A TRUE STORY: The Greatest Generation

There are moments in time that can echo forever, telling new generations about the greatness or the lack of it in the abilities of men and women. This is a true story about a generation’s greatness and an army's humanity.

I was a 21-year-old corporal in 1987, when REFORGER ‘87 was taking place. I was an intelligence analyst serving with the S-2, 4th Battalion, 41st Infantry Regiment, which belonged to the 2nd Armored Division (Forward). My unit was based in Lucius D. Clay Kaserne in Garlstedt, Federal Republic of Germany (when that still existed).

My battalion had been deployed for a few months at this point. I occasionally joked with my friends that we weren’t deployed as much as we were homeless now. The joke even brought out a laugh now and again.

During the deployment, the battalion traveled to unfamiliar ground for us. Normally we were located in Northern Germany, and only came south of Hanover to perform gunnery qualification with the M2 and M3 Bradley Fighting Vehicles. When the unit traveled south, it usually went to the gunnery range at Grafenwohr, in Eastern Bavaria, and then went on to be evaluated at nearby Hohenfels, which was a training area used by Allies from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. At Hohenfels, the unit would go through an Army Training and Evaluation Program to demonstrate our efficiency. It was hard soldiering, but the “Iron Deuce” was a great old unit and drew some pretty staunch soldiers.

It was training, though, and the reality of what defending another nation on its own soil really meant had not gotten through for a while.

This REFORGER was different for a lot of us younger soldiers. We traveled through towns and saw the faces of ordinary Germans we were protecting. It was the Cold War in those days, and so many of us believed it might become a shooting war while we were there. No one took the threat of the Soviet Union lightly, and soldiers in the United States Army in Europe respected the Soviets and their Warsaw Pact Allies. We all knew they were a professional and strong army. But, then again, so were we.

Still, as we passed through several towns, driving along German highways and byways in our armored personnel carriers, trucks, and Bradley Fighting Vehicles, it changed how I saw my service there. It made it real to me.

What really brought that sentiment home, though, occurred in Drensteinfurt, in the Northern Rhine-Westphalia region of the country. As normal, the unit pulled in and, in my case, soldiers from the S-2 (the Intelligence and Security Section), parked our M577 Command Post Carrier right next to the S-3 (Operations) and we went about the businesses of unrolling canvasses and making our tactical operations center, which a fire support team from the Field Artillery and an air liaison team from the U.S. Air Force hooked into as well.  This is where our commander, at the time Lieutenant-Colonel John Voessler, and his primary staff officers communicated with and controlled the 700-soldier (or so) task force that was 4/41 Infantry.

Well, it was hot and sweaty work in the middle of August, and everyone who took part in making the TOC, as it was called, was dirty, tired and thirsty. However, the one good thing about operating in towns is that soldiers were occasionally allowed to patronize little cafes in the immediate area, if everything was on schedule, as it was this bright and sunny day.

My good friend, Private Bruce Fogle, and I received permission to go grab ‘some local chow’ and return. Fogle and I were wearing camouflage face paint and I was carrying my M-16 and he the bulky M60 machinegun assigned to him. Our helmets were on and chinstraps firmly in place and our uniforms looked like they are supposed to in the field.

This was a natural thing for us. But, as he and I passed German civilians, I became aware these accessories might very well be disturbing. I put myself in their place. So, I tried to do some smiling as we passed people and Fogle tried the same. I couldn’t imagine how it would have felt seeing foreign soldiers strolling down my hometown street in Howell Township, New Jersey.

Well, this older woman, perhaps in her late 70s or older, was accompanied by her granddaughter (as I came to find out later) down the little cobblestone road where the cafe was located. Upon us approaching, she became visibly shaken and muttered something emotionally to her granddaughter. I thought we must have upset her and tried my broken German to explain we were only having a wargame here and that my unit would be leaving soon.

Yet, her granddaughter explained her grandmother’s reaction: “No sir, that patch you and the other man are wearing is the same as the patch of the men that freed my grandmother from the Nazis in 1945. She wants to thank you soldiers still.” Then the old lady reached out and took Fogle’s dirty, gloved hand and placed it up to her face and said, with her heavy German accent, “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

Tears immediately rose to my eyes, which I thought was very ‘un-NCO-like’ of me, but Fogle had the waterworks going too.

My Dad was a soldier back then. He fought in the Rhine like so many others. He could have easily been one of the soldiers that helped her back then. It all came around for me -- why we were there, what we are supposed to be about and the very big shoes we were filling.

I asked her granddaughter to translate, because I didn’t want to screw it up. Then I said that there are always going to be evil people in the world. And, it was a privilege to be associated with the men she knew, if only by our patch, and that both my friend and I, and the rest of us, would try and make sure neither she nor her family ever had to go through anything like the Nazis again. This moved me. Right then, I figured out what it was to be an American soldier.