Memorial Missives

• Of the, times man has experienced, but which have gone away that I experienced personally- my service along the East-West border in Germany is among the best. It is among my earliest adult memories and thinking of that time evokes the most powerful recollections I have.






• God, so innocent- I think I was what- 19? when I got there. Due to the closeness to the border and our mission it was made a very tough assignment by design. We ran 4-8 miles every morning, worked 12-16 hour days and were in the field constantly. I worked for the first 3 months without a day off.






• In 1985 my unit spent 350 days in the field.






• When me and Paul Spackman got off the bus a guy was there sweeping the street for extra duty. He said,"Welcome to Hell gentleman."






• As most posts ours had been a German Kaserne during WWII. The facade of our headquarters building still had the Reich symbol above it with only the dirty bird cut out.






• Our vehicles were Vietnam bring backs. My track had .50 caliber machinegun holes through the side armor that had been patched. Three on the left and two on the right- indicating one did not pass through the vehicle leaving us to imagine what it would be like to be stuck in that can with a 1 ounce chunk of metal bouncing off everything...





• We called them Battle Taxis or simply tracks. German soldiers call them "Scheinewurfel"- Pig cube.





• I wonder if Mary's Cafe just off post is still in business? She loved US western movie culture and horses etc.- even country and western music. She freaked a little when she found out I was from Texas.





• And simply did not believe me about same when she found out I in fact owned no horses and no, I was never fearful of gunfights in the street since as a rule they hadn't been happening for over 100 years.






• The warrior who thinks he will be the one to die is rare- any army, any time period. You always think it will be the other guy. There was a story out of WWII where a commander tells the troops, "2 out of 3 of you may die."- of course every man looked to his left and right and thought, Gee, you guys sure are swell- I'm going to miss both of you!





• Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come. Carl Sandburg in 1936.