Dear Mom and Dad,
I hope you got the post cards I sent you along the way. If you did, you will know that I made it to Germany OK. It was a very long and involved trip, but I finally made it to my duty station, in fact I just arrived about an hour and a half ago. I am now sitting in my BOQ room writing this letter. Guess what! I'm not in Erlangen, but in a place called Illesheim. Not only is the name unpronounceable, the town is so small you won't find it on most maps. The Post is also very small, but about 10 times the size of the town, which consists of about a half dozen buildings and a Guest House. Not only is it small, it is also a long way out in the country. to get here I took a train from Frankfurt to a town called Neustadt which is big enough to be on the map, but probably won't be on the one I left home. Neustadt is right on the East German border and as close as I can make out, about 65 miles due North from Nurnberg.
Anyway after I got off the train in Neustadt a Lieutenant from Illesheim picked me up and after about a 30 minute drive on winding country roads we got here. So all I can tell you about where I am is that I am about a 30 minute drive from Neustadt in some direction which I don't know, and about 65 miles from Nurnberg. Why my orders were changed like that at the last minute, I really don't know...that's just the Army's way of making you more confused I guess.
But I do have a club here, which I had my doubts about getting. After hearing what little I did hear so far about it from this lieutenant who brought me here and after a brief inspection, myself over a beer, I'm not so sure that I should be too happy about it. It appears as thought the club is in real bad shape financially. The last club custodian was a 2nd Lt., like me and also "school trained" at Ft. Lee, like me, but I guess he had quite a hard time with it, and was put in some other job after a few months. So I'm the one who is going to replace him.
Well tomorrow morning I have to report to the Colonel who is in charge of the post, so I think I will go to bed now and get some rest. I will try to continue this letter tomorrow
Sat. Dec. 26
Well it's been about 3 days now since I started writing this letter. I was very tired the night I started writing. As I am writing now, I figure that it must be about 6:00 AM your time, the morning after Christmas. I've had kind of a hard time adjusting to the drastic time change. I really hope you had a good Christmas.
Really, at this time I can't say much about my impressions of Germany, because I haven't seen any of it yet, to speak of. Right now my biggest job is to get into my job as Club Custodian and start doing as well as I can in it. I don't really plan to start doing any real sight-seeing for a month or so, or until I get settled. The only contact I've had with Germany so far was the train trip from Frankfurt to Neustadt which was really quite an experience in it's self, even though it was dark, which made it difficult to see outside. The passenger cars are divided into little separate rooms with 6 seats in each. The rooms are closed off with a glass door and windows that look onto a very narrow hallway that goes from one end of the car to the other. I had one heck of a time trying to go through that narrow hall, with my 3 heavy pieces of luggage, looking in each glass enclosed room for an empty seat. To make matters worse there were hundreds of people also in the hall walking around and I was clogging up the whole works with my suitcases! I finally did find a seat and had an interesting conversation with a German girl who was anxious to try out her English - which wasn't too hot.
Well anyway, to get back to life here in Illesheim, things are really dragging along at a slow pace. I haven't started working yet and have spent most of my time in my BOQ reading and writing. This is a very bad time of the year to check into a military post. On Wed. and Thurs., everybody was only working half days which made processing in difficult. Friday was Christmas and everything was closed tight. Today and tomorrow are also semi- holidays, so I won't be able to finish processing in until next week.
There is about a half inch of snow on the ground, and it is very cold here which makes going outside difficult in my yellow windbreaker. Very soon I think I will buy a heavy coat.
I want to get this letter off as soon as possible. Please drop me a note so I know that you got this OK. My address is below:
2LT. M L B ss# (we would put our SS# right in the address)
HHC 1st Bde, 4th Armored Division
Attention - Officers club
APO NY NY 09140
No comments:
Post a Comment