Berlin / Tempelhof Central Airport , 1973 - 1976

6912th Security Squadron, USAFSS

An Ex-Airman Remembers

Part 2 - January 1974 through October 1974

1974 was for me a very eventful year, and I have split it up into two parts.

Celebrating New Year's with Peter and Dan

Tuesday, January 1st, 1974, was a slow day at work. A lot of the guys had the day off. Several promotions took effect on the first of the year. Sgt. K. was strutting around with his 7th stripe, and Bill M. had made sergeant with three stripes.

That evening Dan and I went to visit a German friend from "Nolli", Peter C., at his apartment in the Fehmarnerstra�e. This was in the Wedding district, near the Anrumer U-Bahn station. Dan and I had a really nice time with Peter that night. He cooked dinner for us, and it turned out to be almost more than I could eat. Peter was an amateur photographer, and he showed us a lot of his photos.

Dan and I left Peter’s place finally at around 11:30, and got back to our room past midnight. It was a very nice way to start out the new year, and afterwards I always remembered that pleasant evening with Peter and Dan.

Dan, Kevin, and Ted to Leave Berlin

On the first swing Sunday night John H. and I had a talk, and he thought it would be no problem for me to extend my stay in Berlin until 1976. That sure sounded nice to me. I didn’t want to leave Berlin, and didn’t know how long I would be allowed to stay until they transferred me. I knew that I had to make the most of the time while I was still there.

Friday night the 11th I took along some books to work to read during slow spells. It was the second mid, and the last one for me for this cycle. A new schedule was going into effect on the 13th, and some of the Able flight guys were switching over to other flights that had other schedules. I worked half the night. They showed a movie about U.S. forces in Germany. I got pretty sleepy, and went right to bed after getting back to the hangars. Dan was in the room, got up at 9:00, and kept me up for an hour and a half with his shuffling around.

Early Tuesday morning the 15th Dan got up at 1:00 a.m., and he had some sad news for me. He had found out that day that he would be leaving Berlin in September. I knew then that our days together were numbered, and that was indeed quite sad. It was hard for me to imagine life in the Hangars without my good buddy Dan.

Tuesday was a dark, wet day. I got up late and went to see Michael, the young German teenager from Nolli whom I started visiting last fall with English lessons. On the way there I ran into Kevin who told me that he had been accepted by the Air Force Academy in Colorado, and would be leaving on Friday! That was interesting news.  Recently Ted was all excited about getting orders to go to Monterrey.  He was going to be leaving Berlin soon as well.

New Shift Schedule but Same Old Burn Detail

Wednesday January 16th was my first mid on the new shift. It was a busy night. I noticed that Paul C. was now in a place of authority, something like what Ken N. had been on Able Flight. He told me that I had burn detail that week. I started that night around 3:30 and finished an hour later.

I got up at 3:30 that afternoon, and went to eat. Jack C. joined me, and told me how the day bus is now terribly overcrowded, and people have to stand in the aisle.

That night was a busy one. There was a tremendous backlog of work, and some of it was pretty hard. I did the burn detail again, and Sgt. K. had me shut the door while I was doing it. Afterwards I found that I had slightly singed my hair without even realizing it.  Thursday night was another busy one. Randy M. and I helped each other out a while, and I had to do burn detail again.

On the last mid, Saturday, January 19th, the backlog had been worked down to nothing, and there wasn’t much to do for anyone. I still had burn detail, though, and worked until 4:30 that morning getting rid of a particularly large quantity of burn bags.

Vaughn and I Play Hookey

Monday the 21st was our second day of a two-day break. I was standing in line at the chow that forenoon with a couple of the guys when Joe P. caught us and said we’re being called in to work. I was upset and confused. I didn’t want to get dressed in my uniform and take the bus and subway to Marienfelde. I asked Don and Vaughn what they were going to do. Don said, "Forget it." Vaughn said, "I’ll go if they provide transportation." He wasn’t going to go on his own. I then rather reluctantly went along with their way of thinking, and decided to stay on base.

All the rest of the day I felt pretty guilty about it, and as a result I didn’t do much all day. Dan got up, extremely cheerful. He got dressed and disappeared. I felt miserable.

Later that afternoon Jim came back from the day watch. "How come you didn’t show up today?" he asked. Apparently Vaughn and I were the only ones who didn't! My heart sank. I dreaded going to work the next day, and spent all evening worrying what they might do with Vaughn and me.

Tuesday morning I got up past 6:00, ate, and left for work. To my surprise, Paul C. didn’t say a word. No one seemed upset. I could tell that Vaughn was as worried as I was, and was also a bit surprised that nothing was coming of it. A little later, though, W. talked with me very calmly about not showing up. Other than that, it all blew over without incident. I was very relieved.

That night Dan came in, lost and confused. He said he had lost it at work that night, and devoured five Almond Joy candy bars. He was the very picture of confusion, fumbling around in his things, finding money orders that he had forgotten he had bought, and generally getting things mixed around. "I can’t keep track of things," he confessed.

Days and Swings

Thursday the 24th was the third day watch for me. Dan was on a second day of break. I had to stand in the bus that morning, since it was so crowded, and it was a busy day at work. Friday evening Jim was working his first swing, and Dan was in the room. He had some big news. Yesterday he and Lucy had finally done it – they had decided to get married.

The first swing on Tuesday the 29th was a very busy night, and I didn’t have a chance to get into some of the reading materials that I had brought along. There was an announcement on the bulletin board about single airmen being able to extend their stay in Berlin, which was good news for me. I was definitely going to go for it.

Wednesday night’s swing was busy again. Cliff S. talked with me a little. He told me that when he started here as a 1-striper in January of 1972, some of the guys were giving him a hard time about his DEROS, i.e., the date of his release from active duty. Now he was a short-timer himself.

Bleeding on Mids

The Air Force in general, and our job in particular, had many buzz-words and acronyms that were in common use. Two words associated with the brutal shifts we worked were "bleeding" and "hanging."  "Bleeding" was a term that applied specifically to mid shifts, and meant that your body was acutely suffering from lack of sleep - a common phenomenon, as one can well imagine. "Hanging" meant staying awake for an extended period of time in order to get in sync with the following shift. If your supervisor gave you a day off, you had a "hit." Other more general terms one heard a lot were "lifers" and "pukes". A "lifer" was someone who had opted to make a career out of the Air Force. (Hector's definition: "Anyone who stays in at least one day past their initial enlistment.") A "puke" was someone who blindly adhered to rules and regulations, worked overtime, and delighted in being a model airman.

Monday, February 4th, the day before our first mid, I got up late. The whole day was gray and bleak for me. In the evening Dan went to a movie at BB with Lucy, John H., and John G. The mid that night was a dead one, and I was "bleeding." There was a meeting about the new shift schedule, which was currently on a 90-day trial. Apparently there was a lot of opposition from upstairs.

Wednesday night’s mid was a bad one. I was "bleeding" again. I was told that I was a Class A operator, and would have to do some extra specialized work that they had. It was pretty difficult, and W. wouldn’t help me out at all. When time came to be relieved, "Hak", apparently some sort of supervisor now, wouldn’t let me go.

February 7 I went to the dental clinic at Andrews Barracks to see Mrs. Mundt, the dentist that Dan had told me about. We both found her name amusing – "Mund" is the German word for "mouth".

Friday was the last mid. It was not that bad. But then W. came by saying that two generals were coming by on Monday, and Major S. had said that anyone who wasn’t "sparkling" would get an article 15. That was really joyous news.

Siggi and Jochen Discover Koolaid

Saturday the 9th Dan told me about his day with Lucy and gang on Friday. They had gone to Siggi V.’s place, where they all "planned their marriage", with a Polterabend and the works. The wedding would probably be in July, with a honeymoon in Spain in August. There were some problems, since Lucy had to finish her nurse’s training in Berlin, and Dan had to leave Berlin this fall. He was thinking of talking with Chaplain Martin about it, to see if he couldn’t manage an extension.

Siggi and Jochen V. were friends of Lucy’s. Siggi had a face that seemed oddly familiar to me, and I could never quite place it. Jochen was a good-natured Berliner. Both were about the same age as the rest of us.

Sunday night I met John H. who told me that one of the visiting generals is a four-star, which was a little unsettling. On Monday I wore my dress blues to work for the first time. The big general visit turned out to be an anticlimax. They came by at around 8:30 and then left. It was much ado about nothing.

I was to give Hebrew lessons to Lucy that evening on base, while Dan would be giving German lessons to Randy and Erik. But Siggi V. and husband Jochen came along with Lucy, and plans changed somewhat. It was a little awkward for me being alone with Siggi, Jochen, and Lucy while Dan was gone. We whiled away the time until Dan returned around 8:45. There was some koolaid there, and Jochen and Siggi tried some. To my great astonishment, they found it "terrible." It was like drinking chewing gum ("Kaugummisaft"), they said. That was one of the first great cultural differences between German and American tastes that made such an impression on me, and which I remembered throughout the rest of my life.

Two More Years

Tuesday afternoon during the second day watch I talked with CMSgt P. about extending my stay in Berlin through April 1976, and it looked very good. I was very happy about that. One of my worries the past year was that I would be transferred out of Berlin after a year or two of service, and have to leave Nolli and all the wonderful friends that I had made.  On Friday I made an appointment to get my extension paperwork taken care of; I was thrilled at the prospect of being able to stay for another two years.

Wednesday the 13th was another day of the recent BVG strike, and traffic was thick and slow on the way to work. Thursday the strike was over.  The BVG, or Berlin Transportation Company, was the organization that provided public transport in the city.  They ran all the buses and subways - but not the S-Bahn trains, which were run by the East Germans.  (The S-Bahn was a city train system with fairly good lines and connections, but due to its affiliation with the East German government, it was little used.  It was not uncommon to see entire cars in the S-Bahn empty as the trains rattled by.  As members of the U.S. Armed Forces, we were even forbidden to ride the S-Bahn. The West Berlin buses and subways, however, were always crowded.)

Saturday the 16th I got up at noon, and at 2:00 I went to Michael’s place for an English lesson. Afterwards at his suggestion he and I hitchhiked to Nolli. Two Turks picked us up. They didn’t speak a word to us during the entire ride. I was mystified as to what motivated them to pick us up at all. This is one of those random memories that sticks out in my mind after so many years: Michael and I sitting in the back seat of a car, being driven to Nollendorfplatz by two silent Turks.

Thursday afternoon the 21st I went to the personnel office to sign up for the 3-year extended tour, up through April 1976. My appointment was for 2:30, but I was waited on a little late. But finally my turn came, and I got the papers signed. I felt quite happy about it. At supper I sat with Roger D. and Tony. Roger, in his typical deadpan manner, told me he thought I was stupid for having signed up for a whole year, and not nine months, so that I could possibly be discharged three months earlier. That made me feel quite uncomfortable, not only because of his attitude, but because of the finality of the whole matter. The papers were signed, and there wasn’t much I could do about it now.

Kevin’s Return

Friday was a rainy day. I was on break. Some workers had installed automatic door closers on the latrine doors, which made a lot of noise and irked me. Kevin met Dan and me in the chow hall, and he sat with us. I had met Kevin in the hallway Wednesday night.  I was surprised that he was back from the Air Force Academy in Colorado so quickly, and he then told me why. The Colonel was furious when he found out that Kevin’s reason for entering the academy was "to get a stateside assignment". As a result, Kevin was thrown out, and sent back to where he’d come from. Kevin was quite negative about everything, and Dan, true to his own nature, was being very positive about everything. Needless to say, he made a very strange impression on Kevin.

Sunday we went to Jim L.’s for the evening. Jim M. and I went to the service club at 6:00 to meet Dan and Lucy. Carolyn, Jim’s wife, was there, and she drove us all over to their place. They had a really nice apartment, and it was the second time visiting them. After a chicken and noodle soup supper, we played "Aggravation". I was lucky in the game, and the phrase "Gl�ck im Spiel und Pech in der Liebe" ("Luck in games and bad luck in love") came up for me. It was just the opposite for Dan and Lucy.

Jim L. and I had to work a mid that night, so we changed into our uniforms and got ready to go. We first dropped off Lucy in Kreuzberg somewhere, and then took Dan and Jim M. back to Tempelhof, and then Jim L. and I rode off to Marienfelde. It seemed to strangely pleasant to go to work in a car for once.

It was a slow night that night. "Hak" and Joe P. were doing max cleanup, and Randy M. and I worked together on an interesting assignment. Back in the barracks after the mid I had a rough time getting any sleep, with Dan in and out of the room at half-hour intervals all morning.

Lucy’s Family

On Tuesday the 26th Ted dropped by our room to say good-bye. He was leaving for Monterey the next morning.

Saturday March 2nd Jim told me he was planning to buy a TV set for $120 for our room. If I split the cost with him, he said, I could keep it after he left. It sounded like an attractive offer, since I had a desire to watch TV shows in German and Russian.

That evening Dan and I visited Lucy’s mother, who lived on Sonnenallee near Hermannplatz.

Lucy and her mother were there when we arrived. Her mother turned out to be a very informal, relaxed, and talkative woman who appeared to be in her forties. She was short, plump, and had dark hair and very dark eyes. A while later Jochen and Siggi arrived with Lucy’s Oma (grandmother). The Oma had been described to me by Dan as Jonathan Winter’s imitation of a granny. The resemblance was indeed there, and Dan and I laughed to each other knowingly. So the seven of us sat together in the apartment all evening, talking and eating ham and salad. Jochen, Lucy’s mother, and the Oma, were all smokers. Her mother smoked like a fiend. I had never heard so much Berlin dialect at one time in all my life. It was one long onslaught of "ick"s and "jut"s and "wat wee� ick"s all evening long. Her mother was quite a chatterbox. The Oma was quite a character, joking and laughing her half-toothless laughs, and puffing away on her cigarettes all the while. Dan was on cloud nine all night, and was laughing away on a permanent, non-stop laugh, turned on by Lucy’s presence and the jovial company.

Sunday the 3rd was my first day watch. It was a quiet day, but there was lots of work in the backlog to keep us busy. Dan stayed in the room that evening. He said that he was getting a little tired from running around with Lucy all the time, and needed a little rest. I read a magazine article in a December 1972 issue of Stern reporting that Martin Bormann’s body had been found near Alt-Moabit, just a couple blocks from the apartment of my good "Nolli" friends, Michael and Danny D. Later in the summer Michael and I went looking for the place.

Monday evening Dan came in the room as I was going to bed. "Guess where we’re going to get married?" he asked. At the base chapel! I was shocked. We had both assumed that it would be at "Nolli", but apparently Lucy talked him out of it. She really felt attracted to the base chapel and Chaplain Martin.

Bland Spaghetti and Berlin Dialect

After the service on Sunday, March 10th, I went with Klaus H. to his place. Klaus was a West German friend from "Nolli". He lived on the Gotestra�e, not far from the base, and we took the 84 bus. I was a little reluctant to go, since I had a swing that night, and I wouldn’t have much time to get ready. Klaus was taking another guest along, a fellow by the name of Ronny. He was a young down-and-out street person with long, stringy hair, missing front teeth, and a very heavy Berlin accent. Klaus had a nice apartment. He cooked spaghetti for us and brewed some coffee. In spite of his appearance, Ronny turned out to be a very straightforward and open guy. Klaus did such a good job of communicating with him. It made quite an impression on me, as did Ronny’s speech. In fact, after all these years I still vividly remember that afternoon in the Gotestra�e with Klaus and Ronny, the heaps of bland spaghetti on our plates, and Ronny’s classic Berlin dialect.

It started getting a little late for me, and I was getting extremely nervous. Klaus was relaxed, concentrating on his conversation with Ronny. At past 2:15 I finally interrupted them, left in a rush, and hurried to the Kollonenstra�e to catch the 4 bus back to base. As it turned out, I needn’t have been so worried, since I got back at 2:40, in plenty of time to get ready for work. My head was full of Ronny’s crystal-clear, pure, classic Berlin dialect. What I wouldn’t give today to have a tape recording of that afternoon!

Arab Terrorists, Steve’s Apartment, and Jim’s TV

The funny guy who sang to himself drove the bus to Marienfelde that afternoon. The swing was slow and uneventful, except for an ERF meeting where they got me all worried about Arab terrorists again. It was a very real threat, and there was nothing preventing some wackos from attacking the base or ambushing our work bus. I sometimes wondered why nothing ever did happen. I guess we were all pretty lucky.

Tuesday the 12th I ate in the chow hall and sat with Steve B., who told me that he had gotten an apartment in Neuk�lln for 60 Marks a month. I didn’t know it then, but that was the beginning of something significant. Over a year later I would be getting an apartment in the same building, my first place of residence after leaving the Air Force.

Saturday Jim came into the room with Mark M. He had a TV set that we were buying together. According to our agreement, it belonged to him as long as he was in Berlin, and he left it for me when he left Berlin later that year.

Hallesches Tor

Hallesches Tor was one of the several U-Bahn stations I traveled through hundreds of times during my stay in Berlin. It was the crossing point between the north-south Tegel – Alt-Mariendorf line, that passed by the Tempelhof airport, and the west-east Ruhleben – Schlesiches Tor line. It was one of the older stations. Since the Ruhleben – Schlesisches Tor line was at that point above ground, and the Tegel – Alt-Mariendorf line below ground, it was necessary to walk a considerable distance to change lines. Hallesches Tor was in the heart of Kreuzberg, one of Berlin’s most run-down areas, and the U-Bahn station reflected it. It was old and dirty. Coming back from Nolli, I would get off at Hallesches Tor, walk down the stairs from the Bahnsteig with crowds of other commuters, many of them Turks, and follow an underground passageway that turned immediately south and led slowly downward past walls covered with tattered advertisements and posters and occasional graffiti. The walk would take about forty-five seconds and ended at the head of a short flight of stairs leading down to the other station. This underground station was just as old and dirty as the one above, but seemed even more depressing, being underground. Here I would stand and wait for the train to come from the north, the line that passed beneath East Berlin. The walls on either side were always covered with advertisements, at least one being for "Rote Hand" cigarettes, a local German brand. Young long-haired Turks would be standing here and there, along with various old ladies and other low-income Germans who lived in the area. No one ever spoke to strangers. The only ones who ever did were drunks and tourists. Life in the German subway was lonely, impersonal, - and yet somehow intriguing. I spent many hours of my life in Berlin sitting in, or waiting for U-Bahn trains and BVG busses.

Hofbr�uhaus and German TV

Sunday the 17th was Jim’s birthday. It was my first mid, and was extremely busy. After it was over, daylight greeted us at the change of shifts. It had been dark at that time all winter. Jim and Dan spent all day in bed. I got up later that day, and Dan got up even later. He told me of his adventures last night. He had gone out to the "Hofbr�uhaus" with Lucy, her mother, her Australian uncle Irvin, Jochen, and Siggi. He had drunk two large beers, and today had a hangover. "If only I hadn’t drunk that second beer, everything would have been okay," he lamented.

I watched the new TV for the first time that night. It was an East German movie called "Das Geheimnis des �dipus", about the Nazis in Greece. It was the first of many interesting times I had with the German TV.

On our second mid I did max cleanup with Randy M. and Vaughn, and it took a long time. That afternoon Dan and Lucy went out somewhere, and I watched a Russian language lesson on the TV at 7:00 that evening. It was interesting for me to see something like that on television for the first time in my life.

"Attention all personnel!  Attention all personnel!"

Tuesday the 19th was our third mid. I had some interesting work to do that night, which kept me occupied. I also helped out Cliff K. with some difficulties he had encountered in his work. We were relieved by Easy Flight at 7:30 a.m. There was a base recall that morning, and we didn’t get to leave until everything was called off at 7:50.

"Base recalls" were emergency exercises that were conducted at irregular intervals.  Those who lived off base were contacted and instructed to report to base immediately.  Those living or sleeping in the barracks were rudely awakened by a recorded announcement that came blaring over the loudspeakers in the hallways, and was repeated over and over, ad nauseam.  Even to this day, twenty-five years later, I can still hear the announcement, word-for-word: "Attention all personnel! Attention all personnel! This is a base alert! Report to your duty stations immediately! Report to your duty stations immediately!" In the last two sentences the announcer emphasized the wording a little differently, a curious trivial detail that has stuck with me throughout the years.  In the first one he emphasized immediately; the second time around however, as if realizing that he was repeating himself, he put the stress on duty stations to break the monotony.

For many seasoned veterans of "base recalls", however, it was a boring routine.  Many who were sleeping off a mid didn't bother to stir from their beds.  Those of us in the hangars who reported to the assembly room down at the east end of the building, just ended up standing around with nothing to do for a couple hours.   I always made sure I had an interesting book to take along.

Spring

Wednesday was the last mid. I found out that my extension was approved! That made me very happy and relieved. So it turned out to be a very good mid. Paul C. was kidding around with me about my Chinese language skills, testing me with various questions. When we got back to the base that morning, I saw Lucy standing at the gate, waiting for Dan. When I got in the room, I found him in the process of getting up, and he then left in a big rush.

It turned out to be a very nice day. It was the warmest day so far that year, and I went outside without my coat for the first time. Friday I noticed that the trees were starting to bud. Spring was on its way.

Hector M.

Saturday the 23rd was the first day watch. I wore my 1505’s, but it was a little chilly. In the snack bar I met three airmen from X-flight who complained to me about how regular flight members take time off. One was Tony, the guy from New York. Another was S.’s wife. The third was a character that I would be getting to know better in the future. His name was Hector M.

I got to know Hector a little for the first time that day. He came from Fresno, California, and hated the Air Force, or "Air Farce", as he dubbed it. He hated being here, and hated Berlin. He was definitely a guy with an attitude problem. There was something very likeable about him, though, and during the following two years he came to be a friend, albeit sometimes rather abrasive. He was obviously a very intelligent and talented guy, but he had no ambition. His only goal in life was to become a race-car driver. After finding out I was a Christian, he always gave me a hard time, but with a certain barely palpable measure of respect and restraint. By the spring of 1975 he was among my closest friends at Tempelhof.

Olaf of Kreuzberg

Sunday the 24th was the second day watch. I was moved into the TE area to be jeeped into their job. I have since forgotten, but it was probably part of a cross-training program. Jim had the TV on all evening without really watching it; and when he did watch it he was just flipping channels. Tuesday Dan and I watched some German TV together, a German version of "What’s My Line" called "Was bin ich?" Every Thursday night on East German TV was Russian movie night, and soon I began taping them.

Olaf had invited me to his place for breakfast on Thursday morning. So I got up at 8:00 and took the U-Bahn to his Kreuzberg neighborhood. It was a beautiful sunny day. While trying to go through the wrong door at the Hinterhof where he lived, this old guy came by and grumbled to me where the right door was. I felt a little dumb about the mistake.

Olaf was his normal animated self that morning. He was up when I arrived, and he fixed us these half-pancake, half-cookie things for breakfast using part of a chocolate bar. They weren’t especially good. The rest of the time was spent just goofing off.   I finally left at past noon. He lent me a jacket, a pair of pants, and a book that I had expressed interest in. It was called "Lemkes selige Witwe", written by Erdmann Graeser. I liked it because it was a story written in Berlin dialect. He wouldn’t let me have the book for keeps, because there was some importance attached to it somehow, as if it were a family heirloom or a book from an important friend or something similar. But he was willing to lend it to me for a while. The back of the book was scarred with dart holes, since his dart board hung right over his bookcase.

It was a really warm and sunny day, the nicest day of the year so far. Olaf walked me to the G�rlitzer U-Bahn station and saw me off at the ticket window.

Little did I know that that was the very last time together with Olaf. I never saw him or heard from him again. I still have his book. Whenever I see it, I am reminded of that warm, sunny day in Berlin, and my last visit with Olaf.

The Runway

Tuesday night April 2nd I was pulled off the line and jeeped in the TE area some more. I had hoped they had forgotten about it, but apparently not. Mark M. helped me out this time. Mark was a very nice guy. He had curly dark-blond hair, wore dark-rimmed glasses, and was always smiling. He was a very good teacher, and very patient. We got to know each other a little better.

Late Wednesday afternoon I ran for the first time in a long while. I ran clear out to the end of the cemetery and back. That was, as I recall, towards the east end of the runway. Some guys were playing football nearby, and a group of German girls on bicycles were watching them through the fence. My path led past them, and I felt a little self-conscious.

Tuesday April 9th was a very memorable day. The weather was nice, and Dan and I went out to the picnic grounds east of the hangars. We were in pretty good spirits. We took a walk around the airport grounds, and I saw places and things I had never seen before. I found out that we could walk the whole way around the runway, something that I hadn’t been aware of. We went to the end of the runway and watched the jets take off in the twilight. It was rather spectacular. We were very close to it all. There was absolutely nothing to prevent us from walking right up onto the runway itself.

It may have been that evening, or maybe it was another one. Once Dan took me to the far end of the airport, just beyond the east end of the runway, in order to show me something. He wouldn’t say what. The walkway ran along the inside perimeter of the fence, and at that point there was a kind of depression in the sidewalk. The fence was above us at that point, and just beyond it, as I recall, was a kind of garden area. "Just stand here and watch this," he said with a smile. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. A few moments later there was a terrific roaring sound, and a huge jet flew right over our heads! It was coming in from the east for a landing, and a few seconds later touched down on the runway behind us. Apparently, when the jets came in from the east, they were barely audible in that little depression, and when they did appear, they seemed to come crashing out of nowhere. It was quite spectacular, to say the least.

Several months later, the entire area was fenced off, and was no longer accessible to personnel on the base. It made sense for them to do that, and I always wondered why it had never been done earlier. I always thought it so odd that there was nothing to prevent some demented fool from walking right out onto the runway where all the Pan Am and British Airways airliners were constantly taking off and landing.

Volkhard's 27 to Israel

Pastor M�ller spoke at Nolli Wednesday evening the 10th, since Volkhard was in Israel again. This was the long-awaited Israel trip that I had once even considered participating in. A group of twenty-seven from Nolli went, including Volkhard. I remember that number because Ralf L. was on the trip, and he later remarked to me that wherever they went they had to tell their hosts that there were "esrim va sheva" in the group, the Hebrew word for "27". It was the one Hebrew phrase that was firmly inculcated into his brain. Besides Ralf, the group included, as I later learned, Sabine and her close friend Brunhilde, neither of whom I knew very well at all in April, 1974, but who within a year would become for me two significant individuals.

John Boozes Brazenly, and Bundesallee Beckons Briefly

The second swing on Saturday the 20th was dead, but there was a big backlog to work on. John Z. started being unfriendly and sarcastic. Sunday was a wet day. I was wanting to take pictures of all the spring flowers in the area, but couldn’t today. That evening John Z. was continuing his war of sarcasm, and to make it worse for me, "Hak" made me work the position that was right next to him. Monday the 22nd was the last swing. I sat next to John Z. that night, and he was being particularly offensive.

Tuesday while going back to the room I ran into Robin on his scooter. In the course of our conversation I found out he lived in the same apartment with Al, a guy whom I had met recently. He invited me along for a ride on his scooter, something that I hadn’t done since last summer. It was a very nice time. I had almost forgotten how fun it was to be zooming along through the streets of Berlin on a scooter. He took me down to Andrews Barracks where his friend Andy worked, and ate in the cafeteria there. We then went to a park, and walked to the Rathaus Sch�neberg, a famous landmark I had not yet visited.

Then we went to the apartment on Bundesallee. It was a very nice place. His rent was 175 Marks a month. He and Andy lived in one room, and Al in a room next door.

Robin and I got to talking, and he suggested I move in after he moved out in the winter. It sounded like a very attractive offer. After their meeting was over, I talked with Al, and the father of the family, Jim E. We had a little wine and cake. Jim turned out to be a very nice and interesting guy, and I resolved to come by again soon.

I left after 10:00, and Robin took me to the U-Bahn station there at Bundesallee, where he saw me off.

I told Dan of my adventures that night, and he poured a little cold water on my idea of moving into the apartment when he reminded me that I would be spending about $1000 a year on rent. Suddenly the idea didn’t sound very attractive any more.

Wednesday Dan went to work a day watch. His schedule had been changed around again. At "Nolli" that night Volkhard and the Israel travelers were back, and he of course had some interesting stories to tell.

That night was my first mid, and I had a job that wasn’t too difficult. John Z. was doing his thing again, but it didn’t affect me as much as the previous times.

During the second mid on Saturday John Z. was a little drunk. "Alcoholism is the only way to live," he kept saying. On Sunday night’s mid, however, he was very silent. I heard that the previous night he had come to work so drunk that they had to send him home. Dan told me that he’d met him going to work, and John had said he was worried what they were going to do to him. He vowed that he would never do anything like that again.

Open House 1974

Sunday, May 12th, was the open house at the base, commemorating the 25th anniversary of the end of the Berlin Blockade. Dan and I went, along with Lucy, Siggi, and Jochen. I had my camera and took eleven pictures in all. We ran into Chaplain Martin, all dressed up in his blues, and he arranged it so that Dan, Lucy, Jochen, and Siggi got to climb into the cockpit of the big transport jet. I got a couple shots of them peering out of the open cockpit window. We also got someone to take a group photo of all six of us together in front of the jet, with my camera. Chaplain Martin was in good spirits, and for the photo gave a "thumbs up" sign, something that I remember that Lucy liked very much, because it was so "American."

Tuesday it was chilly and cloudy. I had to get up early, since I was on a detail to clean up the barricades from the open house. As soon as we got out to the field, it started raining. Robin was on the detail with me. The first load of barricades we unloaded at the Rathaus Sch�neberg. I sat in the cab of the truck, along with Robin and the German driver, who were chatting away, which was interesting for me to listen to. Robin was taking it easy, and we two were drifting away from the main group of workers. We came back to base before noon, where we ate and then complained to Captain P. about having to do the detail in the rain. It didn’t do any good, and we were sent back into the rain to finish up the job. After lunch we played some Fu�ball in the Skyrider, and then went back to more of the same work. It started raining pretty hard. The next load we delivered to Fehrbellinerplatz. By 3:00 it was all over, and I had come back to the room.

The first mid on Thursday was pretty busy, but died down after 1:00. Later on towards morning I got incredibly sleepy. I could never really adjust to working mids, especially since they continually came cycled in with the swings and days. During my three years at Marienfelde I eventually found various creative ways of sleeping on slow mids. Besides the obvious retreating to the latrine and dozing on the stool, where one could be found, I found some large empty steel cabinets where I could sleep standing up! Back behind Jim L.’s area there were several of these steel cabinets, that were normally installed with various kinds of electronic equipment. From the front they all looked the same, but by opening the door in the back I had discovered that one or two of them were completely empty. From the day of that discovery, those cabinets became my emergency refuge for catching up on much-needed sleep during particularly slow mids!

Out on the Town with Michael

Tuesday the 21st I had an appointment with Michael D. We were going to go out on the town and take pictures. The day turned out a little chilly, and it was cloudy off and on, with a little rain. I got to his place at noon. A woman was there with his father, presumably Michael’s mother. Michael lent me a jacket, and after gathering his camera, a map, and an umbrella, we struck out for the day.

Our first destination was the place near Invalidenstra�e where the Stern magazine I had read on March 3rd had reported finding the body of Martin Bormann. While in the general area, we asked an old lady on the street if it was the place. She didn’t know, and didn’t care. "What are you young people doing looking for things like that?" she chided. "You should be down on the KuDamm having fun!" I took a picture of the place anyway, and later found out that it was indeed the correct location.

After taking some pictures at the border to East Berlin at Invalidenstra�e, we took the bus to the Charlottenburg palace. The main part of the palace was undergoing renovation, and was surrounded by scaffolding. I took a picture anyway.

From there we took the 74 bus to the Funkturm, a tall Eiffel-tower-like structure that stands in the Berlin fairgrounds. It was raining. After taking pictures, we rode the elevator to the top, where we had a fantastic view of the city. It was too bad that the weather was not better.

After having spent considerable time at the Funkturm, we took the 10 bus north into Siemensstadt, changed to bus 13, and rode to the Spandau Citadel. I somehow had confused the Spandau Citadel with the Spandau prison where Hess was being kept. It turned out that the Citadel was just a fortress, now a museum, surrounded by a moat. I was a bit disappointed, but it was an interesting place, nevertheless.

From there we took a bus up to Tegel, to the Humboldt castle. This was located in a wooded area just north of the Tegeler See. I loved the place. It was all grass, woods, and meadows. We tramped around the greens, and took several pictures of each other. Michael was quite a clown that day, striking silly poses whenever I aimed the camera at him.

We then took the U-Bahn from Tegel south to Holzhauserstra�e, where I had seen a Russian cemetery on the map. It was a fascinating place for me. The cemetery was relatively small, but all in Russian, with double crosses on the tombstones, and a Russian Orthodox church built in the center.

By then it was 6:00, and Michael and I were both getting a bit tired. We went to the Europa Center to take the elevator to the top of the I-Punkt, but we found the place closed. So we visited an exhibit on Siberia instead.

We got back to his apartment finally around 7:00. His father fixed us a supper of scrambled eggs with bacon, potatoes, and spinach. It was very good, especially since it was my first meal all day.

I had seen more of Berlin with Michael that day than I had seen all the previous year. It was quite a memorable day, one that I remembered for years afterward.

Where's Waldo?

Saturday May 25th was the last day watch. The morning was very busy, so busy in fact that Baker flight was called in to help. In the afternoon things slowed down. Dan had the day off. Jack C., one of the guys on the flight, acquired the nickname of "Waldo". He had gotten a fortune in a Cracker Jacks box stating that he would acquire a new nickname - and "Hak" and Paul C. promptly obliged him.

After Vacation

Wednesday, May 29, I left Berlin for a four-week vacation in Iowa, and I returned on June 25th, which was a beautiful day, sunny and warm. I signed in at the orderly desk past 11:00, and then went to eat. Jim was in the room when I got back, but Dan was out. Jim told me that they were planning to change the Marienfelde work schedules around again.

That night was my first mid, but Able flight’s second. It was very busy, and went very slow. It was the first mid that I could remember where we actually added to the backlog instead of reducing it. Mid number 3 on Thursday the 27th was not as bad as the previous one. I drew a colored doodle in the log book.

During the last mid Dwight S., who didn't seem entirely sober, was playing around with a toy monkey he had brought along. Toward the end of the mid there was a Commander’s Call, and Sgt. Archy G. spoke to us, keeping us a little overtime.

New Arrivals: Steve Ch., WAFs, and a Hamster

Sunday afternoon June 30 I got a knock at the door. When I opened it, there stood Steve Ch., an interesting friend whom I hadn’t seen since Goodfellow! Steve was one of those unusual people you remember all your life. For instance, when he found out that I had invented my own language, he wasn't to be bested, and immediately began inventing his own, calling it - for whatever bizarre reason - "Nixarish", after Richard Nixon. Now he was here in Berlin.

Wednesday July 3rd some high-ranking officers were at the site, along with the undersecretary of the Air Force. Also, there were six WAF operators at the site today. The first ones had just come in recently. This was a new development in the squadron, since up to that point the flights had been composed of men only. The hangars, which hitherto had been men’s barracks, now had a section on the far eastern wing, down past the orderly room, that was reserved for the women. There was a time when you could walk naked down the hallway, but those days were coming to an end, since the women now had to walk through our area to get to the main complex.

The days of "men-only" at the 6912th Security Squadron had ended. Down at the east end of the hangars, deep in WAF-land, somewhere across from the orderly room, there was a kind of recreation room where someone had once painted a huge gaudy mural that covered the entire north wall.  It depicted a green German landscape with trees and mountains, and a beach at the far end. This was innocent enough, except that the landscape was shaped like a giant reclining female nude, with mountains for breasts and foliage in pertinent spots. Also, on the beach sat two blonde female nudes, their backs toward the observer, waving to a passing ship. All of this was of course typical crude stag material, and I always wondered if it lasted through the influx of WAF's in the 1970's and 1980's.

Thursday the 4th of July was the last day watch, and a lot of the "day weenies", the people with seniority who worked days only (no shifts), took the day off.

On Monday the 8th Dan received a pet hamster from Randy H., who was going to be leaving Berlin soon. It proved to be quite an unwelcome little guest in our room, as far as I was concerned.

Sgt. Ch., Haircuts, and More WAFs

There were a lot of new WAF’s in training at the site Monday night. I drew a picture of an old man with a giant doodle in his dialogue balloon tonight. Vaughn was disgusted that I didn’t do it in the log book. Sgt. Ch. told me to get a haircut - "like tomorrow". That got me upset. I was never very happy with some of the stupid rules we had to follow, particularly the ones regulating haircuts.

Sgt. Ch. was one of the supervising sergeants on the flight. I don’t recall when exactly he started with us, but by the summer of 1974 he was here. He was a diminutive bean-pole of a man, nervous and frail, about 35 or 40 years old, with thin dark-blond hair and wire-rimmed glasses. He smoked incessantly, and wore a perpetual sheepish-looking grin on his face, a grin that seldom had anything to do with his true feelings at the moment. We never got along particularly well. He was always on the defensive, and always treated me as if I were just another rebellious airman who needed to be kept in line.

Dan’s new hamster woke me up at 5:30 Tuesday morning. I could tell that having to share the room with a hamster was not going to be a pleasant experience. On the swing that night I drew a large doodle in the log book that took up an entire page. It turned out fairly good, and I was pleased with it.

Thursday night’s swing was the last one of the old schedule. A new work schedule was to start on the 14th. That evening there were so many WAF’s on the flight. Things were definitely changing. I jeeped one of them in a while. A guy there was getting on my nerves. As a joke he and a "jeep" friend grabbed one of my legs as I was propped up against the newspaper rack. There was some celebrating going on that night; I forget what the reason was. Everyone was going wild with reel of tape.

Dan was in the room recording records when I got back. He had gotten a hit. Jim came in from mess check. The hamster, whose name was "Jack", was full of energy that night, and had nothing better to do than to keep me awake.

New Work Schedule

Saturday morning the 13th Paul C. got me out of bed past 8:00. We were being called out to work. So he, I, Dottie, Roger, Cliff, and another guy went. It was a bad morning for me, and I lost my temper about some silly thing which I no longer remember. We went back at past 1:00, and we had to take the bus 11 and U-Bahn. Taking the public transportation system while in uniform was always a tense experience for me, but everything went okay.

Sunday the 14th the new work schedule started. I was scheduled to work a swing, but got a hit because I’d gone to work Saturday morning. Monday evening Dan finally removed the hamster from the room, and took it to Lucy’s place.

That night I worked my first mid. We worked it together with what used to be Dog flight. It was an empty night for me, and seemed different, strange, and boring. During the second mid Paul C. showed me a note where D. – probably some supervisor whom I have since forgotten – had remarked that Dean B. and I didn’t do any work. I was very upset, since it wasn’t at all true. I found myself overcompensating for that remark by working furiously all night.

Is 24 Old?

Monday the 22nd the weather was very nice. It was a pleasant break from all the miserable, wet weather we had been having most of the summer. That evening Don and Vaughn were blasting away with their stereo in the window, sitting outside the hangars, enjoying the pleasant weather.

Tuesday night’s swing saw the old flight all together again. Even Dan was there, although he came late because of a hospital appointment. After the swing he was dead tired and went to bed right away; he had worked until 3:00 a.m. the previous night.

Wednesday the 24th I worked a swing. Hector M. talked with me some more. He was giving me a hard time for being so "old". For him, 24 was quite an advanced age. I think he was only about 19 or 20 at the time. That night I met Sgt. Derry F., one of the new supervisors, I think from one of the other flights. I don’t remember too much about him, other than that he was a bit of a "lifer" and didn’t command too much respect from a lot of people.

I met an interesting WAF that night named Michelle. She was tall, had dark hair and dark eyes, a toothy smile, and a very open and friendly personality. She was a bypass German linguist, and knew Italian and Spanish as well. We got on the subject of languages, and I told her all I knew about Berlin dialect. She was a very nice and interesting person.

Mischievous Hector and Moronic Sergeants

On Thursday’s swing I didn’t get very much work done. Hector talked with me more, and seemed to enjoy pestering me as much as possible with his typical harmless and almost friendly sort of sarcasm. Friday night Hector was pestering me more. I drew a charicature of him, and he retaliated by writing on my arm.

Monday the 29th Hector and I had to take some tests on base, and didn’t go to work. We arrived at the specified room at 8:00, and found that we two were the only ones participating. The tests, as I recall, had to do with our classified job knowledge, and so I was a bit surprised to see the testing materials being distributed to us in an unsecured area. The most annoying part of the morning, though, was the attitude of a certain SMSgt M. who was overseeing the testing. There was a prominent "No Smoking" sign hanging on the wall behind him, and yet he calmly began to smoke. I pointed out to him that were we sitting in a non-smoking facility, but he stuck his nose in the air and ignored me. What a jerk.

The Advent of the Infamous Colonel Joyce

There was a flight meeting at 11:00 during the last swing on Friday night the 26th, led by Lieutenant H. and George S. Our new base commander had been replaced. It was no longer Colonel Webb, the easy-going chummy sort of officer who believed in rubbing elbows with his troops. It was now Colonel Joyce, an old dried-up sour-faced grump who was quoted as saying that he "didn’t like Colonel Webb and didn’t like the way he did things", and who was determined to turn us all into a really strack outfit. This upset me terribly, and it burned on my mind for the rest of the night.

Saturday the 27th was a one-day break before a set of day watches. I got up before noon, and went to eat with Dan. My anger over Colonel Joyce was occupying my mind. Steve B. was in the chow hall, and I sat with him. We talked until past 2:00, and I told him about my dislike of Joyce.

Monday the 29th was a nice day. Later I heard that Col. Joyce and Sgt. Archy G. had conducted one of their infamous dorm inspections some time during the day.

Late that afternoon there was a Commander’s Call over at HBE on the 5th floor. (HBE, or "Head Building East", was the far eastern end of the Tempelhof complex, beyond the WAF area and the CQ offices). We all assembled in the room, and awaited the arrival of our new base commander. Soon he came, and we all stood at attention while he walked to the podium. Then he began his speech. He was an old, cheerless, Scrooge-like creature of about 60 or older. From the beginning of his talk, it became clear that he had two passions, two pet peeves, two enemies against which he was ready to wage a merciless and relentless war. One was hair, and the other was drugs. But mainly drugs. Col. Joyce had brought dogs into the barracks to sniff out drugs that were purportedly hidden in certain airmen’s rooms. During all this talk of drugs, he calmly pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and began puffing away. I was absolutely furious. I was so disgusted at the hypocrite. There he was, preaching away on drugs, and at the same time sucking on his own drugs and blowing his exhaust all over the room for the rest of us to breathe.

It took me a while to get over the anger I felt that evening. Dan was in the room, all happy over receiving his orders for Mountain Home in Idaho. He was going to be a medic. We talked a while, and soon my feelings of anger subsided.

Dan Marriage and Steve's Discharge

Tuesday July 30 I worked hard all day. At supper there was steak, the best I remembered having since at Tempelhof. Dan went out with Lucy that evening to buy a white shirt for his wedding.

I skipped Nolli Friday night, August 2nd, and at 7:00 Dan came by with his new wife Lucy, and mother-in-law. They had gotten married at the Standesamt, i.e., a local Berlin registrar's office, at 10:00 that morning. I took a couple pictures of them. Lucy was beaming. They showed me their custom-made matching bracelets, which had turned out very nicely.

Saturday August 3 was a beautiful day. It was also Steve B.’s last day in the Air Force; he was getting discharged on Sunday morning! We got together in his room and talked for a while. We decided to go to BB together, and went by U-Bahn. I was looking for bookends, but couldn’t find any. We then went to the large commissary and shopped a while. The place closed at 4:00, and we took the U-Bahn back to base.

There I met Paul and Dot C. Paul told me he thought I was working mids beginning that night. So I made a phone call, and found out that he was right, unfortunately. That was an unpleasant surprise.

A Bit of India in Wedding

I went to the Indians’ place Tuesday afternoon. Singh and Arora were two Indians whom I had met at Nolli. They lived up in Wedding in the Bellermannstra�e. They said I should get off at the Gesundbrunnen U-Bahn station, from where it would be a short walk. However, I wasn’t allowed to take that line, one of two lines that ran north and south under East Berlin, and so I rode to Leopoldplatz instead, and walked the rest of the way.

I had never been in Wedding before, and it was a nice, pleasant walk. I remember walking a long ways up a street in Wedding, probably the Pankstra�e from Nettelbeckplatz. I arrived a little early, and had a long wait, because they were slow in getting the dinner started. I ended up talking a long time with Singh, and he told me the very interesting story of how they were converted, all the details of which, unfortunately, I have completely forgotten.

Dinner wasn’t ready until about 9:00. I had two "ruti"s, rice, apple juice, a kind of stew, and grits with raisins. The meal was good, just a little different perhaps. Singh and Arora were terribly nice and pleasant people, and really went out of their way to make me feel comfortable. It was a nice little adventure, one of many such little adventures in Berlin that I look back to with fond memories.

The Accidental Shoplifter

Thursday the 8th Dan and I went out on the town all day. It was quite a memorable adventure, and probably the very last time we two spent any length of time together out on the town.

First we went out shopping for clothes at C&A, a low-price clothing store. We ended up walking all the way to Hallesches Tor, and then down to the S�dstern U-Bahn, looking for the place, until we finally found it. They had a lot of fantastic bargains. It was their Sommerschlu�verkauf, i.e., their end-of-summer sale, and I ended up getting two jackets and a pair of pants for under 30 Marks. They also had a lot of nice shirts for sale, and Dan and I looked over several, and I bought one.

We had finished our shopping and were walking out of the store, when suddenly the saleslady stopped us. Dan and I had been looking through a lot of shirts, and one of them Dan still had tucked under his arm! It was just another one of Dan’s innocent absent-minded actions, but the lady thought that he was shoplifting. I hadn’t noticed it at all, and when she stopped us and I saw the shirt, I blurted out to Dan, "Das ist Diebstahl!" ("that is stealing!"). I was surprised and confused, Dan was totally confused, and the saleslady, who up to that point had been very nice and friendly with us, was now livid with rage. She of course didn’t know Dan, nor did she know the kind of unbelievably absent-minded deeds he was capable of. Therefore it was impossible for us to explain. She was threatening to call the police. Everyone in the general area was staring at us, and it made for a very awkward and embarrassing situation. Nothing that we could say would calm her down. She demanded that we pay for the shirt, and so we had no choice but to buy it, and leave.

That was a very unpleasant blemish on what had been a very nice time shopping with Dan.

Nixon Quits

Friday, August 9th was my first day watch, which I worked along with Jim. It was cloudy and rainy. There was some big news on the radio that morning: President Nixon was resigning! Some of the guys were huddled around a radio on the line, listening to the broadcast. I had not been following any of the Watergate scandal, since there were so many other things going on in my life in Berlin, and hadn’t realized that things had gone that far.

It seemed strange that Nixon was no longer President. He had been elected when I was a junior in college, and today he stepped down at 5:00 p.m. Berlin time.

Hector was grumbling about the Air Force again today, something that he was nearly always doing. Col. Joyce had been at the site that morning, and later Derry F. was going around jumping on people for haircuts, especially Hector, who was notorious for letting his hair grow long and bushy. I was also told to get my hair cut. So after work, Roger D., Hector, "Pic", and I ended up going to the barber shop.

That evening at 7:00 was the wedding rehearsal at Chaplain Martin’s office in the chapel. Dan, Lucy, her mother, Siggi, Brad S., and Frank J. were all there.

Dan Gets Hitched

Saturday, August 10th was the big day. Dan and Lucy got married at the base chapel, and I was the best man. Lucy’s friend Siggi V. was the bridesmaid. Dan and Jim got up at 6:00 and I got up an hour and a half later. It was a gray, drizzly day. I got dressed up in my blues, with the white shirt and bow tie. Before 9:00 I went to the front gate to sign in Michael D., one of several Nolli guests who showed up for the event. The wedding ceremony started at 10:00, and everything went as planned.

Afterwards we all went to the wedding party on the 19th floor of the I-Punkt at the Europa-Center. I rode Frank’s car along with Brad, Siggi, and Grandma. It was a gray, cloudy, wet day, certainly not very festive. The room at the top of the I-Punkt had a fantastic view. Right outside the window was the Ged�chtniskirche and the KuDamm, and one could see over the entire western half of the city, in spite of the inclement weather. There was a big dinner of course. All of the regulars from the Dan-Lucy-Chaplain Martin group were there, including Frank, Brad, Jochen, Siggi, Lucy’s mother, and granny. I had my camera along, and took a lot of pictures. I got a couple terrific picture-postcard shots of the view over Berlin.

After the I-Punkt, we went to Lucy’s mother’s apartment for the rest of the day, where we just sat around and partied. At 8:30 Frank and Jochen drove me back to base. The others probably stayed around longer, but I had to work the next day.

Chosen for CQ

Sunday was the third day watch. Jim and some others came late, and I found out that George S. was letting some of the guys do that. I was not feeling very cheerful that day. The whole issue with Col. Joyce was stewing in the back of my mind.

Friday was another hot day. I had been chosen to work CQ on Sunday night, and was having to see Sgt. Archy G. at 3:00. I was somewhat worried about missing the work bus because of it. When I got to the orderly room that afternoon, Sgt. G. wasn't there, and some other guys filled me in on my CQ duties.

As it turned out, I had plenty of time to catch the bus.  I spent some time talking with Gary H. that evening, and told him of my languages. Gary was a guy on the flight that I later got to know quite well. He was an interesting guy, quite bright, and had a healthy dose of sarcasm woven into his personality, but nothing malicious. He was in certain ways fairly similar to Hector, but not as shiftless.

CQ Adventures

Sunday, August 18th, was my day to be on CQ. I was nervous all day about it.

Being on CQ was always a bit scary, since I would be on the spot if any kind of emergency arose. Things went smoothly, and nothing happened until Bobby A. arrived just past midnight. He was signing out on leave, and was a little drunk and acting very silly. He ended up staying with me all night, and we talked about Russian language and various other things. We tested each other on vocabulary. He had a very thorough knowledge of Russian, which rivaled or perhaps even exceeded my own. He had learned a new word recently, the Russian word for "hangnail". It sounded familiar to me, but I had to admit that I didn't really know it.

Things were flowing along in a very jolly manner with Bobby A. for most of the night, until we were interrupted by a phone call from the SP's. They had picked up a drunken airman, supposedly from our squadron, and wanted me to go and take him to his room. So Bobby drove me to the SP office in his car, where we picked him up. He was certainly very drunk. He could barely walk, and all that he could say was, "Yup, yup." We had quite an adventure that night, trying to find where his room was. To every question, he always answered, "Yup, yup." We ended up going all through hangars 1 and 2, trying to find his room. Eventually we found out that the guy wasn't even in our squadron, and we finally got him dropped off at his room, which was over at the gym area. It was by then clear to us why the SP’s brought him to me. When they picked him up, they immediately suspected him of being another one of those wild guys in our squadron, and he just answered "yup, yup".

I didn't get sleepy all night, for some reason. It must have been all the excitement. I read to Bobby from Gogol in Russian for a while, and he finally left past 5:00 a.m. It wasn't until between 6:00 and 7:00 that I managed to get a little sleep. At 7:30 I was relieved by the next person, and went back to the room to sleep it off.

My sleep was cut short by a phone call at 9:15. Sgt. Archy G. wanted to see me at 3:00. That certainly wasn't good news. So at 3:00 I went to see him. He had called in Carol J. as well, the other person who had been on CQ. Apparently there had been some messy residue from some parties in the lounge, and he wanted to know what knowledge we had about it, and why we didn't have it cleaned up. It turned out to be a fairly harmless lecture. I had been fearing something much worse.

Dan and Jim Getting Short

Tuesday the 20th was a break day. Dan and Jim would both be leaving soon, and I wasn't looking forward to the new situation. Wednesday through Saturday I worked days. It was the beginning of Jim's last set, and Dan had been gone on his honeymoon, returning on Wednesday. Dean B. and Rob A. got me to draw a picture of Col. Joyce and a dog in the log book, which turned out quite well.

Wednesday night I found Dan in the room, and he told me about the honeymoon. They had bumped into some Nolli people we both knew while in Frankfurt. He had some other stories to tell of his wild adventures, all of which I have since forgotten.

Saturday there was some ERF activity, because of the situation in Cypress between the Greeks and the Turks. I got put on "mobile" the first thing that morning, and felt pretty nervous about it. That day was Jim M.’s last day watch, ever, and I drew a picture in the log book in his honor.

That night at Nolli Volkhard spoke on the entire history of Nollendorfplatz, and about how he ended up here in Berlin. It was an absolutely fascinating story, and it had all started with a man named Harold Herman. Harold Herman was an American evangelist (formerly a Hollywood photographer who personally knew Lucile Ball, Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, and many other big-name stars) who started the church at Nolli back in the 1950's during some tent meetings. The 20th anniversary of the church was coming up in a few days, and Brother Herman was going to be here next week for the celebration.

(Note from November, 2001: Harold ("Hal") Herman died in 1999, and some items from his estate have ended up for sale on the web at Prints-n-Ephemera. Among other things, there is an autographed photo of Charlie Chaplin for $1100.)

Wednesday night was my first mid, which we worked together with Charlie flight. I got very sleepy towards the end of the night. A bunch of the guys were playing cards in a corner of the room, and Sgt. Ch. didn’t take too kindly to it.

Thursday the 29th was the second mid. I was very tired and sleepy again, having had only four hours decent sleep in the previous thirty-eight hours before the mid began. For fun I listened in on some German ham radio operators. That was always very interesting for me, listening to all of the Berlin dialect. Usually the transmissions were very loud and clear. Besides ham radio operators one could also pick up taxi cab drivers from time to time.

I did some cleanup that morning before leaving, and Sgt. Ch. had me do it all over again. When I got back to the room, I slept like a log. I didn’t have to go to the commander’s call which took place at 1:30. While sleeping off the mid, the packers came at around 9:15 to pick up Jim’s things. The cleaning lady saw them working away and commented, "Verreisen? Gott sei Dank, einer weniger in meiner Dusche!" "Leaving? Thank God, there’s one less person in my shower!"

Saturday, August 31, 1974

Saturday, August 31st, 1974 was a very memorable day for me. It started out with a very ordinary mid, where Cliff K. and I cleaned out the burn room. I then slept in until 11:30, got ready, ate lunch, and then went to the airport terminal.

It was a very beautiful late summer day in Berlin. Harold Herman was arriving in Berlin at Tempelhof airport, and I wanted to be one of the people there to greet him. For several days we had been hearing so much about this man who preached all over the world, and who started the work here in Berlin many years ago. Volkhard thought the world of him. His praise for "Bruder Herman" knew no bounds.

Lucy F. and Linda were there already, and soon Bruder M�ller and son Uwe arrived. We talked there a while. It was nice for me to see them all there at "my home." Brother Herman and wife arrived at 12:45, and our little group put on quite a festive welcome for them, right in front of all the other passengers in the terminal. Lucy had her guitar and played a song, and Wolfgang gave a little speech.

Harold Herman was a tall, graying man in his seventies. His wife looked much younger, only about fifty, or perhaps even younger. The M�llers took them into their car and drove off. Lucy and Linda then went to the U-Bahn station, and I went back to base.

At the front gate I met Steve B., and he invited me over to his apartment in Neuk�lln, telling me to meet me at the Neuk�lln U-Bahn station, which was just a couple stops south of Hermannplatz. This was an area I had never been to before, and I was surprised to discover that it was quite a pleasant neighborhood. There seemed to be a certain small-town feel to the place. Steve walked with me up the street to his apartment building at Silbersteinstra�e 99, about a ten minute walk from the station. His apartment was in the Hinterhof on the second floor of a very old, but clean, neat, and quiet apartment building. I was very much impressed with his living accommodations there. The apartment had a small living room and a kitchen, and the windows looked out over a green area beyond which one could see a running track of some kind. No cars, no buses, and no noise. Nearly all the neighbors were old people. Compared to the living conditions at the hangars, this was heaven! Not only was it a nice place, the rent was very low, only about twenty or thirty dollars a month, as I recall.

Steve was obviously pleased at my reaction, and went so far as to give me an extra key! He said I could use it for sleeping off mids, or just to get away when I needed to.

Michelle soon dropped by. She and Steve had become good friends, and they began talking about some apartment up in Wedding for her. They then left together, and I stayed in the room to rest. It was a very nice and relaxing time there alone, perusing through all of Steve's books. I had nearly forgotten what it was like to have privacy, peace, and quiet.

"Brother Herman" at Nolli

On Sunday morning, September 1st, Nolli was packed solid with people. Hal Herman was the featured speaker, and there was a lot of picture-taking at first, so much that Volkhard finally had to ask people to put away their cameras. Brother Herman was an old man, and his sermon was somewhat less than what I had expected. Volkhard had portrayed him as the hottest thing in the Christian world today, but for me he was just a very old man, trying to preach like a young one. But the service was very nice and festive, with flowers, music, and the works. Hal Herman was being given a regal welcome.

Monday was my first day watch, and I was still glowing from the fabulous weekend. A lot of the "day weenies" were not there due to the Labor Day holiday. It was a busy day, but I had time to draw a "Baker" logo into the log book. (I guess that I was on Baker flight ever since the new work schedules; I've since forgotten).

That night Jim was giving away some of his stuff. He was getting ready to leave Berlin; his last day would be on Thursday.

Jim M. Leaves Berlin

Tuesday the 3rd was a cool, cloudy day. It was a very busy day at work. It was cold when we left that afternoon, and it got dark very quickly, a sign that winter was coming. That evening Dan and I finally got Jim to go to Nolli with us. We had invited him numerous times, but he always turned us down. But now that he just had a couple days left, he gave in and decided to go along.

For me, the service that night was very dull. Hal Herman was not a very glamorous speaker, and there weren't very many people there, either. I was personally disappointed for Jim, knowing that it was his first and last time at Nolli.

Wednesday was another busy day, and outside it was a bit sunnier. That evening Jim was giving away more of his things.

Thursday the 5th was my last day watch, and Jim's last day in Berlin. Before leaving the room I said good-bye to him, knowing that I would probably never see him again. (It's been over 25 years now, and I indeed haven't heard from him or seen him since). That evening I moved into Jim's part of the room. Jim, Dan, and I had the lockers set up such that it divided the room into three partitions, where each one of us had lived in relative privacy. Jim had the best setup, since there was a permanently blocked door at his end of the room, for which he had obtained a key! So in effect, he was living in a private room with his own door. Dan was leaving Berlin this month, and Jim had already left, and so I naturally took advantage of the situation. Who was to say what kind of roommates I would be getting?

Open House Details, and Joyce Gives a Speech

Friday the 6th the weather was very nice. It was my first day of break, but I was on a detail most all day with other guys from the flight, putting up barricades for tomorrow’s open house. We had to show up at 8:00. In the forenoon we were dismissed, with instructions to report back at 2:00. There was more work to do, but they had to wait for a large transport jet to arrive. At 1:45 I woke up Dwight S. and Cliff K., and went back to the detail. There wasn’t a whole lot to do. The guy who was in charge was very disorganized, and everyone was grumbling about it.

Monday the 9th I got up early. I was coming off from a high generated by a terrific weekend, and then immediately a trial came. Sgt. Archy G. came around and told us we had to help clean up the flight line. So we did that until 11:00. At 1:30 there was a commander’s call, where we were shown two films and a couple people received awards. Col. Joyce mumbled a barely audible speech for a while, and then we were dismissed. "What a turkey," Mark M. remarked.

Wednesday night’s swing was fairly busy. I drew another ornate "Baker" picture in the log book, as I had done the night before. Thursday I worked the last swing, and it was pretty busy. I didn’t get a break until 10:00. I drew another "Baker" doodle in the log book, the fourth one so far. There were three WAF’s in training with us tonight, and one of them sat with me for an hour or so.

Saturday the 14th was my first day watch, and it was a very average day. The weather was very gray. Hector was being a terrible pest all day, and I got to the point where I was ready to clobber him. Col. Joyce was out at the site for some reason, and I bumped into him unexpectedly in the corridor. He said hello. I was a little surprised at the human touch, and it improved my opinion of him somewhat.

My Best Friend Leaves Berlin

Dan was in the room Tuesday night; He was starting to pack that night, or at least pretending to go through the motions of packing. The packers were coming the next day, and he had so much junk to sort through. On Wednesday morning the 18th he returned around 8:30 to finish his packing, but didn’t seem to make much progress. The packers then arrived at 10:00 and took what he had ready. I was amazed at all the stuff that he didn’t have packed. Dan was unbelievably disorganized and was dazed by how fast the packers had done their work.

Dan’s stay here in Berlin was coming to a close. He would be leaving for good on Monday. It was very sobering for me to think about his departure. We had enjoyed such a special friendship during the past 14 months, and in just two days he would be gone forever.

Sunday night was the second swing. I drew a picture of a giant kicking apart the site, and it turned out pretty good. Again, it was a pity that it never saw the light of day and ended up in a burn bag.

Monday, September 23rd, was the big day. Dan was leaving Berlin. I got up to see him off at the airport. I arrived at a little past 8:00. It was sunny and chilly. Udo showed up also! Dan and Lucy were there, and Dan was trying to make a phone call to the orderly room to sign out. He couldn’t get a connection, and had to walk over personally to sign out.

Dan soon came back, and Udo and I saw him off. And he was gone...

Udo and I went up to a restaurant that overlooked the runway, and watched him get onto the plane. We were going to stay to watch the plane take off, but a waiter chased us out, since we weren’t ordering anything. So we had no choice but to leave.

I tidied up the room a little. It was a very odd feeling, knowing that Dan would never come back. I realized that it would be a very long time until we ever saw each other again. Perhaps we never would. (It has been 25 years now, and I still haven't).

G-2, ERF, and Cartoons

Thursday the 26th was the first day watch. It was cold, cloudy, and wet. On the bus ride to work I sat with Mark M. who advised me to get a room over in G-2, the area near the chow hall. They were much better rooms than the hangars, and also much closer to everything. In addition, they were all double rooms, or in some cases single rooms. That sounded like a really good idea to me, since I didn’t know what was going to happen now that Jim and Dan were gone. I surely wouldn’t be living in a "single" room in the hangars for long.

Derry told me that I was no longer on the ERF team. My qualifications had expired or something. I wasn’t too sad about that. Gary H. had refused to be on it, for reasons that I have since forgotten, and I had considered doing the same thing.

Friday the 27th, the second day watch, was a busy day. I got to draw a picture on the last page of the log book, a cartoon of the site being blown up. I had gotten to draw on the last page of the previous log book as well.

No More Private Door

Saturday at Nolli I talked with Ralf a little, and found out that Bruder M�ller had had a kind of stroke or something, and the left half of his face was paralyzed. If he didn’t get well soon, Volkhard would have to stay here in Berlin instead of going on the planned Israel trip, which also meant that Volkhard might be my guest on the base for lunch the week after next. At least, that’s what Ralf thought. I was sad to hear about M�ller, but excited about the prospect of having Volkhard come to Tempelhof with me.

Monday through Wednesday was break. I met "Pic" in the hall Monday morning, and he told me that they were moving people from Hangar 1 to Hangar 2. Then I had quite a shock. While in my room I heard a key turning in my "permanently blocked" door! It opened, and in walked Tony! He said that he and a guy named John C. were moving in to my room by Friday. That was news enough, but the fact that he had somehow obtained a key to "my" door was very disturbing. I decided then and there that I had to get over to the G-2 area somehow, as Mark M. had suggested.

After lunch I went to the orderly room to check up on the situation. At the orderly room I was told that they couldn’t find any keys to door 226, the regular door to our room, and so they had extras made for my door! That meant that both Tony and the other fellow would be going in and out through my "private" door! Moreover, there would be no talk of any other moving until they get the Hangar 1 moving finished. Needless to say, all this caused me considerable mental upheaval.

That evening I went out to visit Steve B. in his apartment. Steve wasn’t in that night, and I waited around for him until 7:00. There was an unmailed postcard he had written to his aunt lying on the table. It read, "very busy these days… very little time for letter-writing and the like… my room I just use for sleeping in." I had really wanted to see him was very disappointed. I was thinking of moving in with him in case the hangars situation became unbearable.

When I got back to the base I met Tony moving in some of his stuff, and I gave him a hand.

New Roommate and Cold Marienfelde Mids

Tuesday, October 1st, there was a base alert at 5:15 a.m. I went down to HBE, an area in the eastern part of the Hangars, and waited around for an hour or so with the rest of the guys. I talked with Mark M., who told me that he would be leaving Berlin in December, and that I should try to move into his room. It was in G-2, and had one roommate, "Willie", the eccentric guy I had known from Goodfellow who collected pipes. (Actually, he wasn't called "Willie" here in Berlin; his new nickname was "Mouse", named after the pet mouse he kept in his room). "Willie", or "Mouse", would be leaving in January. It would be okay to move, but only if the orderly room approved it. Wednesday I was sort of expecting my new roommates to arrive, but nothing happened all day.

Bobby A. joined me at supper on Thursday, and I then hurried off to Steve's apartment to see him. He wasn't there again, and so I just sat around inside and read. At 6:15 he finally appeared, just before I was going to leave. He was in a great hurry. He handed me a letter for me to mail on base (cheaper and faster). He had ordered a dinner at some place, and had to go to eat it, and so he couldn't stay. I took off together with him, and went back to the base.

That evening Tony came in to the room with more of his stuff, and then I helped him move in his piano. Much to my dismay, I found out that he was a chain-smoker. That was not very joyful news. Steve had told me that he thought it would be great if I wanted to move in with him; he would just have to find a place for me to sleep.

October 4th's second mid was another sleepy, cold mid. It always was cold at the site, barely tolerable. We worked with Able flight that night. That evening at Nolli Ralf caught Volkhard and asked him about dinner on base with me on October 13th. He said that he was not yet sure.

Saturday, October 5th was the third mid. It was extremely cold that night, and I was quite sleepy as well.

DDR Celebrates and Volkhard Accepts

Sunday was the last mid. East Berlin was all lights and sound - they were celebrating the 25th anniversary of the DDR. It wasn't as cold at the site that night, perhaps because I had put on my winter underwear for the first time. I was still sleepy, though. When N. relieved me, he found me asleep at my station.

Tony was working his third day on Sunday, and the other fellow he had mentioned still hadn't shown up, and so I was still pretty much alone in the room. That night Brezhnev and Honnecker were making speeches in the East Berlin TV. (The 25th anniversary was on Monday the 7th).

Sunday night I went to Nolli, and sat with Arora the Indian. It was Erntedankfest time again, and there was a display of fruits at the front, just like the previous year. Hans B. showed up, in a bad mood. I wanted to get hold of Volkhard about Hans, as well as speaking about coming to the base on Sunday, but he was in his usual rush, and had no time for us.

Hans was a 21-year-old "Gammler", a down-and-out bum with long stringy hair and rotting teeth, whom Dan and I had befriended several months earlier. He and I went to the pizzeria together. After a while his bad mood melted away, and he became very gentle and meek again. He told me he was going to a clinic in Kladow until March or April of next year, and in the meantime would write Nolli a greeting. At that moment Volkhard, his wife Erika, and his mother-in-law Bertha came into the pizzeria with two Americans guests, and took another table. Hans beckoned to Volkhard to come on over to speak with us, and he did! I finally had the chance to invite him over to the base on Sunday. He accepted the invitation, saying that it would be fine! Hans and I left at 11:00, and said good-bye to Volkhard and company on our way out.

WAF Revelations and Roomie #2

Wednesday the 9th it rained. The day started out being slow but ended busy. I learned a lesson about not pre-judging people. Two WAF's that I had looked down upon up to that point I found out weren't at all what I had imagined them to be. One of them, Irene, wasn't as sour as I had thought. I talked with her a little and saw her smile for the first time. The other red-headed one, Pat, was a Russian major and a Russian by-pass! Not only that, but she had been in the USSR twice, likes music, and plays clarinet. She told me how everything in Russia is so backward and poor. I had turned out to be completely wrong in my pre-conceived opinion of what she was like.

The long-awaited second roommate finally arrived Thursday night, carrying in some of his stuff. His name was John C., and I had never seen him before. He had a stocky build, and turned out to be just a run-of-the-mill beer-drinking dull kind of guy, even though he was tolerably polite while sober. He was definitely not in the Jim M. - Dan T. - Steve B. category of human being.

Volkhard Spitzer Visits TCA

Sunday, October 13th was the big day, and it turned out bigger than I had imagined.

At Nolli that morning Volkhard gave one of his "impromptu" sermons. He said he didn't have anything prepared until that very morning, but it turned out very well. Volkhard was very good at improvising, and more often than not the impromptu sermons turned out to better than the prepared ones.

I was a little nervous about the impending Volkhard visit, but things turned out okay. Eventually he got ready to leave, and we left in two cars. Volkhard had told me he was inviting a visiting American friend along for the day. I was with Volkhard and his mother-in-law, and the American guy John A. was in the following car with his wife and two children. At first it was an awkward and embarrassing experience for me, riding in Volkhard's car. He was talking with his mother-in-law in some strange dialect I had never heard before; I couldn't understand a word of it.

After arriving at the base, I got everyone signed in. Then we all marched over to the chow hall, me at the head, followed by Volkhard and company. Volkhard was wearing his purple suit. We got into the chow hall and put two tables together to seat us together.

I finally had a chance to chat with Volkhard a little. There was not as much time as I would have liked; moreover, Volkhard was at the same time entertaining his American guests. He mentioned to me a girl from the church he was planning to send to America. She had come from a very mixed-up background. He had been counseling her for about a year, and thought that she needed to be removed from the bad environment here in Berlin. Her English skills needed a lot of improvement, and he thought that I would be able to step in and give her lessons. He said he would be getting back to me on the subject later.

Chaplain Martin and the American speaker from Saturday morning soon came by with their wives. We took a brief tour of the chapel and facilities, and then it was time for them to leave. I went to the gate to see them off, and then it was suddenly all over!

It was quite an experience for me. After having waited for months for an opportunity to be together with Volkhard, the ice had finally been broken. I had been very worried that something would go wrong, or that it would be a big letdown, but it turned out to be a success. Everything had gone very smoothly. It had almost seemed as if Volkhard was an old friend just stopping by for a casual visit.

Thomas B.

Sunday evening after the meeting at Nolli I got together with a new guy named Thomas B., and we went to his apartment which just happened to be on the Nollendorfstra�e, not far from the church. Thomas became a regular at Nolli from about that time. He was a bit tall, slender, and had dark hair and light green eyes. He had a fairly serious demeanor, and was in certain respects somewhat similar to Steve B. Two other guys were living with him at the time. He showed me some of his books: he was into philosophy, poetry, and foreign languages, and was also interested in learning New Testament Greek.

We spent some time together talking.  I was about to leave, when at around 9:30 a drunk came stumbling into the apartment and started smashing up their kitchen. He was apparently a friend of Wolfgang's, one of the roommates, and he was upset about something. I was of course very startled. I had never seen anything like it before, and tried to stay out of the way. The guy was shouting and cursing, and I could hear the sound of smashing glass coming from the kitchen. All of them were shouting in Berlin dialect, which was almost as impressive to me as the physical action. It was a strong, pure Berlin dialect, almost comical in its forcefulness. Wolfgang and his roommates called the police, who soon arrived and dragged away the drunk, and then there was peace again.

Udo and another friend named Thomas dropped by. He, the two Thomas's, Wolfgang, and I then sat around and talked for a while and sang some songs. Wolfgang was very similar to Udo. They both had the same kind of personality and sense of humor, and both spoke the same kind of rapid, forceful Berlin dialect.

I finally left at 11:00. It had been a very nice time with them all, in spite of the ugly scene earlier with the drunk. I got back to the base before 12:00, and went to bed at around 1:00 a.m. "What a day!" I wrote in my diary. "These last 3 days have seemed like a week and a half for the things that took place. My time here in Berlin is anything but boring!"

Drugs in the Hangars

In contrast to the weekend, Monday was a quiet day alone on base. The time went by quickly. Tony and John C. were on their last swing. At suppertime I met Hector outside, and he called me "Sarge." I had found out Friday night that I was going to be promoted to sergeant before December 1st.

Tony and John C. were apparently working mids. Wednesday turned out rainy again. At lunch I sat with Bill M., who was now living in a single room in G-2. Randy M. told me he didn't think I would have any problem moving into the G-2 room once Mark M. leaves Berlin. Randy and I were planning to move in together. He said he had a friend in the orderly room who could arrange it for us.

Tuesday the 22nd Tony was filling the room with a lot of smoke again, to the point of being almost unbearable. I had both window and door wide open.

The 27th was the first mid. I met Randy M. on the bus to work, and we talked about his plans of moving into the G-2 room together after "Mouse" left. The mid that night was very dead. I read in the snack bar, and the rest of the night just slept. It was raining when we were relieved. Wednesday the 30th was the last mid. I took my chess set along, and John Z. took notice. We agreed to play in the snack room, and ended up playing for several hours. I won all the games. The rest of the guys were more interested in the big boxing match between Foreman and Muhammed Ali, which was being broadcast live from Africa – with German commentary. They had a TV brought into the snack bar to watch it. Ali won in round eight with a knockout.

John went to his last mid Wednesday evening. Tony was back, and I found out that he had been in the hospital, at Ward 2, being treated for drug addiction! He had taken an overdose Sunday night. He also told me that he had been having therapy for several weeks. That was surprising to me; no wonder he had been mysteriously missing for the past few days. Randy M. or Mark M. once told me that there was a big drug subculture on base, which I took with a grain of salt. Looking back I realize that there may have been some substance to the story, and one of those may have been my own roommate. He had been my roommate for about a month already, and it had seemed like only a week. We went to bed at midnight; I had a dental appointment the next day, and he had an appointment with the OSI. (The OSI, "Office of Special Investigations", was the FBI of the USAFSS, and the people who conducted security clearances).

(One reader of these memoirs, a former member of the 6912th who served during the same time period, wrote me an email assuring me that there was most definitely a drug subculture on base, and that it was very widespread. "Everyone speculated," he wrote, "that the higher-ups knew that if they busted everyone, they wouldn't have enough operators to man Mari.")

Part 1 - 1973

Part 3 - 1974 (Nov-Dec)

Part 4 - 1975 (Jan)

Part 5 - 1975 (Feb-Dec)

Part 6 - 1976

See the pictures behind the story:

MARIENFELDE / TCA PHOTO GALLERY

Disclaimer:

The purpose of "Marienfelde, 1973-1976, An ex-airman remembers" is only to entertain. These are personal memories of one individual, and as such they are subject to error. The names of individuals have in nearly all cases been abbreviated or altered in order to protect their privacy; therefore the reader is STRONGLY cautioned against making any assumptions as to the identity of any individuals referred to in this narrative. The views and opinions communicated on this website, whether explicit or construed, are those of a private individual and not those of the United States Air Force, the USAFSS, or any other government agency.

Copyright � 1999 by Bill Price

URL = http://www.geocities.com/bprice1949/mari74a.html

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