I have told so many stories on here that I honestly can’t remember if I’ve told an earlier version of this story or not but regardless, I’m about to tell it now. It was in the middle of April 1975 and I was a couple weeks away from marrying a sixteen year old girl I was in love with. I’m sitting in an AAFEES building in Louisville Kentucky, about eighteen and a half, right off the farm, green but anxious to leave what I can only describe as Shithole USA. I only had a couple of demands. I want to learn electronics, and I do not want to leave the states, and the enlistment officer… and I only call his that because if I call him a lying sonofabitch it might insult some fairly nice people who just struggle with the truth. This man did not struggle. He said something that even forty-nine years later I can still hear clearly in my head when I close my eyes… We never send anyone overseas on their first enlistment. So with that worked out, I signed up and I said I do and on the delayed entry program, I came back to Louisville Kentucky on June 2, raised my right hand, and hopped on a military bus heading to Fort Knox, filled with about fifty new friends and about thirty-miles away from realizing that I had no idea what I had just done to myself. Don’t worry. I have not forgotten about the question, but I still had around two months of basic training that involved screaming drill Sargents, near starvation, sprinkled with exercise filled days and nightly sleep deprivation. Up until my graduation from basic training, I had never been more than 100 miles away from home but my next destination was Augusta Georgia, where I would be schooled in my military training until a few weeks until Christmas. That’s when I got my orders for Mannheim Germany for the remainder of my military career. I’m still not sure exactly how many miles away from home that put me, but a week after Christmas that’s where my ass was sitting. For what turned out to be just under twenty-four months. Oh, and that sixteen year old girl that I married over forty-nine years ago… we are still married.

ws