All this Veteran’s Day “honor our heroes” stuff got me to thinking about my tour of duty.
Back in the “Day”, young men like me graduating from high school had little choice, you either went to college or your ass was drafted into the Army. Period. The college exemption always pissed me off. Basically it was a class thing. People who could afford college got off, those that couldn’t carried a gun. No politician was going to accept their kid getting drafted.
Being from a family that couldn’t afford to send me to college, and being such a poor student that no college wanted me anyway, I was looking down the barrel of a gun. On graduation day, my old man put it clearly enough, “Either find a way to go to college, get a job, or join the Army. It’s time to move on.”
Never could see myself shouldering a gun and marching around half the day. After six years in a HS marching band I had had enough of that. Couldn’t see myself floating around in a tin can for 6 months at a time so, I joined the Air Force.
After acing the entrance exam, (My first awakening as to how really dumb most people are. After all, if I, a C- student, can ace this test, WTF is wrong with the rest of these morons?), anyway… the recruiter was excited. He knew he had a live one. You see, below a certain score on the test and you couldn’t get into the Air Force, so the recruiter was excited that he was going to score another point that day. “Sign right here son”, he said, handing me a pen. “Look through this book and tell me the three things you would like to do the most.”
The “book” was basically a long list of occupations that you might want to pursue. This was pre-Vietnam and the Air Force didn’t participate in the draft, so they had to attract recruits and one way to do that was by “guaranteeing” you the job you wanted. Of course, once you sign, your ass belongs to them and you do whatever they tell you to do.
The military basically needs every occupation there is in the civilian world with a few exotic things like bombing and strafing thrown in for good measure. My first choice was to be a spy. Intelligence, they called it. The hair on the back of my neck tingled just thinking about it. Second choice was Air Traffic Control. Something that could have held me in good stead for the rest of my life. But noooo, I got assigned to my third choice… photography, something about as useless as tits on a boar. Something that, if pursued as an occupation, will only guarantee lifelong starvation or worse, a lifetime of taking pictures of weddings and fat cheeked babies.
Why the hell I chose photography I’ll never know, but it turned out to be the perfect job for a slacker like me.
After a few weeks of boot camp, (another story) I was sent to Lowery AFB in Denver, Colorado for Tech School, one of the finest photography schools in the country. I have friends with college degrees in photography, and from talking with them, I now realize I got the equivalent of a college education in that school. We learned everything from dye-transfer to the laws of reciprocity, and even how to take a picture!
Following graduation, I was again given three choices, for duty assignments; Arkansas, Bermuda, or West Germany. It was a tough decision. Bermuda had a reputation as a single man’s paradise. It was exotic. It was where the airline stewardesses vacationed, and this was back when stewardesses and Playboy bunnies were pretty much one and the same. I could see myself lying on the beach, sipping a cool one, a beautiful young thing on each arm. Ahhh, the dashing young photographer done good.
But Bermuda is, after all, an island of only 23 square miles or so, and this was a three-year assignment, and… Germany on the other hand, was “Europe.” The home of Formula One. The Nurburgring, Spa Francorchamps, LeMans. And, I had it on good authority that there were girls there too. Decision made. Off to the land of Beethoven. Oh, I almost forgot. There was a third choice you say?
We flew over the pond on a chartered, commercial Pan Am 707, with all the comforts. A planeload of GI’s attended to by the most hit-up and harassed stewardesses on earth. They smiled their stew-smiles and took it all in good stride but were, no doubt, relieved when we touched down in Frankfurt. From there it was a military bus to my home for the next three years, Ramstein AFB.
I checked in, was assigned a room and reported for duty at the base photo lab. There is no better photographic duty than base photographer. Responsible for photographing everything from portraits to parades, automobile to aircraft accidents, and all points in-between. I spent a good deal of my time shooting for the base newspaper and, eventually, the Stars & Stripes, European edition.
I had been there a few weeks when the sergeant and a couple of the senior airmen decided to take me out on the town and “break me in” on my 19th birthday. We went to the nearby village of Lanstuhl, a picturesque little place with an ancient castle perched atop a hill. Fortunately, one of the airman was into the culture and our first stop was a cozy little gasthaus right out of a picture book. I really liked the place as it was an authentic local pub and unfrequented by GIs. It eventually became a favorite watering hole, however, there being only one waitress, who showed no interest in getting to “know” us, and we being the only customers, the rest of the guys decided to move on. They were looking for action.
Next was a seedy GI bar, and the place was humming. The table next to us got my attention as one of the girls, a big old mama with makeup applied by a paint brush, on a bet from a GI at her table, took his beer bottle from his hand, stood it on the seat of a chair, hiked up her dress and squat down on it, absorbing the whole thing within her. With a big smile, she paraded around the place, then came back, lifted her leg, placing her foot on top of the table. Without missing a beat, the GI reached between her legs, retrieved his beer, licked the rim, and took a slug.
The heady German beer was going to my head but not fast enough for Sarge, who ordered up a concoction called Absinthe, a milky looking liquid that tasted like licorice. Let me tell you, after a couple of those babies, I just flat didn’t give a damn.
A third one was delivered by a pretty nice looking waitress in a skimpy outfit who sat on my lap, put her arm around me, and hugged my face into her ample cleavage. Then, she planted a kiss on me that took my breath away, and placed my hand on her crotch. I let out a yelp and jumped to my feet, throwing the girl onto the floor. Sarge and the boys fell out laughing. What I had found in that bitch’s crotch was a set of balls and wanger bigger than mine! What the fuck!
I was pissed enough to beat the crap out of somebody, but I just couldn’t bring myself to stay pissed at someone laughing so hard there were tears in his eyes, especially since the entire bar was laughing with them. The queen got up, straitened herself, and stormed off in a huff.
By now it was getting late but there was still one more stop to make, the infamous Florida Bar, a big old barn of a place with a stage at one end and a giant dance floor half filled with tables, and surrounded on three sides by booths. This place didn’t even open until midnight. It was the place everybody went after every other place had closed. It was a melting pot just waiting to boil over.
To begin with, there were lots of drunk Army soldiers trying desperately to score as they had to make curfew and be back on base by a certain time. Then there were the Airmen, who had no curfew, and were biding their time waiting out the Army troops, half of whom were looking for any provocation to start a fight as they were pissed because they knew they were being waited out. The rest of the crowd was made up of a smattering of German civilians and nearly every bar whore and bar fly from every other area club that had closed for the night.
It didn’t take long for the action to get started. One of the whores, stood on a chair and yelled at the top of her lungs, “Get the fuck outta here nigger” and hurled a beer bottle at a table full of black troops who were hitting up some girls at the table next to them. All hell broke loose. I was in a sea of punching, screaming, gouging, and broken bottles. It was like a scene from a Hollywood western, only nothing was made of balsa and sugar.
I grabbed a couple of beers, dropped onto all fours, and made my way through the melee towards one of the booths. I had just made the relative safety of the booth and pushed my way under the table alongside another person there, when the Military Police arrived. Whistles blowing, they waded into the crowd with their nightsticks, smacking the crap out of anyone within reach, innocent or not. People were streaming towards the exits as the medics arrived, pushed their way into the crowd, and began carrying out the wounded on stretchers.
When I finally caught my breath, I turned to see who it was I was sharing my retreat with. She was a cute little German girl of about 17. Oh yeah! I gave her one of my beers, “Guten abend fraulien.”
And thus, I became a combat veteran of the GI bars of Germany… with oakleaf cluster.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
A Soldier of the Great War
All this Veteran’s Day “honor our heroes” stuff got me to thinking about my tour of duty.
Back in the “Day”, young men like me graduating from high school had little choice, you either went to college or your ass was drafted into the Army. Period. The college exemption always pissed me off. Basically it was a class thing. People who could afford college got off, those that couldn’t carried a gun. No politician was going to accept their kid getting drafted.
Being from a family that couldn’t afford to send me to college, and being such a poor student that no college wanted me anyway, I was looking down the barrel of a gun. On graduation day, my old man put it clearly enough, “Either find a way to go to college, get a job, or join the Army. It’s time to move on.”
Never could see myself shouldering a gun and marching around half the day. After six years in a HS marching band I had had enough of that. Couldn’t see myself floating around in a tin can for 6 months at a time so, I joined the Air Force.
After acing the entrance exam, (My first awakening as to how really dumb most people are. After all, if I, a C- student, can ace this test, WTF is wrong with the rest of these morons?), anyway… the recruiter was excited. He knew he had a live one. You see, below a certain score on the test and you couldn’t get into the Air Force, so the recruiter was excited that he was going to score another point that day. “Sign right here son”, he said, handing me a pen. “Look through this book and tell me the three things you would like to do the most.”
The “book” was basically a long list of occupations that you might want to pursue. This was pre-Vietnam and the Air Force didn’t participate in the draft, so they had to attract recruits and one way to do that was by “guaranteeing” you the job you wanted. Of course, once you sign, your ass belongs to them and you do whatever they tell you to do.
The military basically needs every occupation there is in the civilian world with a few exotic things like bombing and strafing thrown in for good measure. My first choice was to be a spy. Intelligence, they called it. The hair on the back of my neck tingled just thinking about it. Second choice was Air Traffic Control. Something that could have held me in good stead for the rest of my life. But noooo, I got assigned to my third choice… photography, something about as useless as tits on a boar. Something that, if pursued as an occupation, will only guarantee lifelong starvation or worse, a lifetime of taking pictures of weddings and fat cheeked babies.
Why the hell I chose photography I’ll never know, but it turned out to be the perfect job for a slacker like me.
After a few weeks of boot camp, (another story) I was sent to Lowery AFB in Denver, Colorado for Tech School, one of the finest photography schools in the country. I have friends with college degrees in photography, and from talking with them, I now realize I got the equivalent of a college education in that school. We learned everything from dye-transfer to the laws of reciprocity, and even how to take a picture!
Following graduation, I was again given three choices, for duty assignments; Arkansas, Bermuda, or West Germany. It was a tough decision. Bermuda had a reputation as a single man’s paradise. It was exotic. It was where the airline stewardesses vacationed, and this was back when stewardesses and Playboy bunnies were pretty much one and the same. I could see myself lying on the beach, sipping a cool one, a beautiful young thing on each arm. Ahhh, the dashing young photographer done good.
But Bermuda is, after all, an island of only 23 square miles or so, and this was a three-year assignment, and… Germany on the other hand, was “Europe.” The home of Formula One. The Nurburgring, Spa Francorchamps, LeMans. And, I had it on good authority that there were girls there too. Decision made. Off to the land of Beethoven. Oh, I almost forgot. There was a third choice you say?
We flew over the pond on a chartered, commercial Pan Am 707, with all the comforts. A planeload of GI’s attended to by the most hit-up and harassed stewardesses on earth. They smiled their stew-smiles and took it all in good stride but were, no doubt, relieved when we touched down in Frankfurt. From there it was a military bus to my home for the next three years, Ramstein AFB.
I checked in, was assigned a room and reported for duty at the base photo lab. There is no better photographic duty than base photographer. Responsible for photographing everything from portraits to parades, automobile to aircraft accidents, and all points in-between. I spent a good deal of my time shooting for the base newspaper and, eventually, the Stars & Stripes, European edition.
I had been there a few weeks when the sergeant and a couple of the senior airmen decided to take me out on the town and “break me in” on my 19th birthday. We went to the nearby village of Lanstuhl, a picturesque little place with an ancient castle perched atop a hill. Fortunately, one of the airman was into the culture and our first stop was a cozy little gasthaus right out of a picture book. I really liked the place as it was an authentic local pub and unfrequented by GIs. It eventually became a favorite watering hole, however, there being only one waitress, who showed no interest in getting to “know” us, and we being the only customers, the rest of the guys decided to move on. They were looking for action.
Next was a seedy GI bar, and the place was humming. The table next to us got my attention as one of the girls, a big old mama with makeup applied by a paint brush, on a bet from a GI at her table, took his beer bottle from his hand, stood it on the seat of a chair, hiked up her dress and squat down on it, absorbing the whole thing within her. With a big smile, she paraded around the place, then came back, lifted her leg, placing her foot on top of the table. Without missing a beat, the GI reached between her legs, retrieved his beer, licked the rim, and took a slug.
The heady German beer was going to my head but not fast enough for Sarge, who ordered up a concoction called Absinthe, a milky looking liquid that tasted like licorice. Let me tell you, after a couple of those babies, I just flat didn’t give a damn.
A third one was delivered by a pretty nice looking waitress in a skimpy outfit who sat on my lap, put her arm around me, and hugged my face into her ample cleavage. Then, she planted a kiss on me that took my breath away, and placed my hand on her crotch. I let out a yelp and jumped to my feet, throwing the girl onto the floor. Sarge and the boys fell out laughing. What I had found in that bitch’s crotch was a set of balls and wanger bigger than mine! What the fuck!
I was pissed enough to beat the crap out of somebody, but I just couldn’t bring myself to stay pissed at someone laughing so hard there were tears in his eyes, especially since the entire bar was laughing with them. The queen got up, straitened herself, and stormed off in a huff.
By now it was getting late but there was still one more stop to make, the infamous Florida Bar, a big old barn of a place with a stage at one end and a giant dance floor half filled with tables, and surrounded on three sides by booths. This place didn’t even open until midnight. It was the place everybody went after every other place had closed. It was a melting pot just waiting to boil over.
To begin with, there were lots of drunk Army soldiers trying desperately to score as they had to make curfew and be back on base by a certain time. Then there were the Airmen, who had no curfew, and were biding their time waiting out the Army troops, half of whom were looking for any provocation to start a fight as they were pissed because they knew they were being waited out. The rest of the crowd was made up of a smattering of German civilians and nearly every bar whore and bar fly from every other area club that had closed for the night.
It didn’t take long for the action to get started. One of the whores, stood on a chair and yelled at the top of her lungs, “Get the fuck outta here nigger” and hurled a beer bottle at a table full of black troops who were hitting up some girls at the table next to them. All hell broke loose. I was in a sea of punching, screaming, gouging, and broken bottles. It was like a scene from a Hollywood western, only nothing was made of balsa and sugar.
I grabbed a couple of beers, dropped onto all fours, and made my way through the melee towards one of the booths. I had just made the relative safety of the booth and pushed my way under the table alongside another person there, when the Military Police arrived. Whistles blowing, they waded into the crowd with their nightsticks, smacking the crap out of anyone within reach, innocent or not. People were streaming towards the exits as the medics arrived, pushed their way into the crowd, and began carrying out the wounded on stretchers.
When I finally caught my breath, I turned to see who it was I was sharing my retreat with. She was a cute little German girl of about 17. Oh yeah! I gave her one of my beers, “Guten abend fraulien.”
And thus, I became a combat veteran of the GI bars of Germany… with oakleaf cluster.
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enjoyed the trip down memory lane with ya! hahaha! Its a wonder you didn't get an STD! My dad said a lot of GI's did!
ReplyDeleteNice read could almost feel the heat.
ReplyDeleteSome 19th birthday - what an adventure! I don't know of anyone with a birthday memory that could compete. Thank you for sharing - Diane
ReplyDeleteBella... you dad was right, lots did. But I pretty much stayed with local girls who were OK.
ReplyDeletePunch... and heat there was.
Diane... I believe my experience was typical. Most GI's have a lot more to say. But then of course, so do I.
Wow, my dad was stationed in Germany before Vietnam as well....LOL! He was in the army and then retired Coast Guard. I think that is what is most sad about the start of the War on Iraq. Most of the men and women who were there at the start just wanted college educations. I'm sure they thought we were "war free"...
ReplyDeletemuch love to you! great story.
I really liked this. You told this story well and it made me feel as if I was a fly on the wall, watching the whole thing.
ReplyDeleteGood story, I could almost taste the Lowenbrau. I hitchhiked through Germany in the late 60s, got a ride in the British sector down to Ulm in the American sector. It was late, went into a bar looking for a room for the night, no rooms, I was about to leave, when a guy said: "Hey man, where you from," in, what I judged to be a Texas accent, we chatted, he introduced me to his friends and after a couple of minutes I realized they were all Germans, talking with incredible American accents. After a few beers, I was educated by the locals, that because there were 40,000 Americans in the Ulm area, all the Germans's English speaking skills were thanks to Uncle Sam, working on bases, socializing (and there was plenty of that). The cold war in Germany at that time wasn't so cold.
ReplyDelete“Guten abend fraulien.”
ReplyDeleteFantastic.
And I love German beer, that photo makes me look forward to tonight.
sounds like a hell of a night
ReplyDeleteThanks to all for stopping by. I'm glad you could relate to the tale and enjoyed it. Stacey touched on a main point in that, most GIs today are in it because they expect to get something out of it. Holte, I was surprised how Americanized so much of Germany had become, even in the 60s. But then again, I was surprised at how much like Americans Germans are. Or visa versa. How much like them are we. Even more so than the Brits with whom we share a language and, for me, heritage. I loved my stay there.
ReplyDeleteNo comment; just applause.
ReplyDeleteA good story well told. Speaking as someone who’s a Brit, but half-German by birth, I’d like to suggest that the Americanisation you saw was presumably as a result of the number of Americans in the places you saw: my mother comes from the very north of Germany, where the British were the occupying force at the end of the war, and where many Brits (including my father) did their National Service. Probably not so much difference now, in the days of the European Union. Indeed the UK is regarded with disdain by most other EU countries for being too chummy with the US (particularly after they became the only other country to take part in the invasion of Iraq).
ReplyDeleteIt’s also good to hear that someone else knows about reciprocity failure. :)
Simon... You're probably right about the Americanization thing, I don't know. I didn't mean to be critical of you blokes, I am English descent myself, it's just that from my personal experience at the time the Brits I met seemed a little more reserved. However I didn't get to spend much time in the mother country and only in London. I will say I had a great time in the English zone of Berlin one evening.
ReplyDeleteMy brother was in the Air Force, a Sgt. who directed the flights into & out of Korea during the Korean war! He had many a tale to tell. Ive been to Bermuda & once you've seen it , nothing more to see. We had a 5 hour cabbie drive & he even stopped to fill up a plastic bottle that had held wax with the pink sand which Ive kept to this day 40 yrs after visiting the Island. The ocean crystal blue & if I had been a scuba diver could have seen for miles underneath - the water was that clear!
ReplyDeletesounds like a fine night to me.
ReplyDeleteThe Americans I met in Europe in the 60s, military and civilian, were wide open communicators, they would talk to anybody, whereas the Brits who traveled around Europe at that time, were more culture vultures, and you are right, more reserved, not me though.
ReplyDeleteThat's my take as well. I believe Americans, as a people, are more open than most other cultures. I found the Germans, at least southern Germans to be the same. Maybe it s the southern thing as the same applies here.
ReplyDeleteSouthern Germans are different to their northern brothers, but the whole of southern Germany is different, it's like you cross some cultural divide. Dress, drinks, even the color of the cows, brown and white in the south, black and white in the north, I never went east, it wasn't easy to do then, I bet they are different too.
ReplyDeleteG-r-e-a-t story.....it was almost as if standing right next to you witnessing.
ReplyDeleteNo offence taken, Mr C. I’m sure it’s as you and others say – Brits (particularly at that time) have more of a reputation for being stand-offish, while Americans are generally more friendly and open. It’s part of our culture!
ReplyDeleteC, great story and brings to mind some of my service "mis-adventures".
ReplyDeleteI wonder, are you still practicing photography?
JJ... would like to hear some of your mis-adventures. I sometimes think people who have never been in the military think we are making this stuff up. And yes, I've been know to press a shutter or two. Currently totally digital with a Nikon D70. Most all the photos posted are mine, except for the obvious.
ReplyDelete