My Three Year Tour (1970-72) in the Military
by Robert M. Perrine
On March 1972 we had a farewell party up in Falkenstein, Germany in the
Taunus Mountains, a village of about 30 homes. My three year ROTC tour as an officer in the U.S. Army had come to an end. I’d wanted to stay as far away
as possible from the military so my girlfriend (Lisa) and I got this little cottage
up in the mountains. I drove 26 km to work in Frankfurt each day. In those days there was no highway and the trip took 45 minutes.
At the party were two of my traveling American pothead friends, a Captain
(we called him Captain America), my girlfriend Lisa, a DAC (Department of the
Army Civilian – the same Resident Engineer I served under in Korea which you may read about later in this article)
and a contractor who sold the US Government this Astroturf we put on 69 tennis
courts all over Germany at American kasernes. I managed the program. In addition to selling products to the military overseas he owned Mount
Gay Rum Distilleries which was located on the easternmost island of the West Indies. He
tells us his wife was being held hostage there he called the West Indies Bitch (but that’s another story). We also invited a dozen local Falkenstein German
neighbors to our last hurrah party.
With too many officers from the Vietnam buildup, as a Captain, I was given
my walking papers, but first Uncle Sugar offered to train me in brick laying
with a 6 month course in Texas. Of course it doesn’t matter that I was a Civil
Engineer, a variety of different types of blue collar training was offered to all NCO and officers alike.
Up until this day we’d been having drinking parties with the one thing
my German Friends were crazy about – Elmer Fundpuckers (well that’s what
they called it back in Butte, Montana). Germans couldn’t get fresh oranges but they were plentiful at the military commissary in Frankfurt. It’s fresh squeezed Orange
Juice, Tequila, topped with yellow Liquore Galliano L'Autentico. We'd squeeze 50-60 at a time. With vodka it a Screwdriver - with a squirt of
Another past time had been inventing drinks mainly for my alcoholic girlfriend
Lisa. We stumbled on this book of drinks by Earnest Hemingway and used his
drink concoctions to experiment with our own. Here’s some of the more memorable ones.
Hemingway Daiquiri
http://cocktails.about.com/od/rumrecipes/r/hmngway_dqri.htm
The Perfect Martini
- pour just enough vermouth from the freezer to cover the bottom of a Martini glass
from the freezer, jigger (1-1/2 oz) Stolichnaya Vodka (Russian and the best) from the freezer, and a very crisp Spanish
cocktail onion frozen from the freezer. We
garnished it with Pickled Herring slices (called it Swedish) but a big green olive will do.
Rum Punch - 80
mint leaves, torn or thinly sliced, 8 ounces light rum, 8 ounces aged rum, 8
ounces fresh squeezed orange juice, 8
ounces mango nectar or juice, 4 ounces pineapple juice. In a pitcher, combine
all of the ingredients except the ice and pineapple wedges and refrigerate
until chilled, about 2 hours. Stir well and serve over ice in red wine glasses.
Garnish each drink with a pineapple wedge. We used a Kumquat wedge.
Lady Marmalade -
1/4 ounce absinthe, 1 ounce vodka, 1 ounce Martini Rosso Sweet Vermouth, 1/2
ounce ginger liqueur, 1/4 ounce chilled verjus (pressed juice of unripened
grapes), 1 teaspoon grenadine, and ice: Rinse
a chilled glass with the absinthe; pour out the excess. In a mixing glass,
combine the vodka, vermouth, ginger liqueur, and grenadine. Fill the glass with
ice and stir well. Strain into glass. Garnish with a persimmon wedge.
Hemingway’s Regular Mojito
- 6 fresh mint leaves, Juice of 1
lime, 2 tsp light brown sugar, 1-1/2 oz. white rum, 3 oz. champagne, Sprig of fresh mint, for garnish: In a rocks
glass, add the mint leaves, lime juice, and brown sugar. Muddle to release the
mint oil. Add the rum and fill the glass 3/4 full with ice. Top off with the
champagne. Garnish with the mint sprig.
Our Takeoff on Hemingway’s
Mojito we called the Hawaiian - 1 1/2 oz peeled fresh pineapple chunks, 2
tablespoons packed dark brown sugar: 1/2 cup diced fresh pineapple, 1/2 cup lightly packed mint leaves, plus sprigs for garnish, 2 oz white rum, 3/4 oz fresh lime juice, ice, 1-1/4 oz chilled club soda, and lime
wedges for garnish: Make the Syrup in a saucepan, bring the pineapple, brown
sugar and 1/2 cup of water to a boil. Simmer over moderately low heat, stirring,
until the pineapple is very soft and the mixture is reduced to 1/4 cup, say 40
minutes. Strain the mixture into a heatproof bowl, pressing on the solids;
discard the solids. Let the syrup cool. Make the Mojitos in a pitcher, muddle the pineapple and mint
leaves. Stir in the rum, lime juice and 1/2 oz of the pineapple syrup. Pour into a glass and add ice. Top with club soda and garnish with mint sprigs and lime
wedges. The syrup can be made ahead and refrigerated for 2 weeks. Of course we made a gallon for our luaus complete with Hawaian leis (Lisa helped out there).
Hemingway’s Death in
the Afternoon - a simple mix of Champagne and absinthe
Hemingway Cocktail - 3 Parts Bacardi 8 Rum, 1 Part Maraschino
Liqueur, 2 Parts Grapefruit Juice, ½ Part Lime Juice: Chill a glass (ice is the
easiest way), put lots of ice and all of the ingredients, except for the
cherry, into a shaker, shake hard for about 20 seconds to chill the liquid
really well, strain the mix into the glass, garnish with a maraschino cherry.
Perfect Margarita - 3
Parts Tequila, 2 parts Triple Sec Liqueur, 1 part fresh squeezed lime juice, 1 lime
piece thinly sliced, salt: a daiquiri glass (the easiest way is to fill it with
ice). Fill shaker with ice and pour ingredients into a shaker. Shake hard for
about 30 seconds to chill the liquid really well. Run a lime wedge around the
outside of the rim of your glass before rolling the rim in salt. Strain the mix
into the glass. Float lime on top.
Pina Colada - 2
Parts Bacardi Superior Rum, 1 ½ Parts Fresh Coconut Cream, 1 Part Pineapple
Juice, 3-4 Fresh Pineapple, 2 tsp Caster Sugar, Cubed Ice, Pineapple Wedge and
Pineapple Leaves To Garnish: Have a frozen or chilled glass ready (leave it in
the freezer for a while). Put all of the ingredients (except the garnish!) into
a blender. If you don't have a blender, a cocktail shaker will do.
Add the crushed iced (if you don't have an ice crusher, make
your own crushed ice by covering cubed ice with a tea towel and smashing it up
with a rolling pin) to your blender/cocktail shaker. Blend/shake hard until the
mixture is smooth. Double strain into the frozen or chilled glass. Garnish with
a wedge of fresh pineapple and pineapple leaves
At Christmas we always had Fire in the Bowl - Feuerzangenbowle - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feuerzangenbowle and even sometimes Rum Pot - Rumtopf - http://www.germandeli.com/Recipe-for-Rumtopf-2
For our farewell party Captain America brought this killer punch recipe.
Most of the town got sauced and ended up roaming the streets with Lisa. It goes
like this.
Captain America Punch – 6 lemons, 1 qt brandy, 1 pineapple or 1
can of slices, 3 cups sugar, 1 qt green tea, I pt Jamaican Rum, 1 qt Peach
Brandy, 4 qts Champagne, and 4 qts Ginger Ale. Cut lemons in thin slices and
cover with brandy. Allow to steep 24 hours. Several hours before serving, slice
the pineapple into the bowl of lemon slices. Add the sugar, tea, rum, and Peach
Brandy. Stir well. When ready to serve add the soda and Champagne (we used Krimsekt - http://www.krimart.com/en/products/krimsekt.html)
The next day we dropped Captain America off at the Steigenberger
Airport Hotel to wait for his flight to Texas. He was two weeks ahead of me for
that brick laying course in Texas. Bartender Luigi got to talking to us about needing
an assistant bartender. To make a long story short, I got the job by telling the
folks back at the military reassignment office that it was a teaching type job
and then telling hotel management I was willing to work for nothing since the
Army was still paying me. I became the best paid person at the hotel. This was
an American type bar serving the typical American drinks – Manhattans, Martinis,
Gin and Tonic, etc. On more than one
occasion an America tourist would come in complaining about the martinis they
served in Germany – pure Dry Vermouth. I always made the day with a proper
Martini (just a splash of dry Vermouth with Stolichnaya Vodka and a huge green
olive stuffed with an Anchovy).
My shift was 4 – 11 pm which gave me time to sun in the nude at the kiesgrube,
a large abandoned sand quarry. Lisa, Baffy (our miniature poodle) and I would
swim out to a little island in the middle of the kiesgrube. There was one incident
when some lady tried to steal Baffy. Lisa caught up with her just as she had
climbed to the top of the kiesgrube wall. She grabbed a shoulder and scratched down her
bare back. The dog napper let out a scream and let go of
Baffy. There was some blood and a big boyfriend. We made a hasty retreat.
One night when I got home, I found Lisa had left for Turkey with my two
pothead friends. They heard that Turkey was a great place to smoke hashish. Later I learned Lisa was working in a flower shop in Istanbul. I never heard from her again.
That’s what happened at the tail end of my three year tour in the Army.
Perhaps more interesting are those first three years.
I graduated from Virginia Tech in
1966. My fellow ROTC classmates and I were hyped up as we hung “Bomb Hanoi” signs out our windows. But
just before getting my expected assignment to the war, a good friend approached
me and asked if I would be one of the teachers at a new two-year tech program
at previously all black Bluefield State College, a position that would delay my
deployment by two years from fighting. I
just couldn’t refuse, since I would be working on my masters at Teach at the
same time. During Bluefield college
enrollment a newly formed white fraternity asked me to be their sponsor. As I had been provided one of the four houses
on campus, the fraternity met regularly at my home. As you may remember, this was the time of Civil
Rights and racial tension. Not only were I and my white fraternity considered a
thorn in the side of this previously all back school, but also for the first time a white president
was appointed by the state, Dr. Wendell G. Hardway. Knowing there might be trouble in the days
ahead, my home became an armed fortress.
Tensions grew and culminated in the 1968 riot and bombing of the
physical education building right there in front of my house. As an angry crowd advanced on me and 20
members of Pi Kappa Phi, they were met with 20 guns pointed at them, giving
them reason enough to retreat back down the hill and leave us alone.
After my stent at Bluefield State
College, and while waiting to be called into action, another good friend
approached me, a Sergeant Major who worked at the Pentagon in charge of making
assignments. He told me how sour the Vietnam
war was going and wanted to know if, on the way to Vietnam, I didn’t want to
make a one year stopover in South Korea where they badly needed civil engineers
to supervise a jet fuel pipeline being placed the length of the country. With
this turn of events, I became the only one at the Engineer Officer Basic Course
class of 110 in the winter of 68/69 not to receive orders for Vietnam.
Three months later on a cold March
morning I found myself coming out of the clouds on a military pane loaded with
GI’s destined for fox holes alone the DMZ with North Korea. The picture from
10,000 feet into Kimpo Air Base was bleak – all brown with muddy newly planted
rice fields and straw thatched roofs, but not as bleak as the faces on those
young GI’s. To me it was like landing on
another planet. I was thrilled! Our first experience upon deplaning was to
line up and drop drawers as a medic stuck our behinds with some kind of
experimental drug, the identity of which I never learned. We were then hauled into a briefing room and
told not to eat the food outside military camps as it would give us worms or
worse. So my first experience was to
find my way into a local restaurant with strange smells and smoke coming out of
the walls. Sitting on a rice mat I pointed to what others were having, mostly
smelly Kimchee. To this day I love the
stuff.
Instead of first going to work on
the pipe line, I was delayed for a vital mission to Camp Ames, an isolated base
in the central part of South Korea where nukes were stored. Seems a protective second fence could not be
completed because the local Military Police Commander was standing in the way
of progress. They dropped me in by
helicopter as the muddy roads there were almost impassable. That first night I blew it with a man who not
only suffered PTSD from a recent assignment in Vietnam, but was also completely
off his rocker. At dinner he said to me,
“Son, what’a drinkin?” I asked for a martini. He said, “Only pussies drink martinis. My men all drink boilermakers” (a mixture of beer and bourbon). I asked the officer next to me how this could
be. He said, “He makes out our Officer Efficiency Ratings, so we need to like
whatever he likes.” As things
progressed, I learned that the Korean work force building the fence could only
work a few hours each day since LT Col Crazy made them wait for hours in the
sun until one of his shorthanded troops could spend another several hours
methodically searching them for anything that could blow up the place. I was able to convince LT Col Crazy to let
the workforce just stay at the work area sleeping and working there. This did the trick and they completed the
half built fence in four days after what had taken three months until the new
work plan. At final inspection, to my
dismay, LT Col Crazy noted that portions of this double ten foot high fence
were just three inches shy of being the required ten feet from the existing
fence.
He turned to me and said I might as
well get it through my head I’d be there at least another year. That night I released the contractor and his
work crew, stole LT Col Crazy’s jeep and drove 70 miles over almost impossible
roads to Daejon. Bright and early at 7
a.m., I confronted a green as green could be 2nd Lt Facilities Engineer with
the fence property transfer papers for signature. On the way out the door the phone rang as I
heard, “Yes sir, he just left. Yes sir, I did sign the papers. Yes sir, your jeep’s out front. No sir, he’s nowhere in sight.”
Back in Seoul, I was put on another
small assignment which gave me time to buy a motorcycle. After almost killing
myself by sliding under a semi-truck and jumping Han River sand banks into
quicksand, a friend invited me to go across the country to the east coast on
our motorcycles to Sokcho, a secret Korean base near the DMZ. For the last leg over a mountain pass it rained
and our motorcycles bogged down in the mud late at night. Fortunately, ROK (Republic of Korea) soldiers
came out of their fox holes and helped us along. ROK soldiers were stationed in foxholes all
along the coast area guarding against sneak attacks from North Korea. Every able bodied man in South Korea had to
spend two years in the military and for the most part, out in the
elements. The soldiers at Sokcho were
remarkable. This was the jump-off
location for ROK type seals to jump from high speed assault boats, swim ashore
into North Korea and spy, plus engage in other nasty activities. Those ROK soldiers could do no wrong in town
and their mischief went unregulated.
Arriving in Sokcho we stumbled into the NCO club, mud head to toe, and
were received with more celebration, increasing the already rollicking club
atmosphere.
During my time in Seoul, a Korean
working in our office began translating our English construction specifications
into Korean. I later learned when I was
in Saudi Arabia that his translation was literally photocopied thousands of
times and was the catalyst for the Korean export of its construction expertise
worldwide, with the workforce in Saudi Arabia working on Corps of Engineers
managed military projects making up of 80% Korean workers.
I eventually ended up in my
assignment supervising the construction of two 40,000 barrel jet fuel storage
tanks at Osan Air Base, 50 miles south of Seoul Korea. I was deputy to a civilian Resident Engineer,
a man who taught me a great deal in a short time, a man who would later kill
his wife and then commit suicide in Texas.
Besides hundreds of Korean construction workers, there were 5,000
airmen, and just outside the front gate, the reality of the Beach Boys’ “Surf City” lyrics and “Two girls for every boy.” The pilots all had Screwdriver and Bloody Mary
drinks for breakfast, and at the Officer’s Club Happy Hour we played “Free Till You Pee,” a game where
officers could consume as much alcohol from an open table as possible until
someone had to use the restroom. Believe
it or not, the record was only 18 minutes.
During my stay at Osan, there were two fighter pilots who flew their
jets straight into the mountain. No, it
wasn’t the booze. According to one of my
closest friends there, most of the pilots were here on R&R from Vietnam
where they were being instructed to drop napalm on village huts. Need I say
more about what they saw in their rearview mirrors as they flew off?
My one year of a two year ROTC
commitment time was up in 1970 and I was still eagerly anticipating my last
year in Vietnam. But as before, another
friend, who had recently been transferred from Berlin, told me he could get me
assigned to Berlin if I’d go “Voluntary
Indefinite,” that is, hitch one more year onto my two-year Army
obligation. And so it was another detour
on the way to Vietnam. Upon arrival in
Berlin I was stationed with the Engineer & Installation Division, the unit
responsible for maintenance of the most prestigious housing in the entire military,
complements of the German Government wanting to make Berlin a show place in the
center of lands occupied by the Soviets. This included the U.S. Army’s Berlin
Brigade Commander’s $20 million chateau.
As for me, as a bachelor Army Captain, I had a two bedroom apartment
complete with kitchen, dining, and spacious living room. Almost before I could get my feet on the
ground, my new commander informed me the turnaround time was now just down to
two months before I’d be shipped off to Vietnam. As it turned out 1970 became the year there
was a huge exodus of half a million soldiers from Vietnam. My two months got lengthened to the point
that I would spend the rest of my two year tour in Germany. E&I Division had a standing joke that
should the Soviets declare war, their primary mission was to place a sign on
the Berlin Wall down at Check Point Charlie simply reading, “POW Camp.” Being surrounded by Russians,
we were sitting ducks. The first and
main obstacle to my new assignment was the Captain I was replacing, a man who
walked on water. He was a lawyer who had
single handedly brought a Wild West outfit to the annual German-American folk
festival.
I could not begin to fill his
shoes, but I did, in a strange sort of way.
Every Friday in full uniform, we could spend the day in East Berlin on
the other side of the wall. As it
happened a new Commander came on the scene a month after my arrival. I submitted to him the paperwork for
permission to pass through Checkpoint Charlie.
He wanted to know why I’d want to go over there. I said, “shopping
and hanging out with East Germans, sir.” He said, “What! You want to trade and fraternize with the enemy? Well, forget it
Captain Perrine.” That Monday he
called me back into his office and said, “Captain
Perrine, I’m afraid I’ve got to eat some crow.
My wife found out you know all the good places to shop in East Berlin so
she’s been bugging me all weekend for you to escort her.” You see, the military in uniform could drive
through Check Point Charlie without being checked. Civilians had to walk through and be
thoroughly searched. I could trade one West
Mark for five East Marks in downtown West Berlin. Tourists had to exchange one for one, but even
at that, prices for antiques, etchings, Bleikristall, handmade wooden toys and
vodka (to name a few valuables) were a steal. In the months ahead I met more than twenty
wives of colonels and generals after they had walked through the check point
with their money in my pocket. One time
antique tables and chairs were tied high on my roof which made the Russian
guards laugh. They had gotten to know my
shopping routine. Two days later it was
no laughing matter when a sergeant had his trunk filled with machinegun
fire. He drove on through to the west
with three dead East Germans, a bounty worth $15,000. These types of incidents were always swept
under the rug, and the sergeant was simply transferred out the next day, I
presume with $15,000 in his pocket.
Koreans were friendly towards
Americans since we came to their aide during the Korean War, but in Germany
there was rebellion against our Vietnam involvement and the young people
ignored GI’s. But then my employees at
E&I Division were Germans, so I did have quite a few German Friends,
especially when the 1970 film “Woodstock”
was released to military theaters, since the German theaters didn’t get the
film for several years. None of the
military personnel were coming to see the film because of many of the songs
were anti-military. I asked the movie
sergeant if I could bring a few of my German employees since the shows seemed
to be mostly empty. When word got out,
every single one of my employees came, some 20 plus. They smuggled in Russian Champaign (Krimsekt
from Crimea), and boy, did we rock the little theater! When Country Joe started
off his song with “Give me an ‘F,’”
we were all up standing on our arm rests answering his cry, “What’s that spell?”
We sailed on Lake Wannsee at the
military Wannsee Rec Center, an elegant chateau on loan from the Germans. Little did we know at the time, this was the
very place where Nazi leaders decided the “final
solution” of the “Jewish Question.” I only learned this years later, and more
recently I learned the rest of a story from E&I Division’s most talked
about accomplishment. Operation Gold was pulled off by one of
our top German managers. He had his
workers dig a tunnel under the Berlin Wall and tap into East German phone
lines. Eleven months later the Russians
found the wire, according to them, by accident; but by then we had obtained
eleven months of information, how valuable we didn’t know. I heard the story told perhaps a dozen times
at cocktail parties. Several years ago
on a 2010 vacation in Berlin, at the Berlin War Museum there was a replica of
the tunnel E&I Division had constructed with a description of what was
learned after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The KGB had known about the tunnel all along,
but decided not to let on. The Soviets
would have had to compromise the Russian mole in British security who found out
about the tunnel, and they preferred to sacrifice some information rather than
their valuable agent.
My favorite Sunday outing was to
buy a case of Guinness Stout from the British Commissary in the British Sector,
load it into my tiny inflatable raft along with my girlfriend Lisa and float
out into a quiet lake both West and East Germans were forbidden to use as the
east/west boundaries cut through the middle of the lake with the Berlin Wall on
the east side. One Sunday we both fell asleep and by drifting into the East
Sector we were awakened by a Russian patrol boat with guns in our faces. Only
the good looks and sweet talk of my girlfriend plus a few remaining beers kept
them from hauling us in to the East.
After a year in Berlin I got a very
sought after job in Frankfurt, Germany.
The colonel interviewing for the job liked to speak French and my French
Canadian girl friend, Lisa, sealed the deal.
I was put in charge of building basketball and tennis courts all over
Germany using Class Six whiskey profits.
In that most civilian clubs had refused to admit blacks, Commanders had
no choice but to put them off limits, and these courts were deemed a substitute.
Ten had inflatable domes, and it was only after I left Germany that I learned,
most had been knifed from GI’s letting off a lot more steam.
A few months before my three years
was up, on May 11, 1972 my girlfriend and I were walking out of the basement
bar area at the Officer’s Club in Frankfurt, when an explosion sent debris and
gases down the step we were about to go up.
This was the work of the Baader-Meinhof Gang. Lt. Col. Paul Bloomquist who had left only
seconds earlier was killed, along with a dozen or so being injured.
After my military tour I worked as a civilian with the Bureau of Reclamation in Montana, then the Corps of Engineers in New Orleans, and then back to Korea where I met my first wife. In 1980 I was hired in Washington D.C. at the Corps of Engineers HQ after being turned down for the first opening there, an opening that would have led to my death in the Potomac River. In January 1982, In 1981 I transferred to Saudi Arabia working for the Corps of Engineers. Awakened in the early morning on January 14, 1982, the Commander of the Corps of Engineers in Saudi Arabia called to tell me my good friend from Korea had been one of the people to go down in the Potomac River with Air Florida Flight 90 several hours earlier. A year earlier in interviewing for a position with the Corps in D.C., I was asked about my boss who was still in Korea. I hesitated, because I knew he had far more experience than I, and I went ahead and told the interviewing manager about his many attributes, an endorsement I’m sure landed him the job instead of me, a job that took him down to Florida on that ill-fated Air Florida flight to a planning meeting at an Army Reserve Center in, of all places, Perrine, Florida.
In 2006 I and my second wife,
Barbette, for 12 years vacationed in Berlin. We each were showing places we had
once lived. After 36 years things had really changed. There was no wall and our
hotel was in the heart of East Germany, the Hotel Jolly Vivaldi. We found that
reunification of East and West Germany was much more difficult than the West
German government had anticipated. Alcoholism was still ramp at an estimated
20% of the population. In 2005 South
Korea had sent a contingent to see how it would be if North and South Korea
were eventually unified. Knowing that it would be harder with people in North Korea
totally brainwashed, the Koreans came away, having learned from the German
difficulties, that they could never-never annex North Korea. One interesting place
we stopped to see was where President Reagan stood in a square with his famous, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Our
tour guide scoffed at the idea that Pres Reagan had anything to do with tearing
down the wall saying only a few dozen Berliners were there to hear Reagan’s speech.
Rather he told us about Perestroika, the political movement by Soviet leader
Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost leading to the fall of the wall, another dagger in
America’s one-sided centralist history of the world.
2006 was the year Barbette and I
retired to Virginia Beach were we both have been quite active. My pursuit as
historian of our church has been blogging. Take the time to see some of my
handy work.
The History of
Virginia Beach as viewed from the first church
The History of Cape
Henry (where we live)
And Our House at Cape
Henry
Thanks for reading my blog. You all
come see us, hear! We’ll keep the light on.
Bob Perrine 757-481-1269
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