Copyright (c) 2014 Phyllis Zimbler Miller
All rights reserved.
North Vietnam calls President Nixon’s threats to continue air strikes an excuse to escalate the war. – December 12, 1970
“42. Missing Personnel – Benefits
“a. A member who is in the active service and who is officially determined to be missing, missing in action, or interned in a foreign country, or captured, beleaguered, besieged by a hostile force, or detained in a foreign country against his will is entitled, while in that status, to receive or to have credited to his account the same pay and allowances to which he was entitled at the beginning of such absence or to which he becomes entitled later.” The Army Personal Affairs Handbook, published 11 June 1966
At the top of Germany’s highest mountain, the Zugspitze, in a bowl-shaped ski area that on one side led down to the German town of Garmisch – site of the 1936 Winter Olympics – and on the other side to Austria, I waited my turn in the Intermediate 1 class to take the tow rope to the top of the bowl. Mitch was not beside me because he was in the Beginners 1 class.
This was the first day of our five-day “Learn to Ski Week” sponsored by the army for which we paid $55 each for “five days of professional ski instruction, transportation to and from slopes, ski lift fees, ski equipment, slalom and ski tests, prizes, an evening at the Casa Catioca, a cocktail party, a Bavarian beer bust, an evening of color slides or movies about skiing, and a graduation banquet.” The cost of the hotel accommodations at the army-run Eibsee Hotel – a benefit deriving from the Allies winning World War II – was additional.
Next to me in the tow rope line a classmate spoke. He told me what his job was in the army. “I’m in a unit responsible for the nuclear devices planted around West Germany. If the Russians come across, we can discharge the devices,” he said.
I gaped at him. “What will happen then?” I asked.
“You don’t want to live through it,” he said. “Better to die immediately.”
I shook my head, startled as always by how the reality of the U.S. Army’s presence in Germany could rear up at any moment. Without nightly television news reports of the dead and wounded in Vietnam, I could be lulled into forgetting that the U.S. was engaged in a war in Southeast Asia that it appeared could not be won.
And here in Europe where the U.S. with the other Allies did win a war, a different kind of war had replaced traditional warfare. No longer did military personnel face their enemies across trenches or battlefields or rice paddies. Now they sat atop nuclear weapons designed to be so devastating that neither side would dare start a war.
I was only a baby when, on June 24, 1948, the Soviet Union blocked all land routes through East Germany into West Berlin, which had been divided after World War II into four sectors – one each for the U.S., France, Great Britain and the Soviet Union. But years later I had learned about this blockade, which the Soviets hoped would push the U.S., France and Great Britain out of their separate sectors of West Berlin.
The West responded by organizing the Berlin airlift to bring supplies to the more than 2 million people in West Berlin at that time. I had been impressed that, at one point, planes had landed in West Berlin at the rate of one every 45 seconds. The air lift continued until September 1949, although the Soviets lifted the blockade in May 1949.
Then Berliners had another shock when, on August 13, 1961, the East Germans started building the wall dividing Berlin. By this time I was old enough to be aware of the event. Russian and American tanks drew up on either side of the wall – and the world held its breath over whether war would erupt. But it hadn’t then.
And here I stood, in a tow rope line on top of the Zugspitze, listening to an American I didn’t know tell me what would happen if the Russians now rolled their tanks into West Germany.
Minutes later at the bottom of the run the instructor announced lunch time. I skied to the cable car location to meet Mitch.
I was about to tell him what the solider said when Mitch said, “I’m not sure we should take the cable car back to the lodge every day.”
“Why not?”
“A cable car like this one broke recently. The people still haven’t been found.”
“You mean until the snow melts in the spring the bodies won’t be recovered?”
Mitch nodded, then added, “After today we can bring cheese and fruit with us for lunch. That way we’ll only take the cable car twice a day instead of four times a day.”
Back at the Zugspitze lodge we bought food for our lunch and sat down at a table. I considered that the “Learn to Ski Week” fees and the army hotel rate were both reasonable. But we had to watch our expenditures – a second lieutenant’s salary did not go very far even when you are given quarters at no cost.
Earlier in December I had written to my mother:
“The official social functions this month are breaking us. You pay for the meal at the officers’ wives club luncheon, then we had to buy a $2 gift exchange. The formal is $4 a person, and then Mitch’s battalion decided it needs it own party so they decided on $4 a person also. But Mitch and some other guys signed a paper saying they would only come if the price was reduced to $2.50 a person or less. You know, higher ups decided on these things and then the 2LTs who make the least pay get stuck going. The colonel over Mitch, not the one we made a call on (he’s the colonel of the 66th), is having a party (good thing it’s free). On top of that we pay $6 a month dues to the officers’ club.”
Here we were living in Europe – a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity – and if I couldn’t get a job we wouldn’t have any money on which to travel.
Mitch looked at his watch. “Time to get back to our classes.”
We reclaimed our rented skis and again headed into the cable car. If it broke, we wouldn’t need any travel funds – or have to worry about the Russians rolling their tanks into West Germany.
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If you enjoy reading about the imaginative future as well as the historical past, see my dystopian thriller THE MOTHER SIEGE here on Wattpad at http://budurl.com/MSonWattpad
