My Time in the Army Part 2 by Richard

I met the company commander and was given a choice to work in the office or outside, but I asked to work out side, which I enjoyed. I made friends with several men as we worked helping the Air Force with their communication needs.

My company unit was known as “special personal attached to the US Air Force”. We worked on several Air Bases in Germany and France. The food in the US Air Force was much better. For breakfast one could order eggs any way they wished and the lunch and dinner meals were also good. On Sunday, for lunch and dinner, we had to make do with cold cuts.

One cold winter night, I had guard duty starting at 10 PM protecting the ammunitions, but due to an alert, I wasn't relived at 8 AM the next day. When I got back to our building, I was cold, hungry, tired and sleepy, I ate and had a long rest.

There are many other things I could talk about but one of the most noticeable was all the damage to all the cities and small towns caused by the war¹. The large cities received the most damage; there were blocks upon blocks that were totally destroyed and the most of the small towns were also damaged. I hope we all learn from this, so we will never again, have a world war.

We all had to learn how to count and to exchange our money into German Marks and to speak some German. Our dollar was worth 4 Marks and twenty cents.

I was able to do some traveling and to see several cities, which included the following: Paris, Amsterdam, Luxembourg and many cities in Germany. One of the German cities I enjoyed was Wiesbaden, which is favorite German vacation place.

My 18 months in Germany went by so fast and it was time for me to go home to the USA. I took the same trip home from Germany, first to Camp Kilmer, next by train and ship to New Jersey. Then on to San Francisco by TWA air lines and on to Fort Ord.

I was discharged on November 19,1954 and left the Army with $300.00.

I enjoyed my time in the service, which allowed me to see things one just read about. It also help me to appreciate many things: mostly life.


1. Strategic bombing during WW2 Describes the purpose and results of Strategic Bombing during WWII. A list of bombed cities in Germany can be found on the right side of the page: RAF Estimates of Destruction

[Editor's note: This story was written by Richard and is Part 2 of 2]




USS General H. W. Butner (AP-113)