of our marriage.

> Read the entire series of posts here: My Journey to Jesus.

MANY VOICES, ONE FREEDOM: UNITED IN THE 1ST AMENDMENT

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