It's a Small Army

I was a payroll clerk in the Army's Personnel Office in Grafenwoehr, Germany. "My" area, the payroll area, was the smaller of two connected, large, open office areas, the other containing the Personnel Officer, NCOIC, and several personnel clerks.

I heard the door to the Personnel Office open, and looked over. It was winter, and the new arrival was wearing a parka. From the back, very little of him could be seen. I did hear the Personnel Officer ask him, "Who are you?" His reply was, "I'm your new Sergeant Major."

Someone had led him astray, whether intentionally or unintentionally I do not know. The post had a perfectly good Sergeant Major who had no plans or orders to relinquish the position. The new arrival was, in fact, to become the First Sergeant of a company in Hohenfels, Germany, an isolated part of the Seventh Army Training Center.

He was processed by the NCOIC and brought in to payroll. We were introduced - he was First Sergeant Sam Donley - and I took possession of his payroll records, cleared up a couple of items, and that was it.

Perhaps a year later a figure in a parka (this is key because there were no insignia and there was no name tag) appeared in my office saying he had a couple of questions about "my pay."

"Sure thing. And you are . . . ?"

"Why wouldn't you know who I am?"

"Let's turn it around. Why would I? I have the payroll records for more than 500 people. I have met perhaps 100 of them more than once, and many of them I've never met at all."

This seemed to placate him, he reintroduced himself, and we resolved whatever issues were bothering him.

Fast forward to Fort Huachuca, Arizona, five years later. Two companies' "Orderly Rooms" (basically company headquarters, usually containing the Company Commander, First Sergeant, and Company Clerk) shared a building. I was assigned to one of the companies and the First Sergeant of the other was - yup - Sam Donley. I had hardly known him, had only met him the two times described above, and had talked to him on the phone a couple of times about payroll issues regarding soldiers in his company in Hohenfels, but we figured to be in close proximity to each other for perhaps the next year and a half, and it seemed to me that the appropriate thing to do was to stop in and say hello.

I did. He was sitting at his desk and I introduced myself as "your payroll clerk in Grafenwoehr when you were in Hohenfels. Just thought I'd say hello." Although I doubt that he actually remembered me, he smiled, stood up, walked over to me, shook my hand and said, "Oh, yes. How are you?"

We chatted for a couple of minutes and my impression that he was somewhat pedantic was reinforced when we were interrupted by a Sergeant First Class for whom Sam had some instructions. When he finished issuing them the SFC began speaking: "In other words, you want me . . . " - "What's wrong with my words?"

Something made Sam ask me if I played duplicate bridge, and he was very pleased to learn that I did. There was a weekly session held at the Sambo's in Sierra Vista, right outside the post. It was sanctioned by the North American Bridge League and I think I recall learning that Sam had started it. I agreed to show up at the next one, we shook hands, and I exited.

Sam and I became friends, not particularly intimate friends, but at least friendly. We were probably the two best players at the weekly event and we usually won when we played together. But we weren't partners very often, as the attendance was fairly small and we made ourselves available as partners to others in order to encourage attendence.

I guess I'm rambling here, as I don't have any point to make or any particular exit line. Sam popped into my head and I thought I'd write about him. Two more related thoughts:

• This was the first time I had made myself available as a partner to players who were consistently weaker than I, and I learned a lot. One incident springs to mind - I was playing with an Army Captain who was very unsure of himself regarding bridge. In fact, we were partnered as the result of his wife asking me to play with him because she felt that a good result would make him more liable to attend the event frequently.
  
  Early on, he opened a hand's bidding with "One heart." I had great heart support and a wildly distributional hand. I jumped to six hearts and he was visibly shaken. He played the hand as if he were walking the plank and went down one in an ice cold contract. Nearly everyone else bid and made six hearts with the hand. But this was not his fault - it was due to my inexperience. What I should have done was drag him through a series of forcing bids. In other circumstances the sequence of bids would make no sense but in this case it would have given him time to realize that he was going to be playing in a slam contract, however reluctantly. Given that time to adjust, he would probably not have blundered due to a case of nerves.
  
  
• The weekly bridge reinforced my decision to leave the Army. I was about a year and a half away from discharge and had been a GI more than eight years. It wouldn't have been a bad life for me except that there were so many rules regarding personal behavior. I chafed under being told what time to get up, what time to go to bed, what to wear, where I was and was not allowed to go, and - most particularly - with whom I might and might not socialize.
  
  Some of the players at the weekly event were commissioned officers and/or their wives, and I came to know and like some of them. However, this was the only occasion on which I could socialize with them, as I was enlisted, not commissioned. I understood and agreed with the logic behind this, but it still annoyed me.
  
  In the event, I was promoted to Staff Sergeant perhaps a year before my enlistment was up, but I did follow through with my determination to reenter civilian life.
  

GI's and German Women

Okay, now I can imagine stepping on some toes with this one, so I want to be crystal clear about this: I am not trashing Germany or German women. I spent four and a half years in Germany, and loved it. I've had several German girlfriends - in Germany - and was even engaged to one. And my best friend in Germany married a German girl nearly forty-five years ago and they are still happily married.

This post is about certain types of soldiers I knew, and their attraction to a particular subset of German women - women who wanted to marry an American for whatever material benefits might come of it. Many German women have married American soldiers, have raised families with them, and have maintained good and lasting marriages. This post is not about them.

Okay? Okay.

Although I have known a few, I'll list only a couple of the GI's I knew who married German women for the wrong reasons. The primary reason in both cases - this is going to be difficult to believe for those of you who have not been in the military and stationed overseas - was to get out of the barracks. Yes. It. Was.

And they are not the only ones to have felt that way. I knew others who often said that if they could find the "right" woman they would get married to get out of the barracks. Either they had criteria at least slightly more stringent or they just got lucky, for they did not marry while I knew them.

This is pretty shallow, right? You prefer "stupid?" Okay, this is pretty stupid, right? So why did (does?) it happen?

Well, the first thing you have to know is that for the most part these were young GI's, say ages eighteen to twenty-two. In many cases this was the first time they had left home for any significant period of time and the first time they had not been subjected daily to the guidance of parents. They were all (in my experience) volunteers, not draftees. I don't know what they thought life in the Army was going to be like, but suspect that the thought of discipline was no part of their daydreams. If they enlisted in order to be "on their own," well, they weren't. They were no longer subject to parental discipline but they were not one hundred percent free, either.

Objectively, barracks life in the two companies I experienced in Germany was not at all bad, but there were definite rules. There was a time by which you had to be out of bed, six days a week. There was a time you had to be in bed, seven days a week, unless you were on some kind of authorized absence. Beds had to be made, rooms kept clean and neat, floors waxed and buffed, rooms inspected - in one case daily, in another case weekly - and rooms, personal gear, and field gear inspected monthly. You might be in a four or six man room, possibly with one or more people you didn't care for, but a minimum of courtesy made this a trivial matter.

But there were a small number of soldiers on whom this life positively grated, and a few were determined to avoid it at all costs. For an enlisted man there were only three non-criminal alternatives:

1. Serve your time and get out of the Army. Alas, this did not solve the problem for the time you still had to serve.
   
   
2. Earn enough promotions so that you were entitled to a private room. This was very difficult to do in one hitch of three years, and would solve the problem only at the very end of its duration.
   
   
3. Get married, thus earning authorization to move out of the barracks and in with your new wife.

As you already know, this post is about those who chose option 3.

The pool of women willing to marry such misfits was generally limited to women who worked in bars not too far from American posts. They worked there largely because it gave them access to the kind of man they were looking for. That was not true for all women who worked in these bars, but we're honing in on the ones for whom it was true.

• The first case was actually a second enlistment GI, a not very well educated country boy who was on his first foreign tour. He openly bragged that he was going to find a woman and marry her and not have to live in the barracks any longer. He found one in a little town called Schlicht, quickly put a ring on her finger and even more quickly reached the point where he should have regretted it, but didn't. He was not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and would smile ruefully about catching her in bed with another man the night before their wedding, and asking her, "Now, Honey, you're not going to do this any more after we get married, right?"
  
  Soon after he got married and moved off post I lost track of him, as I transferred from Vilseck to Grafenwoehr.
  
  But, still in Grafenwoehr a couple of years later, I ran into him again. He had rotated back to the US, spent a year or so there, and was back in Germany. The first thing he said to me was, "Have you saw my wife?" He then explained that after she got her first Army allotment check - at that time it was mandatory for enlisted men to send various amounts of money to their spouses unless they were living in government housing - she abandoned him, sent the Army a change of address, and simply kept receiving and cashing the allotment checks, the only reason she had married him in the first place. Ironically, the Army would not provide him with her address.
  
  
• The second case was a young man, perhaps 21 - a critical age, because if you were under 21 the Army required parental approval prior to your marriage. He too bragged that he would find a girl and "get out of the barracks." He found one, proposed and was accepted, bought rings and had them fitted, but before they married he too caught her cheating. He managed to get the engagement ring back, kept the set, and went looking for a girl with the same ring size!
  
  He found one within a couple of weeks and married her. I have no idea how it worked out as my tour of Germany came to an end soon thereafter. Anything can happen, but I am rather skeptical about his long term happiness with her.

I do not provide these as examples of a large problem -it wasn't. Nor do I have solutions for the small problem it actually was. I suspect there are no solutions that are not unjustifiably burdensome on those who are "real" adults and wish to marry for more conventional reasons. I posted this because I thought it was interesting and because I'd bet a lot of money that many of you never dreamed that people could be so irrational for such a reason.

Forget Our Training, Did We?

My outfit in Vilseck, Germany, was on one of three posts making up what was then (and may still be, for all I know) the 7th Army Training Center, the other two locations being Grafenwoehr and Hohenfels. NATO troops trained there year-round, and once a year a huge exercise, "Operation Wintershield," involving tens of thousands of opposing forces, took place. When this occurred, our company gymnasium was converted into a lounge for General Officers. No kidding, just generals, and there were dozens of them.

One of the sections dealt with chemical, biological and radiological warfare (CBR). Among other things, this section had the use of a helicopter which was especially fitted for CBR - more specifically, for dispersing CS, or what we called CS gas. Exposure to this (chlorine and sulfur) would cause your eyes to burn and cause you to have coughing fits until your lungs were cleared. And for a while after that, too. If you got a good lungful you weren't going to smoke cigarettes for a day or two.

One day during an Operation Wintershield period, a friend who worked in CBR called me and said that one of the opposing armies had requested CBR support and the section had agreed to provide it. Did I want to go along for the ride?

I'd never been in a helicopter and thought it would be interesting. I asked for and received permission from the First Sergeant to leave my job and make the trip.

My friend (who was a Specialist Fifth Class, so we'll just refer to him as SP5) and I got into the helicopter and strapped ourselves into seats. One whole side of the helicopter was open, and the trip to Hohenfels was cold. SP5's seat was right at the edge of the opening and mine was directly opposite. Much of the center was taken up by a large white tank containing CS. At some point a lone soldier in a jeep, top down and entirely in the open, was spotted and it was determined that he was one of those who for the moment were our "enemies."

We put our gas masks on and as the helicopter swooped down on the jeep SP5 grabbed a hose with some special kind of nozzle affair. The helicopter tilted, leaving me looking almost straight down on the jeep, and SP5 soon sprayed the moving jeep with CS. The driver panicked.

We were close enough to him to see that he was carrying a gas mask and I am certain that he had been trained, as were we all, to put that mask on and clear it in a few seconds, no inhaling required during the process, but his instincts were wrong and he decided he would outrun the helicopter, ho ho ho.

His goal was the woods, perhaps a half mile of bumpy dirt road (or bumpy off-road if he chose) away. He dodged, sped up, and slowed down, but about once a minute he was rewarded with another cloud of CS. Eventually he reached the woods. He slowed the jeep down and jumped out, leaving the jeep to roll where it would.

Our last view of him sticks in my mind - he was standing at the tree line, looking up at us and giving us a one finger salute.

Hey, GI, they taught you about that gas mask for a reason.

Eggs Over Easy

During my time in Grafenwoehr, Germany, I was the post's Finance Clerk. For a while I ran around with our Company Clerk, Moe. Many of our evenings were spent in Pressath, a little town a few miles from post, a town where almost no one spoke any English. Our main hangout - but by no means the only one - was the Eis Diele ("Ice Cream Parlor") where the only alcoholic beverage served was cognac. You could (in the early 1960s) buy a bottle of perhaps eight ounces for five marks, at that time the equivalent of US $1.25. The cognac, however, was only a cut above wood alcohol.

The Eis Diele was run by a small middle-aged woman whom we all called "Mama." Later, the first double date for John, Irma, Anna, and me would conclude here.

Somewhere along the line Moe had bought a wreck of a two door car:

• There were no rear view mirrors.
  
• The front seat was a bench seat, unattached to the floor. When Moe put the car into gear the passenger leaned forward to offset the tendency of the seat to fall backward, taking driver and passenger with it.
  
• On a left turn, or even when the road curved left, the passenger door would fly open.
  
• Only more or less local trips were possible, as the radiator was virtually a sieve. Trips had to be planned with water supplies in mind. Every time we went to Pressath we stopped at a river on the way home and replenished the water supply.

Every year Moe had to get a post sticker for the car, showing that the car had been inspected and was "safe." These inspections were accomplished by German civilians who worked on post, and each year Moe arrived with a carton of cigarettes and left with a sticker.

Late one morning Moe called me at work. He had a yen for some eggs, something we were not going to see at the mess hall during lunch, and suggested we drive out to Pressath to another restaurant and bar - the name of which escaped me long ago. We did that - in our fatigue uniforms, which was against Army regulations - and arrived to find that it was not yet open. My recollection is that there was no sign setting forth business hours, and I speculate that they were generally open only for dinner and the evening bar hoppers. Moe and I had been there a few times but didn't really know anyone there - owners or management.

Nevertheless, Moe knocked on the door a couple of times and after a moment a fortyish woman answered the door. She spoke no English but told us in German that they were not yet open. At Moe's urging I asked whether the two of us might buy ham and egg lunches. She thought about it, invited us in, locked the door, and seated us. We ordered two beers and she asked how we would like our eggs. One hole in our collective German vocabulary represented the phrase "sunny side up" to describe eggs, and we went at it the long way around. We managed to get the concept across, and she smiled and told us it would be just a few minutes.

She reappeared with two plates, everything perfect except that the eggs were very well cooked. But we dug in and greatly enjoyed the novelty of having lunch off post, in a German restaurant, drinking beer. The tab came to less than a couple of dollars apiece. We left a nice tip and thanked her for making an exception for us. She invited us to repeat the experience any time we wished.

Well, then. The next day we went back and were greeted with a big smile. On being served the two beers we engaged her in a conversation aimed at getting her to cook the eggs not quite as long as she had cooked yesterday's. She soon understood and before long we had our lunch in front of us. The eggs were not quite as hard as before, but still a little overcooked for our taste.

The next day we asked for just a wee bit less cooking of the eggs and got that. On the fourth day we repeated the process, using thumb and forefinger to show that we were that close to perfect on the eggs, and on that day they were perfect when served. Alas, that was the only day this was true.

She was on a roll, and the next time we went she cooked them a tiny bit less. Still, we smacked our lips and made the appropriate appreciative sounds. Big mistake. Each of the next several days the eggs came out runnier than the day before, until we speculated that she was just waving them at the stove. We just could not get her to stop reducing the eggs' cooking time. She was on her way to some bizarre kind of egg soup, and not to be deterred. Eventually we gave up and returned to eating lunch at the mess hall.