GERMANY

ASSIGNMENTS

I spent over three years in Germany beginning in 1953 (eight years after WW II.) For half of that time, I served as a radio operator on top of a snowy mountain near a village whose name Americans could not pronounce properly. Germans would roar in laughter when the American efforts produced a slang word for a part of the feminine anatomy.

The other half of my service was spent as a cryptologist in Southern Germany.

The U.S. Army, as an Occupying Force, kept close reins on its uniformed troops.

As a U.S. Air Force Airman, I was not under Army restrictions.  I did not have to wear a uniform, and a special pass allowed me to travel in Europe without encountering red tape. (The Army guys did not like that.)

AACHEN

After I arrived at Bremerhaven, I was treated to a long slow bus ride to my first assignment.  I passed through town after town that showed some little signs of bombing, but the city of Aachen was different.

There was devastation. I did not see a single building there. Instead, I saw what looked like piles of rubble.  In between the piles, skinny people seemed to be digging with their bare hands, probably looking for stashes of unopened canned food.

Aachen was once a "Jewel in the Crown" for the Holy Roman Empire.  Now, it served as a Testament to the "Faded Glory" of Hitler's Third Reich.

A couple of years later, I saw that rebuilding had begun.

KINDER

I noticed something right away when I looked at German children.  Every  one I saw in this Caucasian country had rosy cheeks!  Why was that? I don't remember ever seeing an American kid with rosy cheeks.

KLEIDER

Early on, I noticed that some Germans were treated with deference by shopkeepers and waiters.  What was different about them?

They always had on some kind of green clothes. Probably a hold-over from the time when there were British-like class distinctions, encouraged by special clothing.

Being a bit of a copy-cat, I purchased either a cheap green German jacket or a cheap green German suit, I can't remember which.  It didn't matter anyway. With my blond hair, blue eyes and green clothing, in my stupidity, I expected some deference from Germans. Of course, that didn't happen.

ESSEN  

My friend, Paul Kubricky, always talked about the beautiful German Fraulein who was ZAFTIC VON ESSEN.  You can figure that out.)

I spent a lot of time at restaurants and gasthouses. You could always see me attacking the same menu:

Ox-tail Soup

Wienerschnitzel

Salat

Two German Beers

Some have said that the Wienerschnitzel was made of horsemeat. All I know is that it was delicious.  I have never had such good food except at the famous (sadly, long gone) Hausner's Restaurant in Baltimore, Maryland.

DEUTSCH AND CONFESSION TIME

In my time in Germany, I became (kind of) friends with some folks who might be considered in the U.S. to be "lower class."  They told very interesting stories about the destruction from bombing, escapes from prison and desertion from the losing German army. 

We had a "cigarette ration," which my sergeant kept trying to steal from me. I kept the cigarettes and sold them to my "underworld" friends on the Black Market.  That money paid for fancy hotel rooms and tours to other countries, like Holland, France, England, and Luxemburg.  Also, it paid for my Jeep not being stolen, even though the cab was open and a key was not needed for it to start.

I became quite proficient in the German language; so much so, that I started to think in that language and translate it in my mind to English. That lasted for a long time, but didn't seem to bother my work activity.

Unfortunately, the German that I was comfortable with was from the "Underworld," so, in order to try to learn it properly, I read a lot of Goethe and Schiller.

Genug!

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Go, and sing German Christmas (Weinachten) songs.