Maggie's Farm

Many years ago I was stationed in Germany while in the USAF. I got to know probably a couple dozen Germans who had fought in the war and about half that many women who lived through the war. One of them was a civilian who after getting his PhD in Physics was assigned as a civilian attache to a few generals where he advised them on technical subjects. Not a combatant just someone who was conscripted. He was part of the invading force into Poland in 1939. Later he was attached to General Rommel in North Africa where he was captured by the Americans in 1942 and sent to the states as a POW. He could be coaxed into telling stories all night long with a few beers. Another man I knew there turned 14 years old in Jan 1945 and was put into uniform without any training and sent to the Eastern Front as the Soviets were invading. Because he was a big kid, 6'4" the Germans brought him in as an SS soldier. He was captured in February 1945 by the Russians along with a couple hundred other kids in German uniforms and before they were able to process these new prisoners and discover he was SS he escaped in the confusion and made his way West until he was able to surrender to the U.S. Army. He said that he would travel at night and hide in barns in the countryside during the day. Typically there was an old woman or an old couple living there who knew the war was collapsing on them and knew this 'boy' was running for his life and they would feed him and hide him.
One of the Germans I worked with everyday had been captured early in the war and spent three years in a POW camp in Alabama. He said he was treated well but his worse memory was picking cotton because the dead thistle parts of the cotton would stick into your fingers and under your finger nails and it took a week or two for them to work their way out.

Everyone I talked to had horror stories about the years following the war until about the mid 1950's when things finally improved for the majority of Germans. Most of them knew someone who was trapped in East Germany and suffered under communism. I visited numerous war sites and cemeteries in Germany, France and Belgium.

I worked with, lived with and met many Germans and they were all good people, hard working, smart, stubborn but reasonable. Still living a simple life then, it was before their economy fully recovered. The younger Germans tended to be a little resentful of having to be held accountable for things that happened before they were even born; I don't/didn't blame them. But they tended to focus on their jobs and family and avoided talking about those times. The older Germans would talk about old times if they felt comfortable with you. It was useful to understand a little more German than you let on. It wasn't an intentional thing. German with the full accent and guttural sounds can be hard at first to understand but sometimes after thinking about what was said you would understand it. So when speaking in a mixed group of Germans and Americans some was spoken in English and some in German and some was said maybe not expecting to be understood but even when I would understand or at least understand enough to follow the drift I never felt that there was any negative subtext or inappropriate things said. I will say this about the Germans I knew; They didn't hide what they felt or thought, they spoke up, usually quite loudly and you had no doubt about them.

Good people, such a wasteful and useless war.

I lived in a little town called Kottweiler. Everyday someone from the each of the German families who lived there would walk to the little store carrying a stainless steel bottle with a handle and they would buy milk on tap. Usually it was one of the kids. Also it was common for the older men in rural Germany to stop along the road and pee if the urge came. So it was not uncommon to see this and the poor little girl about 10 carrying the milk would just stop a reasonable distance from the old gentleman relieving himself and wait until he was done before she continued her walk home. It was no big deal I guess.

German cows are huge. I mean 6 feet or more tall at the shoulder. They would herd them down the street in the morning and evening from the field to the barn. Usually being urged on by a small boy who you couldn't even see because the cows were so big.

German bottled beer has a snap top. It is a ceramic plug with a rubber washer on it connected to springy wires that lock it in place, kinda like the old fashioned mason jars. Well when you get a new guy in you take him out for a beer or two. You show of and use your pointer finger to knock the top off. But what you are really doing is hitting the release with your folded fingers just a millisecond before your pointer finger hits the top. So you tell the new guy to try it. Of course he can't do it and after a few tries his finger feels like it's broken.

Also German beer (at least back then) was around 9% alcohol. So after two beers you were drunk but you didn't know it because you only had two beers. So everyone is waiting for the new guy to have to get up and walk to the bathroom because he has no clue he is drunk. He'll stagger and maybe knock a chair over and sometimes needs help and he's laughing because he still hasn't figured it out.

I bought a Mercedes when I first got there. I know it sounds expensive but I paid $900 for a 4 year old Mercedes 220e their cheapest model. But it ran great and we went everywhere in Europe with it. Because I was military it had what was known as "green plates". The combination of Mercedes and green plates saved me a lot of hassle. I could cross borders (this was before the EU) and the border guards would just wave me through. The few times they did stop me seemed more like a greeting than asking questions. Didn't matter what country you went to they always treated you better in a Mercedes with green plates.

The autobahn had no speed limit but it was generally two lanes either way and the trucks in the right lane would drive 80-100 KM/hr so you had to drive in the right lane or drive slow. The fastest my car would go was something over 220 km/hr. That's pretty fast especially when the traffic next to you is doing less than half that. But every now and then a Porsche or Mercedes 550 sl would come up behind you flashing their lights for you to move over. Curtesy says you should but slowing to 100 km just so some jerk can pass kind of pisses you off. So this one time a Mercedes 550 sl was ripping up behind me flashing his headlights for me to pull over. I couldn't the right lane was full. SO at full speed he pulled onto the median and passed me on the left on the grass. Those Mercedes can really handle in that wet grass.

OK I'm done now.