“I’m leavin on a jet plane…”
Before I could get to Germany I would first have to fly down to Fort Jackson, South Carolina to do all my inprocessing, get issued all my uniforms, get all my shots, all that wonderful stuff you have to do when you join the army. Fortunately, because I was prior service and had only been out of the army reserves less than two years, I was not forced to go back through basic training again. If I was, I probably would not have done it. Basic training is of those things that you’re so glad you did and proud you made it through but you never, ever want to do again. Ft. Jackson is the main basic training base for the US Army so there were plenty of young scared faces on the plane. We stopped over in Charlotte, NC on the way down and as I was sitting in the food court waiting for my flight, who walks by but Drew Bledsoe. In 1998, Bledsoe was the New England Patriots starting quarterback. He was only a year removed from a Superbowl appearance and was a major celebrity back home. Nobody else seemed to recognize him as he and his two travel companions stood in line waiting for their food so I nervously went up and said hi.
“Uh, excuse me…Drew?”
He turned and looked at me.
“Hey, how’s it going?”
“Pretty good…um…I’m actually from outside of Boston and huge Patriots fan…I just enlisted in the Army and I’m on my way to Germany for the next three years but I just wanted to tell you that the thing I’m going to miss most about home is watching you guys play on Sundays…”
“Cool, thanks. Germany huh? I’ve got a couple of friends who are in the army there, they say it’s awesome, great beer”
“Yeah, I’m looking forward to it…anyway, just wanted to say hi…good luck next season”
“Thanks, good luck in Germany man, you’re gonna have a great time there”
I felt pretty stupid but I’d never really met anyone famous before and had no idea what to say. I ran right over to the pay phone and called Mike and Jen to tell them about it but they were not home so I left a frantic message on their machine: “OHMYGODGUYSYOU’LLNEVERGUESSWHOIJUSTRANINTOATTHEAIRPORTINCHARLOTTEDREWBLEDSOEIWASSONERVOUSIMUSTHAVESOUNDEDLIKEANIDIOTHOLYCRAPICAN’TBELIEVEIT!”
With my brush with celebrity behind me I got on the plane still a bit excited about meeting one of my hometown sports heroes. When I got off the plane in Columbia, South
Carolina later that night I was snapped back into reality. There was an E7 in his dress uniform screaming his head off at everybody. Get your shit! Get in line! No talking! Eyes straight ahead! I said no talking! Are you deaf?!
“Holy crap, what have I gotten myself into?! Am I crazy?! What the hell was I thinking?!”
I’m standing there with all the young basic training recruits, most of them just out of high school, and for the first time I’m thinking that I made a big mistake when the guy spots me – I guess I must have stood out among the younger people – and walks over to me.
“Oh no, what the hell did I do? Why is he walking towards me? Shit, this was a bad idea!”
He stopped about 10 feet away and pointed at me.
“Are you prior service?
“Yes…”
“OK, get out of that line, you don’t need to be with all those new guys.”
Phew.
Fortunately the prior service people were treated a bit better than the basic trainees since we had already been through it all before. We had to go through all the same inprocessing that they did but we had separate barracks and had a lot more freedom. I made some good friends during the 5 or 6 days that we were there waiting to go overseas which made the trip a little easier to deal with. There was one guy who really just begged to be made fun of. He was from the upper peninsula of Michigan. My brother used to work up there and told me that people make fun of “UPers” quite a bit as they see them as backwards rednecks. Well, let me tell you, this guy fit the bill. We called him “Youpee”. He actually brought a hockey stick with him. We were like “You know you can probably buy a hockey stick in Germany, right?” But he couldn’t stand to part with his hockey stick. We were allowed two checked bags and one carry on and Youpee used his hockey stick as his carry on and asked us about a dozen times if we thought we might be able to get a game together when we get to Germany. It was nearly May. That was Youpee. Another guy, from Montana, told me that he enlisted active duty to go to Germany for one reason and one reason alone: so he could ski the Alps. You must really love to ski if you’re willing to join the army just to do it. There was a kid named Bosh who was just crazy. He had a tongue ring and used to try and tell us that he had once done a secret airborne jump into North Korea. We just kind of humored him and said it must have been quite a harrowing adventure. He’d lived a hell of a life for a 19 year old kid. Then there was Stephanie. Stephanie was the very definition of white trailer trash. She was 24, from the swamps outside of Tallahessee, Florida, had worked in a bar since she was twelve years old, had three kids, wasn’t married, and had one of the thickest southern accents I’d ever heard.
She was mildly attractive, loved to gamble, and was very friendly. I hadn’t met very many women like her in my life so I was kind of intrigued by her. We all flew to Germany together except for Stephanie who had to remain at Ft Jackson to testify against a married E5 who had repeatedly tried to coerce her into having sex with him while he was supposed to be supervising our work detail.
Landing in Germany was a moment I’ll never forget. We touched down at Rhein-Main Air Base, which shared a runway with the Frankfurt International Airport. The base was small and while most people would call it old, I called it historic. Rhein Main was the home of the 64th Replacement Station and, as such, was where all military personnel arriving in Europe had to go to do some inprocessing and receive their assignments. It was so named because it sits near the confluence of two major rivers – the Rhine and the Main. As I looked around and saw the big “Gateway to Europe” sign, I couldn’t help but think about all the soldiers who had been there before me and walked the same path. Elvis Presley was once stationed in Germany…had he once walked under that same “Gateway to Europe” sign that I did? There was so much history at that place. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers had served tours in Germany over the years and they had all gone through Rhein-Main. And I was now a part of that history. It gave me goosebumps. We went into the building where they looked at your files and gave you your assignments and sat in the waiting room. I had brought my walkman with me and put my headphones on so I could hear some real German music. Little by little I was starting to notice that things were different. They had rock music on the radio but there were also stations playing “oom-pa-pa” music, like you would hear in a beer hall somewhere in Bavaria. Never heard that before. Even the toilets were different. I was loving my new life so far.
One by one the new people – affectionately referred to as “newbies” – were called and given instructions to get on this bus or that bus which would take them to their new assignments. But for some reason, I and most of the guys I had flown over with weren’t getting called. By the end of the afternoon the short female sergeant who was working the desk told us that our assignments weren’t ready yet and they were closing for the day. Since it was Friday, we were put up in some temporary barracks and told to hang out for the weekend and we would be given our duty stations on Monday. We got settled in our barracks and a couple of the guys made plans to go to the shoppette and get some beer for the evening while others made plans to catch a cab for downtown Frankfurt. Myself, I had other plans. It just so happened that one of my best friends from back home, Steve Lester, was in the Air Force and was stationed at Ramstein Air Base, about an hour south of Rhein-Main. We hadn’t stayed in touch very often in the previous couple years but I called him up and told him that I was at Rhein-Main for the weekend and hoped he might be able to come up. He was excited to hear from me and told me to sit tight, he would be there in an hour to pick me up and he’d show me around a bit and introduce me to a little bit of Germany. As I hung up the phone I became instantly aware of how lucky I was that Steve was in Germany as well. We’d met in high school at my church youth group and became friends immediately. He was an easy guy to like and was fun to hang around with. He’d gone through one year of college at the University of New Hampshire but ended up with piss poor grades, which I never understood because Steve was always really smart. After realizing that he was not college material he enlisted in the Air Force
as an Air Traffic Controller and had been to places like Homestead AFB in Miami, McChord AFB in Tacoma, Washington, Turkey, and now Ramstein Air Base in Germany, which was fortunate for me. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, Steve and I would be spending a lot of time together during my stay in Germany and the trips and adventures we would share would strengthen our friendship more than I could ever imagine. Steve remains, to this day, my favorite traveling companion. He showed up at the barracks and we figured we’d hit the club for a beer then take in a movie and just catch up a bit. We went to the little club on base and that was where I had my first authentic German beer. For a beer lover like me, it was quite a moment. We went to see “As Good As It Gets” at the theater on base but I was so tired and jet lagged that I actually fell asleep halfway through the movie. Afterwards Steve said “Hey, why don’t you come stay with Erica and I this weekend?”. Erica was his coworker and girlfriend at the time and I figured why not? So we made the drive down to his place which I fell in love with immediately. He lived in a small little village called Thaleischweiler-Frochen and his place was so big and cool that I immediately dubbed it “the bachelor pad”, his relationship with Erica notwithstanding. As it turned out, Erica was on shift that night so he took me to downtown Landstuhl, which is the town that Ramstein is in, and went out for my first German meal. Of course I had to have schnitzel. I’d heard of schnitzel and since I was determined to get everything out of my German experience as possible, it was only fitting that it was my first official German meal. For the uninitiated, schnitzel is basically a breaded pork cutlet. It is served with a variety of different sauces and/or toppings. My favorite is the “jagerschnitzel”, which is a schnitzel served in a brown mushroom gravy sauce. The meal was fantastic. After that, we hit the local Irish Pub and drank Guinness all night until Erica got out of work and picked us up. My first weekend in Germany was turning into exactly what I was hoping for. On Sunday afternoon, Steve and Erica drove me back up to Rhein-Main, which I remember for one main reason. As we drove close to Frankfurt on our way to the base we drove right past the stadium where Frankfurt’s soccer team (Eintracht Frankfurt) played their home games. This was a big deal for me because I had grown up watching the German professional soccer league, the Bundesliga, on Sunday mornings and there I was so many years later actually seeing one of the stadiums in person. Anyway, I got back to the barracks and had a couple beers with the guys in my room. There was a Mexican guy with us named Gallegos who had bought a case of Tecate which was a Mexican beer at the shoppette and I just couldn’t stop laughing at him for being in Germany and drinking Mexican beer. Old habits die hard I guess.
Go to Part 13
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