Copyright (c) 2014 Phyllis Zimbler Miller
All rights reserved.
The Polish Catholic Church asks Premier Pyotr Jaroszewicz to restore all freedoms to the Polish people as a condition for “peace in social life” within which church-state relations would be normalized. – January 1, 1971
“93. Remains of Service Members
“a. When a member of the Army dies while on active duty, active duty for training, or during inactive duty training (or members who are now retired or discharged in an Armed Forces hospital who continue as Army patients therein to date of death), the Army will provide for care of the remains and delivery to the place designated by the adult next of kin and will pay an interment allowance to assist the next of kin in defraying the cost of interment.” The Army Personal Affairs Handbook, published 11 June 1966
We were walking home from a New Year’s Eve party in the American military housing area when a car swerved directly at us. I jumped onto the trunk of a parked car and Mitch squeezed near the rear end of another parked car.
The driver of the attacking car was obviously drunk. We got the license plate number, and as soon as we returned to our apartment we called the MPs.
When the MPs arrived, Mitch provided the car’s license plate number and the building in which the army personnel lived. (We had seen the car turn into the parking lot of one of the apartment buildings.)
“The car purposely swung from the road to hit us,” Mitch reported. The MPs took down the complaint information, although I doubted anything would be done.
Later as I brushed my teeth I couldn’t stop shaking. The car had missed Mitch by inches. Small comfort that, if he had been killed while on active duty, the army would have assisted with funeral expenses.
These last few months had been as if spent on an alien planet. Or in one of those snow globes that a giant turned upside down to shake and forgot to turn upright.
A couple of weeks ago at “Learn to Ski” week Mitch and I heard that the hotel dinner that evening was to be pork. Mitch had immediately gone up to a hotel waitress and asked if something besides pork could be substituted for us. The young American woman had thrown her arms around Mitch, so happy to see another Jew after months of working at the army hotel. Mitch hadn’t even said we were Jewish; the waitress assumed this because of the food request.
Another example of our upside down life: I found it confusing to carry both kinds of money – American for all kaserne uses and German marks for everything else. The exchange rate at that time was 3.62 marks to the dollar at American Express, but Germans tried to get away with a 3.5 exchange rate.
I had to give the woman who cleaned the staircase of our apartment building eight marks a month – apparently this was an expected custom. Only I never knew when to expect the woman.
And even though we had an American Express checking account on which checks could be written in dollars or marks, phone bills had to be paid in person so that the German clerk could stamp the bill paid.
By this time Mitch had already experienced serving as 24-hour staff duty officer at the 66th. He got to sleep on a cot at headquarters to fulfill this duty.
On December 19th the 66th had a formal dinner. After going through a very long receiving line, Mitch and I had been seated in formal army style – at the same table but at opposite ends according to rank.
The lowest-ranked officer, which was Mitch, sat next to the highest-ranked officer’s wife at one end of the table. I as the lowest-ranked officer’s wife sat next to the highest-ranked officer at the other end of the table. Needless to say, I did not have a great deal to say to this officer.
On another night we had attended an eggnog holiday party where the center of the festivities was playing with the couple’s cat. I had explained to the Southern hostess from a “good” family that Mitch was very allergic to cats and could the cat please be put in another room. The Southern hostess said she’d never heard of such a thing and the cat stayed in the living room.
Within minutes Mitch and I had to leave the party. So much for Southern hospitality, I thought, although there might have been a tinge of anti-Semitism mixed in with the rudeness.
Finally on December 21st our last shipment of goods arrived – the one from Ft. Sheridan. Previously on Thanksgiving Day our second shipment from Ft. Holabird (the shipment slated to arrive first) had arrived with several items broken. The McGraw Kaserne transportation officer said the shipment had been packed incorrectly.
I experienced a small moment of pleasure that the incompetent civilian transportation person at Ft. Holabird would soon be out of a job. Word had come that Holabird was closing at the end of 1971 – from now on military intelligence training would be at Ft. Huachuca in Arizona. On the other hand, the incompetent clerk would get to work less hours his final year of employment: a five-day work week had just become official for the army.
And in a series of transactions Mitch and I had bought a new Volvo sedan from the Canadian PX and picked it up at the U.S. Army PX in Augsburg where we turned in our Fiat. Paying a fee to the Canadian PX for this privilege allowed us to legally avoid paying the 11% sales tax that Germans paid. And the car had American specifications. German cars did not have all the specifications required by the U.S. so if we had bought a car “on the economy” we couldn’t take it back to the U.S.
Now on the afternoon of January 1st I put on the dress I had worn for our engagement party and Mitch put on his blues – his dress uniform. He wore a long tie rather than the bowtie he had worn to the formal dinner because this New Year’s Day social event was before 6 p.m.
As we approached the Officers Club at the kaserne only one person stood out in the cold. It was the Russian spy who kept track of all the goings and comings at the club. I had already asked Mitch whether it was dangerous that the spy knew all of us. “What if the Russians decide to blow up the club?”
Mitch had assured me that this would not happen. The Russians would rather keep an eye on the people they knew than have to learn all of the new replacements.
The spy looked so cold standing out by himself on a deserted street that one could almost feel pity for him.
Inside there was another receiving line with the adjutant announcing our names to the colonel and his wife. Everyone looked the worse for wear. How perverse of the army to have a formal social obligation after a night of celebratory drinking.
At that moment I heard an officer’s wife say to the colonel’s wife, “I didn’t want to come today.” The colonel’s wife shot the other woman a withering look and said, “If I had to get up, you can darn well get up too.”
Had the Russian spy partied last night and then had to get up in time for this function? Or maybe he wasn’t allowed to party. He had more important things to do – checking that we Americans hadn’t decided to suddenly roll into East 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
