On my 77th birthday, 27 October 2024, Patrice and I traveled from Paris to Berlin for four days. It was disappointing.We should have spent four weeks.
. I had been stationed in Berlin (1971 -1974), a young (promoted to captain in 1972?) flight commander, 6912th Security Squadron, leading America’s finest young (There were a couple extremely old men on the flight, about 35-40 years old) men and women (Yes, there were dipshits among them, I the first among equals).
Kurt Maier, Patrice’s uncle, periodically visits Germany to lecture on the Holocaust. If interested, go back to an earlier article. .https://liarspath.com/2019/11/patrice-uncle-kurt-the-holocaust/
Le Train Blue, a restaurant in Gare de Lyon, is Patrice’s favorite place to wait for a train. Recently restored, in this 19th century restaurant, rich Parisians waited in style for their trains to the Mediterranean.
A ceiling painting of Mont Blanc in Le Train Bleu, Michel Devrient’s grandfather, a turn-of-the-century Swiss artist, participated in its creation.
I suppose a birthday in one’s 7th decade inspires retrospection visualized like one of those Francois Truffaut New Wave B&W movie one watched at the Play Circle in the UW Memorial Union, a B&W still, or 8mm jerky image projected onto a wall, or that washed-out color Beta cartridge recovered to a CD disc.
In October 1973 Israel was of no particular concern to me (Though I had read Leon Uris’ Exodus in high school). On Yom Kippur, 6 October 1973, the combined Egyptian and Syrian armies launched a surprise attack on Israel. Hmm, I thought, that sucks. The Syrian Army came a few hours from breaking through into Galilee, but chose to stop short of the summit for the night, since they were so in advance of the ‘plan.'. It was enough. The IAF using terrain masking against the SA-6 acquisition radar, was able to blunt the Syrian armor. It had been very very close.
For the well-born Ivy-League children chanting From the River to the Sea, Israel was at that moment, as the Barry McQuire pop song of my era went, on the eve of destruction.
Then, On the night of October 24, 1973, my flight was on mid-shift, and I was in the comm center reading traffic. The high speed printers began to kick out message traffic–DEFCON action items–by the mile, hieroglyphics to me. The US Armed Forces had gone on DEFCON 3 nuclear alert. Holy smokes! Captain Robert Townsend, perhaps not the most professional officer of this man’s Air Force, was as deep into the heart of the Warsaw Pact as any US officer (save for a US military attache or two stationed in Moscow).
I took the elevator to the top of the great antenna array, I looked east at five Soviet Armies (plus the 16th Air Army) training to fall upon our Vietnam-depleted US Army, and upon me. The Soviet officer class was raring to go; General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet Union’s strong and intelligent CP General Secretary, held them in check. (Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your take on history, he held onto power well into his dotage, thus bringing about the collapse of the Soviet Union.)
Shit, batman! My farm, my family, my (wo)men, my country, were threatened. Luckily, the nuclear alert was of short duration, but the threat remained (The war plan that brought Israel to the ‘eve of destruction’ was a standard off-the-shelf Soviet war plan whose purpose was to destroy NATO.)
Over the next few years, I became the dedicate professional officer I should have been 3-4 years earlier. I researched Soviet war theory, planning exercises in Berlin, then later at the National Security Agency, Fort George G. Meade, Maryland. Post-NSA then returned to HQ USAFE Rammstein to build a military that would trash the Soviet war plan.
Along the way, I made good friends–officers, enlisted and civiliam—who after all theseyears remain friends. I am awestruck at their forgiveness.
Still friends after all these years, Berlin
