My Army career lasted 3 years, 2 months and 26 days, but who is counting. I left the army as a very high ranking PFC with over 30 month time in grade.
I joined the Army in 1958. I did basic training at Fort Dix, NJ. The barracks were WWII temporary buildings. The heating system leaked so bad that we didn't use it. We preferred the cold to the smoke. The walls had cracks large enough that when it snowed we woke up with snow on the floor.
Next the Army sent me to Ft Devens to radio direction finding school (MOS 059) with the Army Security Agency. More WWII barracks but at least the heat worked. We used to supplement our $77 per month pay by picking apples at $.10 per bushel. I could make $40 on a good week end. The school lasted almost a year and graduated top in my class.
This is typical of the American built WWII barracks. I think they were all built from the same plan. I still see many of them in existence today.
Here I am standing on main street with the EM club to the left and typical WWII German built barracks to the right. Guess which style barracks were more comfortable.
After spending all that time and money on my education, the Army in their infinite wisdom sent me to Germany to be a radio teletype operator. This was a job for which I had no training, but not much was needed. I was assigned to D Company, 32nd Signal Bn. More WWII barracks, but these were German and far superior to the ones stateside. Except for a luck few who got thicker mattresses and single bunked, we still had the same double deck bunks, with 2" thick mattress, and the scratchy OD wool blankets. A welcome relief was no more KP (Kitchen Police), this was handled by German nationals. We also got 2 16" lockers. One was military, one civilian that was not subject to neatness inspection, only to an occasional shakedown inspection.
The 32nd had 4 main missions. Pole line companies that strung WD4 to connect the EE8 field phones, armed courier service, land line teletype service, and mobile radio teletype service. I was the latter. We used duce and a half's (2.5 ton trucks) with a radio van permanently affixed with a 10 KW gas generator in a pull behind trailer. A lot of my touring Germany was from the back of a duce and a half as shown winding its way through narrow streets. The equipment in the van was WWII vintage, BC610 400 watt transmitter, a pair of R388 radios, a FSK modem, and 50 baud Baudot teletypes. When you consider that the Baudot code is 5 bits as opposed to 8 bit ASCII, this corresponds to less than 32 bytes per minute. My present 3 mbit internet service delivers 20 megabytes per minute, or about a half a million times faster. The truck full of equipment would fit in a suitcase.
While in the ASA Morse intercept school I had meet some people who could send and receive Morse code at over 50 WPM, equivalent to all the sophicated equipment in the truck. In fact I meet one individual who could receive Morse code at 90 WPM while smoking a cigar and reading a book. Some of the TTY operators claimed they knew people who could decipher the 50 baud FSK signal. I only got up to 35 WPM in Morse. While I could certainly decipher the RYRY test signal and some others I never learned to decode Baudot in my head. Here I am proudly displaying my Ahead of the Game badge that let me skip Morse code classes because I was ahead of the learning schedule. But my typing was not as good. After 6 months of training 4 hours per day, 5 days a week I was able to type 15 words per minute.
In garrison our mission was to keep a network up and running by passing test messages once an hour. There were also some real secret messages, but they were encrypted in 5 letter coded groups so I couldn't make any sense out of them. We were net control with some infantry and armored divisions completing the rest of the net. Being low man on the totem pole I got the night shift. The radio operators from the infantry and armored divisions were not dedicated operators, but EM with other duties. After working all day they tended to nap on the night shift so a lot of test messages were logged on the land line after the fact. Garrison duty was boring, in spite of the discomfort I preferred "Germany from the back of a duce and a half".
Every winter we did training. FTX (Field Training exercise) Winter Shield was one. We got in our trucks and drove a few hours to somewhere in southern Germany. We set up in the woods next to some farmers tree plantation. Setting the camouflage nets up over the trucks in the snow was a physically challenging duty. Then I had to dig an area to set up my tent. At least I had the assistance of the air brakes on the trucks to blow up my air mattress. The sergeants got to sleep in the trucks. The generator had enough power to run the electric heaters in the radio van, but not enough for the tent. When we left the tree farmers inspected the area and were compensated for every tree that was run over for the total value that tree would have obtained over its expected lifetime.
Here a young boy is offering to go into town and buy us some beer. It was a Mark ($.25) per liter.
We did get feed on while training, but the restaurant was not 5 star quality.
I was interested in electronics and radio as a hobby also. I used to fix the electronic equipment of the new comers who plugged stuff into the 220 volt circuits without using a step down transformer. I obtained a German ham radio license (DL5BL). I also became a MARS (Military Affiliate Radio Service) operator. They gave me a SP600 receiver and a Rosen Swartz transmitter. The receiver was American; the transmitter was captured WWII equipment. The SP600 was on par with the R388; the transmitter was equivalent to the BC610 but much better built. It was all neatly built in a 5 foot tall relay rack with each of the individual modules easily serviceable. The power resistors were a work of art made by Rosenthal.
In spite of my interest in radio and electronics the Army in their infinite wisdom decided to make me company armourer. This is another occupation for which I had no training. After leaving the Army I became an Electronic Engineer, so the former MOS was more suitable for me. As armourer I was in charge of the "gun room". I had to check out guns to three EM going on guard duty, check in the three from guards coming off shift, and issue one to the armed courier who drove down to the IG Farben building every morning. In the afternoon the courier returned his weapon. This totaled about a half hour's work per day and I had an assistant who did the afternoon "work". Since I was on duty during critical times I was exempt from formations. On the next FTX my job was to see that there was enough diesel fuel for the stove in the headquarters tent. The sergeant major liked comfort on his camping trips. This was more comfortable than the pup tent.
In addition to the routine duties I had to issue the weapons once a month for cleaning, issue weapons for training exercises and once I had to issue the guns in anger. This was the time when the Berlin wall was erected. We had a president who was receiving OJT (On the Job Training) as an international diplomat and was failing miserably with the Russians. So one day I gave the guns out so our guys could stare at the Russians in East Germany, who were staring back and probably just as interested in not starting anything as our guys were. This was the same time that we had a large influx of Reservist’s on base that were very unhappy that their careers as civilians were being unfairly interrupted.
The guns I took care of were mostly M1 and M2 carbines and M1 Garrand rifles. There were a 6 M1911 45 caliber pistols, 4 Bazookas (3.5 inch shoulder fired rocket), 4 50 caliber machine guns, and 6 grease guns (45 Caliber hand held sub machine gun). Some of these guns saw service in WWII. It was interesting to see the difference in the quality of the weapons that seem to depend mainly on who made them. The Rockola (a juke box manufacturer) carbines were rough and ill fitting, IBM turned out a quality product. One of the Garrands had a serial number 1187 which made it among the very first to be manufactured. It was a work of art, and I managed to issue it to someone who had an appreciation of weapons. The Bazooka were fun to fire, the 50 cal MG was awesome to fire with every fifth round being a tracer. It was also a challenge to take apart for cleaning and to reassemble it. My personal favorite was the grease gun for its amazing simplicity and function. It was also nice because if you left the bolt in the gun room it was the lightest. The bolt was probably about one third of its total weight.
The biggest morale booster on base was the USO club. They had a double deck pinochle tournament once a week. It drew about 20 teams every week. I had a particularly good partner, a master sergeant; we won the tournament 14 out of 16 weeks. They sponsored bus trips most weekends to nearby towns, to castles, wine festivals, museums, etc. The cost of the round trip transportation was $.25. Here I am watching the frauleins in a parade at a wine festival. The USO provided an environment that was much more home like than the barracks. I was sad to see the USO eliminated, probably some cost cutting measure by some bean counter for the OJT president.
The other entertainment for the GI's was the EM club, which had booze for $.25 per mixed drink, good German beer for as little as $.05 on nickel beer night (Friday). They occasionally had live entertainment from the states. They also had slot machines at which I was lucky and managed to win a couple of dollars. They were the ruin of some others. Another ruin of many was payday poker, but the losing poker players helped the loan sharking business of others.
Another favorite among some of the GI's was 20 mark alley (4.20 marks to the dollar = $4.67) near the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof. This was practically popular on payday. To get to the Hauptbahnhof we took Strassenbahn 13. Payday was the best day of the month to eat in the mess hall because very few GI's were left for the evening meal and they had very good steaks. Good food was in short supply so that was the only day when there was enough supply to meet demand.
While in Europe I did some traveling while on leave. On one trip three of us visited Austria, Switzerland, and Italy. Here I am sitting in front of the Fountain of Trevi in Rome with my traveling companion Kitchens. We had wanted to do France, but the whole country was "Off Limits" to GI's due to the Algerian crisis. As a guide book we used Frommers "Europe on $5 a day". We weren't sure if that was for each of us or for all of us. We averaged $3 or 4 each. SP4 Powers had a small British car, I think a Morris Minor. It was a tight fit but we had a good time. At that time The Germans liked the Americans fairly well. The rest of the countries we were treated with emotions that ranged from indifference to outright hostility. I am not sure if we, who were all just past being teenagers, did much to endear ourselves to the locals. The worst German / American incident I can remember is the night when some GI got drunk and decided to drive his tank downtown.
Here I am riding in a gondodown down a side canal in Venice with you know who, and having a good time at it.
Here I am standing by the bell tower in Pisa. It was so long ago it was hardly leaning. Like many of the churches the bell towers get more press than the churches. The church was far more spectacular than the tower.
The Church of Santa Croce in Florence is another example where the bell tower gets more reviews than the church, so here is a picture of the church.
Austria is a beautiful country. Innsbruck was my favorite town. The mountains in the background makes the downtown unique.
Here I am standing in front of the Matterhorn in Switzerland.
The Army experience was an interesting one. I was not a particular sharp soldier. I managed to keep out of trouble, but was never recommended for promotion. As a result I was the highest ranking PFC in the company with almost 31 months time in grade as a PFC. My final salary was $125 a day, once a month. Here I am happy to be a short timer, anticipating being a civilian again. I am glad I went through it but I am not sure if you could pay me enough to do it again. It taught me about how people operate and that the Army was not my career choice. This motivated me enough that I was able to do very well in college.
