Lincoln – Time once again to look back a half-century.
In 1969, after my two-and-a-half years of sea duty on USS Rainier and USS Arlington in the Far East, my Navy personnel detailer thought I deserved shore duty and asked where I'd like to be assigned. I asked for the Defense Communications Agency–Europe, in Stuttgart, Germany, where there was an open slot for a Navy officer.
So from Yokosuka, Japan, I traveled first to Lincoln for two weeks' leave; then to Washington, DC, for a short assignment at the Pentagon's Navy Annex, during which President Eisenhower's funeral took place; then to Fort Monmouth, NJ, to Army satellite school; then to Stuttgart for the next two years. It would change my life.
DCA–Europe was located in the Stuttgart suburb of Vaihingen at the former Kurmärker Kaserne, which was built for the German army's Seventh Panzer Regiment in 1936-37. The post was also the headquarters of the U.S. European Command, so there was a lot of U.S. Army brass present. DCA, made up of personnel from all uniformed services, operated the U.S. communication circuits in Europe and the Middle East.
At first I was a DCA watch officer, then became a circuit engineer. My duties occasionally took me around Europe to inspect communication sites. I was in Venice for the 1969 moon landing, enroute to a remote site in Italy.
There was also much opportunity for personal travel, often with my DCA colleagues: to Munich, Paris, Zurich, Salzburg, Strasbourg. On arrival in Stuttgart I immediately started working on learning the German language. After some months I joined the Metropolitan Club, a German-American organization of young people dedicated to friendship, culture, and language. We often toured in and around Stuttgart. It was at a Metropolitan Club Christmas party in Nelligen that I met my future wife, Annette Rohrberg.
In August, 1970, my active duty obligation expired; I left the Navy in Stuttgart but remained there until May, 1971, teaching for the University of Maryland on Army posts in Stuttgart and Mannheim. In 1970 and 1971, I had ample time for a visit from my Nebraska family, then for extensive travel with German tour groups throughout Tunisia, the Soviet Union, and Turkey.
The photographs below show the Eisenhower funeral procession; the Officers' Club at the U.S. European Command in Vaihingen; Oktoberfest in Munich with Marine Captain Mick Zwick on the left and Dagmar Shannon and her husband Navy Lieutenant Bill Shannon at right; Stuttgart Zentrum; my Nebraska family on the Adriatic in Italy; and an outing in the Black Forest with Annette.
