free hosting   image hosting   hosting reseller   online album   e-shop   famous people

Lunch at the Gerszuski snack bar from about September 1974 - July 1975.
And yes, that was beer in those dixie cups.

I remember the day Nixon resigned. Our commander in chief. What a world it was. I was with C-Company at Crailsheim for a few days on the fence job. I don't remember what I did there. Something about getting dirt samples, or locating aggregate or something. I don't remember surveying. Pelfry was there by then.

I know I had a 10 speed bicycle with me and bicycled the rolling hills. Another thing I remember was reading Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut. The boys from Charlie watched AFN TV and I remember a detective show called Mannix.

In September 1974, Hugh C. MacDonald 1LT, claimed that I was a hard driving individual and I had performed my duties with outstanding results on more than five large earthmoving projects, and countless general construction projects.

I must have been a real whirlwind in his eyes. He was real prick as I recall. So for him to use the word outstanding was an outstanding accomplishment in itself. I don't mean he was a prick as a person, just as a LT. I can remember seeing him smile a couple of times. Just didn't know what he was smiling about. Was he out to get me or what?

There was no smoking hash with him. Unlike LT Jacobson. I smoked a bowl with him one time with Kogut and Earle. Later, at Gerszewski, he asked me where he could get some. I said I didn't know.

Firing up a loader at Gerszewski

Convoy heading to a job, possibly the Crailsheim Fence job.

It was all based out of Gerszuski Barracks now, Graf was done, and life in the barracks at Gerszewski was dry as gunpowder with all those new volunteers with their starched uniforms and spit-shined boots. I could have cared less about that kind of crap. But they were in to it man.

I went to the Gerszewski NCO Club to play pool and see the same lousy rock band from Scotland over and over again ....

I went skinny dipping with some WACs from the 249th in the Gerszewski pool one night.

I played on our softball team as catcher ....

I went to Company Bar-b-cue's ....

I even streaked the Karlsruhe Bahnhof ....

I ran through that place naked with SP4 Langford the battalion photographer. Click the link and you can see him in the background in his white socks.

We wore cover-alls in to the place and then went downstairs to the WC where we stripped down. There happened to be a German Janitor watching us; and he began chasing us with a broom as we ran naked through the train station shouting the old Rebel Yell.

The picture was taken by a girl visiting her sister from Wisconsin, whose lap I jumped into as our getaway van waited for us. She was the sister-in-law of the HQ company clerk named Gary.

Gary and his wife lived behind the Stassenbahn stop in Knieligen down toward the Rhein River. His sister-in-law was quite a babe. And she had quite the experience on her short visit to Germany with the 79th.

And that was the problem. Everybody was short and everybody from Graf was gone. Even people on vacation were short.

I played hours and hours of Spades, Hearts, and Fussball. And on the weekend nights, we'd hit the A-Bar in Knieligen and then go downtown to the Discos and Fish Bars and so on.

It was all that normal GI crap, and I still had about a year to go.

I had to figure out something better to do. After all, here I was in Europe.

It must have been in August of 1974 when I told Lively about the time I went to the French Rivera with Kogut, Nord and Gilkey in Earles van. So we decided to do it again.

And what a time it was again.

Let's see if I can remember the names in the picture. From left: Rufus, Lively, Trentwith?, Gidley in window, Me, David Georgiana. We did a lot of gittin around in Gidley's van that summer. That was the getaway van for the streaking caper.

I remember the long drive through Switzerland again. I remember sleeping at a rest-stop somewhere in a grassy area and the sprinkler system suddenly went on in the morning causing us all to scramble with our fart sacs. I remember sleeping in the gardens of the Monaco castle too and something about smelling dog shit the next morning. And the Formula 1 cars racing through the streets was ganz fantastic.

And then I remember that we stopped for one last beer at a bar when an American School Bus suddenly pulled in. It was from the University of Illinois and was full of college girls. We just had to stay for a while; but, what luck - too bad we hadn't met them on Friday. They liked us.

On the way back Gidley's van puttered up the mountains just like Earle's van did, about 50km tops. We picked up a hitch-hiker from Canada who was kind of a anti-soldier hippie. He learned different.

Thank God I wasn't AWOL this time when we got back.

After that we went to Hockenheim to watch the Formula 1 races. We went to the German Grand Prix at Nürenburg Ring (I think). I remember a car flying through the air and in to the crowd.

Now, since I was the Soil Section Chief, and since we suddenly took a liking to following the Grand Prix circuit around that summer, and because my number one man in Soil, PFC John B White, had a BMW; well, I had to order him to take us to Paris, and then from there we would head to Dijon, France for the race down there. Hey, how far can it be?

Well, it was pretty dang far. There was four of us this time. I think it was me, White, Lively and Georgiana. I remember driving around the traffic circle for the Arc de Triomphe on the Champs-Elysées in about eight lanes of traffic stuck in the middle not knowing which way to go. We did find the Eifel Tower and Notre Dame Cathedral and that little Statue of Liberty.

We went to the Louvre where Louis XIV lived when he sent his army to massacre my ancestors in the Palatinate. Near the Louvre there was a campground and Marty might have had his guitar or maybe he started playing somebody elses around a campfire that night. Anyway three Dutch girls took a liking to us.

Suddenly there were seven of us in John B White's BMW going to Dijon the next day. I remember a long long drive with the cute Dutch girl on my lap a grind'n. They were from Nimegen, Holland. I can't remember where we finally left them. I think it was the train station because White was all pissed about the weight in his beloved car.

Back at Gerszewski the lifers wanted me to re-up and become a NCO. So I took some test to become a E-5 and was interviewed by the battalion SGM and some others. I think his name was Torres.

The report came back to me that I had gotten the highest score of anybody who took the test. But a black guy got the promotion. The clerk who told me about it said that when they asked him how many men were in a battalion, he thought, then answered, "Boo-cue .... I know dat!"

I told Top I'd rather get out and join the Marines than put up with this bullshit for 20 years.

I decided to just simply become a civilian again and work for the army in the daytime.

Lively liked that idea. I had seen him up at Graf in Company B but had never really met him until we got back down to Gerszewski.

Lively in 72 or 73 at Bridge Training, B-Co 1st Platoon (LT McConaghy)

I just knew he played the guitar, had red hair, stood out in a crowd, and came from Mo-town. Somehow he became the Colonels Driver in HQ. The girls loved him. Except for that snooty WAC in S-1.

I can't remember how it all began but we got together and rented an apartment in Linkenheim.

It's about 15 clicks (KM) up the Rhein River from Gerszewski on the Karlsruhe side of the river in Baden Wuertemburg.

Main street of Linkenheim in 1975

I can't remember the exact dates very well, but it must have all begun in late October or November in 1974. I know we were there for Christmas and New Years that year. That's when I met Karin. I met her that New Years at the party we had in Linkenheim.

The Apartment.

We lived in the basement apartment first, but after the CIA dude on the first floor got run out of town, we took the swanky first floor apartment.

Supper

Yes, we cooked, we kept the place clean, and we had a great stereo. Lively had a big foot locker full of rock and roll albums. There was even a lake down the road where we went swimming, and there was a bar up on the main-street that we sold whiskey to now and then for extra cash. I saw the Ali-Frasier fight in that bar. It was called the Gruner Baum (Green Tree) at the time.

As I recall we lived just below "P" (parking area) in the green shaded area with the word Friedhof.

I had a birthday party at the Güner Baum that year and met some Germans who came down to the house to party and hang around. One of the girls was named Pia. Marty and Pia began going out steady after our New Years party, and Pia became a permanent fixture at the house. Her parents had a swimming pool inside their house. I think her father was a doctor.

More about this all coming soon. If you remember some of those wild times E-mail me and share the memory. Right now I'm racking my brain. I think I'll stop for a couple of days and come back to it. E-mail me if you got something to share.

This is a picture on a Christmas Card that came out of the blue about 4 years later. Lively was in Baton Rouge working at swanky Hotels and living with "a girl, some cats, and his dog, in an old house". Must have been 1979 or 80. I got the card in New York. I was renting a house on the Mohawk River with two old high school buddies at the time.

We rode motorcycles back then and shot ducks from our front porch while American society moved deeper and deeper into Hedonism. I could write a book about those motorcycle days on the Mohawk River. Karin got a card from Lively in Germany too. I went back to Germany in 1979 to marry Karin. I had never met her parents before, and hence, I have yet another story that could become a book. Way too much for this web-site.

Lively! - If you're still out there somewhere E-mail me or give me a call. I know it's late at night but Karin and I would love to hear from you! Yes, we're still married, and we got two grown kids. We live in a Atlanta suburb now.

Got any "Coops" left?

NEXT PAGE
Please Stop the Music

---

Copyright © 2002, Bruce Christman
All Rights Reserved



Fait Accompli
E-mail the Webmaster