During my junior year of high school, in 1984, we did an exchange with a Kreisgymnasium in Germany. Their students came to us during the school year for several weeks, and that June was my first trip overseas.
My exchange student, we’ll call him Andreas, had already visited us and I nearly cancelled my trip as I really didn’t want to deal with him again. If one looked up “creepy” in the dictionary, they’d find his photo- when he walks in the room, the goldfish stop swimming and all that jazz. The guy used borrow my bike and vanish for the entire afternoon- he finally explained that he was pedaling all the way downtown to go to “Bwoo Movies”. (Blue Movies was half block long porn shop and peep show extravaganza on W. Liberty Street.)
When I arrived in Frankfurt, his father picked me up at the airport
His dad, Hermann, was as German as one could get- alpine hat, Trachten jacket, etc.. He was also a dead ringer for the aged Dr. Mengele (I feel awful making this comparison but it’s true). The drive home was about an hour, and his English was as rough as my German at the time (3 years of high school), but things turned out just fine.
About 2 minutes into the drive, he apologizes for his lack of fluency and explains that it’s been a few years since he learned English in the HJ. Seeing an opening, I produced a photo of myself in an LAH uniform with an MP40. His excitement perplexed me a bit, but then he explained that he had been a Fallschirmjäger in the War and he had no idea Americans did things like that (reenacting.) Things were looking up.
Andreas’ mom was a very tall, rather large lady, about half her husbands’ age, who knew zero English. She was incredibly sweet, a fantastic cook, but she had trouble with the letters R and L- so the phrase “Wowwin! Aufstehen!” is forever burned in my memory. His parents made for a very unique couple and I never found out exactly how they got together.
His sister, Michelle, was the same age as I, thankfully quite normal and spoke my language better than I did- she became my safe zone.
Over the next few weeks I got a much better handle on my German, suffered horrible jet lag, tried to be polite and act impressed with Andreas’ comic book collection (while trying not to touch anything in his room), got fat on Mom’s cooking, and had a guided tour of all the historical sights in the area from Hermann. His dad basically adopted me.
The house backed up to the Teutoburg forest, and the old paratrooper wore my 17- year-old-cross-country-running-ass out hiking the trails. The one slang expression that I never forgot was “Marsch, marsch bis dem Arschwasser kocht!”
We also spent time going over the battlefield where the Germanic tribes defeated three Roman legions in 9 B.C..
Although I was deathly curious, I had opted to leave the topic of WW2 alone. He frequently alluded to the War, but it was only in passing and never in any detail. Finally, one afternoon toward the end of my trip, he called me into the kitchen. On the table were his awards and a few photos, and he said “I’ll tell you some things.”
He happily recalled his time in HJ, his basic training, and jump school. This was probably half of the discussion, but, sadly, I don’t recall much of it.
Then he said “Kreta” and his demeanor changed completely- he went from enjoying old memories to deathly serious. He said he’d only been with his unit a few days when they jumped on the island. All he would say about the battle was, “they were ready for us. Everybody died. It was awful. Absolutely awful.”
Later he talked about Africa, (Ramcke Brigade) and he relaxed a lot. He dwelt mainly on the environment there- the heat, the cold, the filth, the smell, but above all…the flies. He emphasized that no photo or film can convey the misery inflicted by swarms of thousands of flies. There were several suicides and everyone thought that the “insect mania” was a contributing factor. In Tunisia he was evacuated after being injured in a car wreck. “Driving your car into a tank is bad. A tank driving into your car is worse.”
Cassino was his final action. Aside from describing the battle as “incredibly hard”, he would only relate how it ended for him. At the time of his capture, during the pull back from Monastery Hill, he was carrying one of his badly wounded friends over his shoulder- and he explained that the only reason the Poles didn’t shoot them was because the injured paratrooper was unconscious and totally naked. As his identity was uncertain, and the Poles were in a hurry, they feared he could be one of theirs and didn’t want to detach any men to carry him- so they let them go. Hermann ended up in England as a POW.
Postscript:
I have no recollection of Hermann’s unit(s) or whether he ever told me- aside from Ramcke Brigade. He was an NCO, and the awards he had in his box were both EK’s, para badge, Kreta cuff title, and wound badge, plus a marble-sized hunk of shrapnel from Africa. He told me he never felt the impact, just blood on his leg- he dropped his pants, followed the blood and dug it out of his buttock with his fingers- applied a plaster to the hole and pocketed his souvenir and went on. His wound badge was for the car & tank wreck in Tunisia. That detail seemed to amuse him.
We never discussed what weapons he carried (although he was fascinated that we could own live “MP’s” in the US), what model of smock he wore, whether he had a helmet cover or any such reenacting nerd details. I know it’s hard to believe for some people but he was the first WWII vet that had told me much of anything so I just listened and he chose the subjects. It’s been over 30 years and probably forgot much of what he said that afternoon.
The wounded paratrooper that had unintentionally saved his life died by the time they reached the bottom of mountain.
Hermann died two years after I left of a massive heart attack while cutting grass with a scythe behind the house. (That was his customary workout.) Michelle told me that my visit had made him incredibly happy- his disappointment in his own son being such a nitwit had really been hard on him. Apparently that day in the kitchen was the one and only time he ever spoke about the War in any detail.
A few years ago, I did some internet stalking and it looks like Andreas ultimately turned out alright- he’s now a university professor of some renown. We haven’t spoken since his father died.
The same Summer that Hermann passed away, I grew bored with college, dropped out and joined the Army. Over the next several years I largely forgot about that trip and what I’d experienced. Then one day during a combat equipment jump, on a blistering, late Summer afternoon, I was drifting toward a brush-covered knoll next to an airfield. Everything had been bone dry for weeks and the foliage was already brown- as I was trying to steer my chute away from the bushes it suddenly occurred to me how much this looks like Crete- and I remembered the old Fallschirmjäger and thought what it would be like if this DZ was hot. Awful.