Yep, he sure could spot the stupid farm hick.
They asked "Where do you want to go for trainng?" "California." I responded.
Check, Florida.
"And where do you want to serve?" "Europe." I shot back.
Check, Berlin
You see, as a farm boy, who needed geography. Berlin is right in the center of Europe. See the maps? I heard of the Berlin wall, that seperates East Germany and West Germany. It turns out, for those of you too young to remember, Berlin was over a hundred miles inside the communist held East Germany.
Of course there was basic training, it was aweful, but what I expected. Ok, the part where they took my glasses and had someone beat me, calling it 'boxing' was an disturbing. The obvious thing to do for me was to go to church, so I went to the army church, where they proceeded to explain to me how God wanted America to be strong and we were his soldiers, and God directs our leaders.
Hey! That's not right!, you're just taking what I believe, and twisting it to make me do what you want me to..... Hey, wait a minute! Ok, now I had to take everything I learned at home and question it. I decided that I still beleve, but not so much in church as in god. I still thought the army might be good, but not the army church.
The rest of the training was also what I expected. My official job title included "non-morse" so the first six weeks of training was learning morse code. Remember, millitary intelligence. Still, this was training, the 'real' army would be different, right?
When I got there, they were not expecting me. That surprised me, cause this was supposed to be millitary intelligence.
I didn't know it at the time, but my barracks, Andrews Barracks, was a Nazi headquarters. An ancient brick building that was falling down by the time I left.
The next surprise was the group of 'thumpers' that cornered me.
"Hi, you are a long way from home, you must be lonely, our group likes to get together
and chat and talk about important things. Oh, are you born again?"
They kept comming at me again and again, and if not for my earlier army church experience I may have been easy prey for them.
Eventually I had to be rude, polite wasn't something they understood.
Even that may not have worked, but I got moved to a different floor when I got
assigned to trick work. No, thats what they called our shifts:
More will follow as I take time to type.