Late
summer ’58, my European Cold War tour was drawing to a close. I had secured an
‘early-out’ on my three-year enlistment. That meant getting out of the military
three months early to return to college. My adventures on the Continent would
soon come to an end.†
Karin,
an attractive young German girl whom I had hung out with much of the past year,
was not yet due back to school for her last year. She was an only child of
divorce – her mother, remarried, lived in Bad Homburg, an upscale suburb of Frankfurt
am Main; her father lived up in Hamburg on the north coast of West Germany, a
Cold War composite of the American, British, and French post-WWII occupation
zones.
Karin
proposed a farewell fling before we’d inevitably have to go our separate ways –
she soon to university in her homeland, I back to college in the States to
pursue my new aspiration of ultimately becoming a professor. Since her father
was off in London on business for his bank, she and I would stay at his place.
We caught an express train to Hamburg, a city largely destroyed by allied bombing
during the war, but rebuilt since and again a flourishing center of sea
commerce at the intersection of the North and Baltic seas.
Hamburg
was Karin’s second home, and she knew the city and environs well. We spent the
first day on the Baltic Sea beach at Travemünde. For the last leg of the trip
out to the beach, we rode a rickety two-car trolley-train that clattered along a lengthy spit of land parallel
to the sea. The day was sunny, but windy. Obviously German bathers knew how to
deal with the elements, for the beach had row upon row of open-ended, wooden
cabanas, each with a colorful awning. We rented one to get out of the wind and
warm-up after swimming.
The beach at Travemünde
The
next day we went down to Hamburg’s great harbor, the second largest in Europe,
on the River Elbe, its access to the North Sea.
It was a bustling place with tugs crossing to and fro and freighters
from many ports of call. Karin’s cousin was a Merchant Marine officer, and his
ship was in port. He welcomed us aboard, and we toured a working ship that
plied the world’s trade routes.
Then
he took us for a swing around the harbor on a small craft that nosed in and amongst the jetties and ships. Putt-putting
amidst hovering ocean-going vessels was akin to exploring mighty canyons. We
stood off a safe distance and watched cargo ships loading and off-loading hard
goods and grains at the port’s various terminals. Quite fascinating.
The harbor at
Port of Hamburg
On
my final day in north Germany – Karin would be staying on to see her father on
his return from England – we took the train and ferry across the Baltic straits
to Denmark for dinner in Copenhagen, an especially festive European city.
Returning very late to Hamburg, we picked up my overnight bag and taxied to the
main railway station. I was due back at my Frankfurt garrison for ‘separation
processing’ – in the Cold War military full discharge came much later after
several years in the inactive reserves – and to pick up my travel orders for
stateside.
As
planned, I caught the last train of the night from Hamburg’s Hauptbahnhof to
points south. Standing in the cavernous departure hall on the nearly deserted
platform, Karin and I said our fond goodbyes – for me it was Farewell
Europe.
Final
out-processing from my intelligence outfit, the Army Security Agency (ASA),
took place at Agency’s HQ in the I G Farben building where I had worked in a well-guarded,
tightly secured classified operation. Summoned to the office of the commandant,
I expected a little pro-forma chat on leaving the Agency. I presented myself,
saluted the colonel, was put at ease, and then pleasantly surprised when he
rose from his desk, a document in hand, and solemnly began to read from it.
It
was a special ‘Letter of Commendation’ in which he wrote:
Upon your
departure from ASA Europe, I wish to take
this opportunity
to express my appreciation and
commend you upon the
manner in which you have
executed your assigned duties
while on duty with this
division…
Your willingness
to earnestly apply yourself and the
skillful use of
your linguistic talents have contributed
abundantly to
accomplishment of not only the branch
mission, but also
of the entire ASA Europe….
Needless
to say I was pleased ASA had noticed, came to attention, gave a sharp salute,
and left his office, believing the time had come to hit the road. Not so fast –
I was instructed to report to another office before leaving the building for
the final time. Locating the office, the legend on the frosted glass door
merely bore the letters ‘CIC’ in modest black caps.
The author
off-duty, Frankfurt am Main, West Germany, 1958
I
had been ‘invited’ to a so-called exit interview by the Counter-Intelligence
Corps (CIC), a shadowy branch of the Army charged with preventing treasonous
activity by US military personnel, especially those of us bearing secret
information that could give aid and comfort to the enemy. With the utmost
seriousness, a gruff CIC sergeant (sgt) warned that if I divulged any
classified information about my mission, I would face 10 years imprisonment
plus a $10,000 fine – serious money in those days.
With
that sobering message filed away, I shouldered my duffel bag and began the long
return home. While I had arrived in Europe by air so that ASA could get maximum
mileage out of me – at the end of my tour I was to depart by slow troopship. My
orders took me back up to the North Sea, but this time to Bremerhaven, the US
military’s port of embarkation. Ironically, I was retracing the steps of my
grandparents who had emigrated from the Tsarist Russian Empire in the late 19th
century, making their way to the New World from the very same port to which I
was headed.
My
ship was waiting. Named the USNS Geiger
for a Marine general, it had been acquired by the Navy for Korean War service.
The Geiger carried a crew of 200+ and
could transport 2000 troops. For this crossing, its complement of passengers
was to be an ‘element’ – Army-speak – of the 3rd Armored Division.
After its role in WWII under General Patton, the 3rd had gone on to
serve for years as a frontline unit in Cold War West Germany facing large
Soviet forces across the border in East Germany.
USNS Geiger steaming out of Bremerhaven
I
was fine with riding the waves with such a distinguished combat outfit except
that I was the sole ASA soldier on the ship’s roster. In berthing arrangements
aboard ship, the structure of the 3rd Armor was maintained, meaning
that all troopers in a given formation along with their sgts were assigned to a
common compartment. Officers were of course bedded down separately above decks
and far more comfortably.
As
an outlier, I was attached to the unit’s oddball collection of GIs – soldiers designated to be mustered out of the
Army under less than honorable conditions, as well as those slated for ‘Section
8’ discharges, men with psychological problems.
As
you can guess, the oddballs along with me were given the least desirable
accommodations on the Geiger – down
near the ship’s screws with the immense, noisy driveshaft turning the
propellers constantly running overhead. I found myself assigned for the return
home in a densely packed, hot, humid, and relatively airless space. Uncannily,
like my family leaving Russia, I too would be crossing the North Atlantic in
steerage.
On
our first day at sea, my fellow passengers were already becoming restless,
loudly arguing among themselves as some whiled away the time lying in their bunks
while others played craps against the bulkhead. There were even a few fights in
one of which I glimpsed the flash of a short blade. Underscoring that we were
in the butt end of the boat, I noticed when we exited for chow that an armed
sentry was posted at the hatch.
I
settled into my bunk with a book, figuring it was going to be a trip to forget,
but shortly after lunch I was startled to hear my name shouted down the hatch –
‘Sharlet, Sp-5, report topside’. I climbed the two-story high metal ladder, and
was met by a sailor who escorted me to the office of the ship’s chaplain. The
chaplain, a Baptist minister and naval officer, invited me to take a seat and
explained that he had two things he wanted me to do during the journey.
I
was puzzled that he even knew of my existence until he gestured to the file on
his desk, my file, from which he had apparently learned that I was the only
detached GI aboard with some college education who was also Jewish. The two
tasks were that I was to edit the ship’s daily paper for the troops, and with a
Jewish holiday coming up – to preside over religious services for Jewish troops
who wished to observe the occasion.
I
had no problem with editing a paper, but wasn’t sure about my other assignment.
I didn’t have much of a religious education, but I did my best. The chaplain
had given me an office on the bright, sunny promenade deck and even assigned me
an assistant, a company clerk from the 3rd Armor with office skills.
Every
morning after chow I’d head to ‘my office’ and set up for the day’s paper.
Then, at a designated time, I’d go up to the captain’s bridge to meet with the
ship’s exec or executive officer (XO), a starchy type. He’d tear several sheets
off the ship’s teletype, glance through them, and hand them to me as the source
for the latest news. If he passed the material on without comment, I was free
to use any of it in the day’s paper, a single legal-size sheet mimeographed on
both sides.
However,
if the XO drew my attention to a section of the teletype he had bracketed, that
meant it was censored and could not be shared with the troops. That happened on
two occasions – the first was a brief report on an aerial dogfight between
Chinese Nationalist and Red Chinese fighter jets over the Taiwan Straits.
The
other censored story concerned US airborne troops in Lebanon. President
Eisenhower had ordered them ashore to combat ‘communist subversion’. I
naturally followed the XO’s orders, musing to myself that, although I was soon
putting the military behind me, the Cold War remained alive and well.
We
published that day’s paper, and I gave the Middle East no further thought.
Usually my assistant and I would hang out in our comfortable office the rest of
the day, not returning to our billets until after evening chow. That afternoon
was an especially pleasant one with a soft ocean breeze and just a light chop
on the water. I was standing at the rail of the promenade deck taking the sun
when suddenly I noticed that the ship had begun a 180-degree turn mid-ocean.
As
the Geiger took a new heading back
toward Europe, I thought, so long fall semester back in college. I figured it
had just been decided on high that the 3rd Armor Division was needed
as reinforcement in Lebanon, and I was along for the ride, stuck with them. But
the ship continued turning, now making a full circle in the Atlantic. Puzzled,
I shouted down to sailors on the deck below wearing big, blocky life jackets
and asked what was going on.
Fate
smiled on my academic plans as I learned the whole thing was a routine
exercise, a simulated man overboard drill. We steamed on to our destination and
my future. Only years later did I learn that just two months earlier it was the
Geiger that had transported the
paratroopers from US European bases to the shores of Tripoli.
After
what seemed an interminable crossing, we sighted the outer banks of New York
Harbor, and then the Statue of Liberty came into view. Though I hadn’t been
overseas that long and was certainly never in harm’s way, I felt a little
emotional tug at seeing the Lady of the Harbor.
Along
with me, my French Citroën stowed below decks, and the 3rd Armor,
the Geiger pulled into the Brooklyn
Navy Yard docks on schedule. We disembarked, Navy longshoremen off-loaded my
car, and I was once again a civilian. I headed north toward Boston and my junior
year in college. ‘My war’ was over, but brother Jeff Sharlet’s lay ahead on the
far side of the world. For him, it would be a reluctant Hello Vietnam.
_______________________________
†
For those adventures from college to Cold War Europe, see previous posts:
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.