Jon's First Tour of Duty

I don't know if it's true, but I've been told that when Jon graduated from high school, the entry next to his picture said "All girls are nice, but none is perfect." Until he met Barbara, of course.  It seems that the women and the vacations left the biggest impression on his mind of all his time leading a tank unit in Germany. He reports:

The girl with the "'beehive" is Ann (my first German girlfriend). The others are the company clerk and the two Norwegian girls who we dated during that week in Copenhagen. I don't know who the German girl was (who came to the US), but I don't think I had dated her prior to coming back to here. jl

My first girlfriend in Europe was half pregnant when I met her (I guess, more correctly, she was half way through a pregnancy);she didn't really show, but there was a "bump" there when "slow dancing."

In the early 60's, in the combat units stationed in Germany, our calendar years were split roughly into six parts, i.e. we spent part of the deep winter doing maneuvers such as river crossings-over the German landscape; part of the spring/summer at a major training area doing, again, maneuvers; and for us "tankers," part of the summer/fall at the major training area where we shot our tank guns (we came in from the range on the day John Kennedy was shot in 1963). The rest of the time we spent at our home “Kaserne” (barracks), doing maintenance, other training, etc.

When I next met my first girlfriend....there was no “bump.”  I met, briefly, the baby, but for some reason didn't want to “bond.”  As time went on, and the annual calendar of events, went on, I became aware that this girl wasn't waiting for me during my 50% of the year of  “field” time.

For vacations, I took a trip to Italy with a fellow officer from the BOQ (bachelor officer quarters); and a trip to Sitges, Spain, which was interesting. Sitges is 40 kilometers south of Barcelona (on the coast of the Mediterranean in the  northeast corner of Spain) . When I got there, probably in the summer, housing was hard to find. I ended up sharing a room with a company clerk from some unit in Germany. During the week or so we were there, he “Fell in love” with a Swedish librarian, and I'm not sure that he ever returned to his unit.

My next trip was for a week in Copenhagen, Denmark. Again, for whatever reason, I ended up dating (with a company clerk) two Norwegian girls. Meanwhile, during the week, I was with a Danish sailor who ran out of money during the evening & due to ship out the next morning, so I bought him drinks for, at least, part of the evening. He offered to buy me breakfast at a place where he “had a tab.” In conversation, when he learned that I was part Finn, he said that  "O'myGod, those Finns come down here and tear the hell out of the place."

When I was back in Tacoma, WA, and living (illegally) with Barbara, I received a letter from one of the girls back in Germany. She was coming to visit, and could she come to see me. I guess it went into the “round file”, because we didn't have further contact.)

jl