I have been in the Army for a couple of years. My wife and I are living in a very small apartment in Elizabethtown (E-Town)  Kentucky.  It is a one bedroom place with a small kitchen, a small bathroom, and a very small living room.  In the living room is a tiny 10 inch black and white television that has four pawn stickers on it.   I leave the stickers on because the pawn broker once gave me a loan for twice the amount the television was worth.   I haven't pawned it in awhile because Cheryl controls the money and she does a good job at keeping us on budget.   That means that I see things I want to buy and she says, "No."   We get to see one movie a week on base which cost us a dollar.  She saves our old bread so we can feed the ducks on the weekend and we get to stop for an ice cream on the way home from feeding the ducks. I'm working as a Squad Leader and I make $320 a month.  We are happy.   I get orders.  The Army has decided I should move to Germany.

Cheryl's family is pretty upset.  They weren't all that happy when Cheryl and I started dating, much less happy when we decided to marry, and now that I am going to get stationed in Germany they have reached the end of their patience.  This is the post Vietnam Army,  morale is low, pay is low and Soldiers still feel embarrassed to say they are in the military.  Soldiers in Germany are on food stamps, I know this because Cheryl's family keeps cutting out the articles and sending them to her.  It is pretty bad when a soldier's wife has to walk into the post exchange and put down food stamps so they can afford to buy groceries for their family.  

The Army allows a soldier that is transferred to Germany to decide if he wants to bring his family or not.   If you want to bring your family, you have to serve three years in Germany, if you don't you only have to serve two years and it is called a hardship tour.  Pulling a hardship tour is suppose to keep you from pulling another hardship tour without at least one normal tour in between.  Not that anything in the Army can be considered normal.  I mean my job up to now was flying at 90 knots  50 feet off the ground while hanging out of a helicopter by a strap and shooting a machinegun.   Not a lot of call for that in the civilian marketplace.

Cheryl is very motivated to go to college and her family is very motivated to keep her from starving in Germany.  She decides that she will stay in the States while I pull a hardship tour in Germany.  We pack up all of our stuff which fits, with room to spare, in our sub-compact car and she heads off to go live with her parents. She enrolls in MCC in our hometown of Rochester, New York. I get myself on an airplane for Germany. 

I land at the Frankfurt Rhein Main Airbase which is connected to the Frankfort airport but is on the opposite side because I flew in on a chartered military flight with a bunch of other military guys on their way to serve in Europe. All of us are unaccompanied or as most of the guys like to say, "I'm separated,   She is over in the States and I am over here."  I get off the plane and I'm completely confused.  Rhein Main is kind of like any airport in the states except it isn't in the States, it is three thousand miles away.  I pick up my duffle bag and walk aimlessly around for awhile.  I'm not really sure what I am suppose to do next. I have orders for the 64^th Replacement Detachment but everyone does since until you land they don't know were they are really going to send you.  All of my good friends from the plane have disappeared.  I feel pretty overwhelmed.  

The next plane comes in and this time  I follow the crowd out of the terminal.  I am kind of dragging my stuff along when I come to a nondescript sign that says "64^th Replacement Detachment Inprocessing."   I drop my bags and move into a very long and very slow line.   I am back in the Army, whose motto isn't "Be all you can Be." it is, "Hurry up and Wait."   One of the clerks behind the desk keeps asking me about by sponsor.   I don't seem to have one.  No buddy cares that I am here. I was worried about being AWOL (Absent With Out Leave) but I think I could have stayed in my very small apartment. It takes me five hours to finish the paperwork.  I pick up my bags and get shuffled onto a bus for Baumholder.  I have not slept for a long time and the the bus ride is about 3 hours long. I get dropped off at the Welcome center in Baumholder they look over my orders, then send me off to a temporary barracks with instructions on where the mess hall is and when to come back to start inprocessing again.  I left the United States 19 hours ago I have been inprocessing for over 8 hours and I'm not even "IN" yet.

I am still wandering around like a lost puppy the next day.  No one has any idea where I should be assigned.  I guess Europe is full up and I wonder if I could have told them to leave me in the States.  I am released for lunch at the mess hall and by the time I get back I am getting yelled at for being late.  They shuffle me onto a bus for Ansbach which I assume will be my new home for a couple of years.   It isn't.  I have only been assigned to the replacement depot in Ansbach.  The commanding officer is looking for a new driver.   It doesn't seem like an especially interesting job but it is nice to be singled out and if I take the job I will be carrying a loaded 45 caliber pistol all the time, which is kind of cool.   I spend a couple of weeks in the Ansbach replacement depot, but in the end I decide that I have been trained as a Combat Infantry Soldier so I should go to a combat unit. 

This pisses off the guys in the replacement depot so I get assigned to the worst combat unit in theater.  

Their unit crest celebrates their victory over the British in the war of 1812 which I understand is the last time they pulled off something really stunning.  It has a ladder which represents the ladders they used to scale the cotton bales, and an alligator since the battle was fought in New Orleans.  

The guy I pissed off explains to me with a laugh, "Alright so you don't want to be the General's driver.  Well I'm going to send you to the 1st Battalion 6th Infantry based in Illesheim. Their military crest shows they are so low that you would have to climb a ladder to kiss an alligators ass. 

I load up my gear into the back of a duce and a half (2 ½ Ton) truck and we head out.  We stop to pick up another soldier who is being transferred to this unit because his chain of command suspects him of dealing drugs.  He assures me that we are going to the worst unit in Europe and most likely the worst unit in the United States Military.   I tell him that he must be exaggerating and he replies, "No the sheep fuckers are the worst in Europe, I'm sure of that."  I say excuse me, the what?  He explains that we are on an old world war two airbase and that they don't mow the grass.  They keep the grass cut by allowing a local Sheppard to graze his sheep on it.   Well this unit is famous for borrowing the sheep and having their way with them.   It went on for quite awhile pretty much unnoticed until one day the duty officer heard a pretty loud commotion coming from one of the rooms on the third floor of the barracks.   He knocked on the door and the guys inside not wanting to have to explain the sheep decided to push it out the window.

The commanding General got involved when the Sheppard complained, "Look Herr General I don't care if they make love to my sheep but they can not throw them out the window."   This is how the 1st Battalion of the 6th Infantry came to the commanding General's attention and how I ended up being assigned to them.

We arrived and were met by a drunken staff sergeant and a power crazed corporal.  The Unit was out in the field so the only ones left in garrison were the "Ash and Trash."  The guys that were either "Short" meaning that they had a short time, less than two weeks in country, or they were awaiting trial.  I was given a folding cot, an army wool blanket and was told to sleep in the dayroom with this band of cutthroats.   I really didn't fit in.   I mean I really didn't fit in, and all of the maniacs sleeping in the dayroom with me knew I didn't fit in.   They assumed that anyone that was as straight-laced as I was must be a Narc working for CID.   That meant that they thought I was a narcotics officer working for the Army's Criminal Investigation Division, of course a Narc wouldn't have looked as straight-laced as I did, but that kind of logic doesn't work with the type of guys who think you are a Narc.

I lay on my bed pretending to sleep so I wouldn't have to swap stories with these guys. Two of the worst guys started to talk really loud about how they were going to kill their Platoon Sergeant or Squad leader and my rank came up as a topic of conversation between them.   I finally had to give up pretending to sleep and explain to them that if they wanted to talk about killing anyone they should do it outside, since it was keeping me awake, and I'd have to testify at their trial. 

They left and I was feeling pretty happy with myself until they came back in and asked, "Do you get high?"   I was kind of surprised since it was not the reaction I was expecting.  I told them that I didn't get high and hoped they would go back outside and leave me alone.    This unfortunately was not what they wanted to hear.  The bigger of the two said, "We think you might be a Narc?"   I explained that I wasn't and that if I was a Narc, I wouldn't be here with guys already facing a trial, I'd be with the guys in the field with the rest of the unit.    This stopped them for a few minutes and then they decided that I could be new and I sure looked like a Narc, which of course I didn't, but again it is hard to explain any of this without sounding like a Narc.  Drugs also make you paranoid  so they started to believe that I must be a Narc. 

The stupider of the two decided that the only way I could prove that I wasn't a Narc was to smoke with them.  I refused and then the bigger guy pulled out a switchblade knife and looked at me and asked again, "Do you get high?"  I looked at my knife wheedling roommate and answered, "Get high?  Of course I get high. I had a couple of joints on the way down here."   This got their attention since it is really hard to get marijuana in Germany.  Not being in country long or a big drug user I didn't know this.   They were almost salivating about getting to smoke a good old American joint, until I explained I had finished off my complete stash.   I also hoped that this would get me out of getting high with my two new best friends.  It didn't.

The one with the switchblade picked an empty coke can out of the trash, bent it in the middle and started to stab it with the knife.  He took a piece of Hash out of some aluminum foil and dropped it into the dented bowl of the used coke can.   Now I hope you understand I am not a druggie. Although I have been around people who have smoked I myself have never inhaled.  No, really I was not very sophisticated about drugs.  In my mind Hash = Heroin.  Although refusing to light up with my two close friends who discussed killing their Sergeant and had just stabbed a defenseless coke can didn't seem like a great idea either.  So I took the coke can that just minutes ago had been sitting in the trash put it to my lips and took a big toke. 

I did not get high.  I may have gotten a little paranoid, of course sleeping between two stoned out druggies with knifes might also give one pause.   We spend the next week together, me and my drug friends.  They showed me where the PX, movie theater, mess hall and Class VI store was. Class VI is the army term for liquor store.   We walked around during the day and sometimes fed field mice to the units pet piranha fish.   It was great fun but after awhile the fish got pretty full and there was a lot of uneaten mice parts in the tank.   I didn't have to smoke any more hash since the stuff is expensive and I had already proven that I would, so we just hung out and waited for the unit to come back from the field.

The First Sergeant came in early to get the building and motor pool open.  He found me with my drug friends who I assume he wasn't all that happy with since he was trying to throw them out of the Army.  He was also upset that his prize piranha were swimming around in mouse soup.    He took one look at me and told me to head down to the motor pool to help the guys coming in.  I spent the next 10 hours cleaning off the battalions Armored Personnel Carriers.   I wasn't assigned to a unit yet, so could have snuck off at anytime but I didn't want the First Sergeant coming down looking for me and not finding me hard at work.

The First Sergeant and I later became close friends and confidantes as I worked my way through the unit. I was everything from the Nuclear Biological and Chemical specialist, to Armorer, to Platoon Sergeant, and finally was the units Executive Officer.    I lived in the barracks and shared a room with the supply sergeant which was good and bad since he could get you anything you wanted but he was a real slob.   

I also started to realize that being married but living apart was a lot harder than I thought.  This was long before email and instant messaging.  We could make calls using a radio phone system called MARS ( Military Affiliate Radio System.)  I'm still not sure how it worked but I think we would transmit through a couple of radio relay stations to the city we were trying to reach and then a Amateur radio volunteer would place a local call for us.   You talked into a phone set but had to say "Over" after you spoke.  Most of the wives didn't get it but it was free and since the mail took about 30 days to make a round trip it was nice to ask a question and get an immediate answer.

I wrote Cheryl a lot, just about every day, but since it took so long to get a reply the letters I was sending had little in common with the letters I was getting.   I would think of a question like, "Have you renewed our insurance."   I'd get back a letter about the weather.   I'd wait a week and send out a follow up question, "I'm really worried about the insurance."  I'd get back a letter about school.  This would go on for a another couple of weeks until I was sure she was not reading or responding to my mail.  I'd write, "So what about the damn insurance?"  Then, "Are you dating the insurance guy?"   Of course just after I had written something really nasty, not nice like are you dating the insurance guy, I get her reply to the first question which would be something like, "Sure I took care of the insurance just before you left.   

I would then write a very apologetic letter and put a big "Star" on the back of it.   I'd then call her and tell her if she loved me that she shouldn't open any more of my mail until she got one with a big "Star" on it.   I'm not sure if she did or  didn't open them, I assume she didn't or we wouldn't still be married.   It did mean that I got a lot more mail from her than she got from me.

This went on a few more times until I finally told her I wasn't going to be able to make it alone, so I needed her to quit school pack up and move to Germany.    I had to reenlist in the Army so they would pay for her trip over, she agreed. She decided that she would spend Christmas in the States and then come over and we would spend the New Year of 1979 together.  That, of course is one of many other stories.

  Part I: Stationed in Germany  (This page)

  Part II: Picking up Cheryl from Frankfurt

  Part III: Apartment in Germany