Dear Mom & Dad,
Well true to my word I am writing again to fill you in on more details that I left out of my first letter.
I got Mom's last note yesterday, the one with the clipping on the drug problems in Europe. The man that the article was mostly about, Dr. Forest Tennant, is working in Wurtzburg, about 35 miles from here, and his program for drug abusers is the one we are trying to model ours after here in Bamberg. The article was correct in it's estimation of the drug problem over here. In Bamberg alone, we estimate that over 60% of the troops use hash at one time or another, most of that number are frequent users. Although hash is against the law, it is really not the area of greatest concern of the programs in Europe, to fight drug abuse. After all, very few men who smoke hash, end up in the army hospitals and most of them are able to do their jobs as well as if they weren't using the drug.
When we give drug abuse classes to the GI's here on post, we don't harp on them too much about the dangers of Marijuana or hash, because for the most part they wouldn't listen anyway. Usually we even tell them the right way to smoke it so the chances of getting bronchitis and lung damage are lessened. This approach also gives them a little more confidence in the information we put out about the harder drugs, which are the real danger over here. I am enclosing some posters that came from the drug information center in Wurzburg (called the "Now House"). I am making up some things along the same line for Bamburg. We also have a drug info. center here which right now is kind of bogged down because I can't get enough people to work in it. Right now I only have two young NCO's working for , both of them have Psychology degrees and experience with counseling drug addicts. Before I started this job there wasn't anyone else in it an I am the first one to be in this position on this post, although there are other places in Germany that also have a Drug abuse officer. There is no formal job description so it is sort of hard to describe exactly what the job is. Right now I am trying to get our drug center (It will be called the "Light House" off the ground. Also in a month or so we will probably get this drug education skit that was mentioned in that article you sent me. I will be working closely with Doc Tennant for this and other things.
One thing that's come up, that is a very interesting possibility is that there is a chance (a small chance at the present time) of my going to the Yale University Drug Dependence Institute in New Haven Connecticut for a two week training program! There is an awful lot of red tape to go through first, and I won't know anything definite on it for a while.
In this job I am working out the office of the Deputy Installation Coordinator which has the following duties:
Internal Security
Post Police
Readiness, Test and alert notification
Coordination of post support activities
Inventory of funds and stock-post services
Operation of Government Housing area
On and off post discipline
Coordination of incident and accident control
Coordination of athletic and recreation programs
Coordination of snow and Ice control programs
Coordination of German-American Relations
Someplace in there, fall my duties with drugs and Equal Opportunity. Besides those two things though, I have also been given a few other jobs:
Post athletic and recreation officer, Officer in charge of Head-Start orientation programs, and Abandoned Vehicles officer
On the whole, these additional duties are minor and do not take much time . As A&R officer I coordinate use of the two gym's and 7 athletic fields we have here on post and make sure all units have equal time to use them. I haven't had anything come up under abandoned vehicles yet.
The Head-start Orientation p;program is the only one that takes up a good deal of time. What this program is, is an 8 hour class given twice a month to all new GI's who have just come to Germany. We get in about 50 a week here at Bamberg. The class is kind of like an orientation that might give to new freshman who just came to college. My job is to get about 5 or 6 different instructors together, arrange class rooms, etc. Also I give a short talk on the GI's purpose in Germany, NATO, etc. The next day after the class we take them on a two hour tour of Bamberg so they will be a little more familiar with their environment. On this, I have to coordinate with the local tourist agency for guides, buses, etc.
Now besides all this, I have also been given the job of writing up a report on the critical housing shortage here in Bamberg, which I almost have done.
So you can see that I am involved in several things, which tends to keep the job interesting.
I haven't mentioned anything about Equal Opportunity yet. It's is a lot harder problem to get your teeth into. A week ago I had a long talk with the Division Equal Opportunity officer who is a Lt. Col, and he didn't seem to know what he was doing along these lines either. The only thing he was doing was writing a very complicated questionnaire, which I will be helping to distribute. The only thing that is going on here at Bamberg to help ease racial problems are weekly "sensitivity" sessions, which I'm sure you've heard something about. These are day and a half sessions with groups of whites and blacks where they talk about in detail, racial and personnel problems. They are usually fairly good, but they have the limitation of not effecting too many people. In November I will be going to Berchtesgarden (Hitler's old stomping ground) for a USAREUR Equal Opportunity conference which might give out some good information. (Also skiing is great there!)
Oh, by the way I just heard that the writers of this series of articles about the Army in Europe were in Bamberg for a day, and one of their stories is on u, so you might watch for it.
Well I hope I've given you some idea of what I'm doing now. So far I really like the job. It's interesting and varied and the hours are a lot better and so far Iv'e had every weekend off!
You can keep sending letters to the Officers club, because it's easier to pick them up there than to change it.
So for no, I will close this one.
