ASAE > Sinzig DF Detachment Germany
Sinzig Detachment
(Editor's Note: This tale could be about any DF Det of the 50s, 60s, early 70s.)
There are times when everything just works out for the best and the ASA was certainly that way for me.
By the time graduation at Devens rolled around, I was scheduled to go to Thailand, which was supposed to be good duty. I never found out because on graduation day "stuff" happened and the entire class was block allocated to Germany. After a long boat ride I was at Herzo Base standing in front of the C.O., Capt Barr, going through the routine of having him review my personnel file while I stood shaking in my fairly new boots. He threw me for a bit of a loop when he said "I see you're from Rogers City Michigan – do you know a family named Haneckow"? I not only knew the family, I partied with the youngest girl before I left for Germany. Of course I failed to mention that when I found out her brother Duane was a Staff Sgt at Herzo. I have no idea if Duane had anything to do with this or not, but after 2 months on base, I found myself being transferred to a detachment in Sinzig. There were guys at Herzo who had been waiting for years to go to a detachment, so I'm sure I didn't make any friends.
Sinzig was "up north" somewhere and since I had absolutely no idea of where I was in relationship to North, South, East or West, it really didn't make a lot of difference. I was going somewhere and a lot of people were jealous, so it had to be good. As it turned out, we were about midpoint between Bonn and Koblenz – maybe 25 miles to each - with Bonn being the main attraction since there were English speaking people there and a big PX. That's also where we got our mail and if you're going to be a "spy" what better address to have than "C/O American Embassy, Bonn"? CLICK HERE FOR THE REST OF THE STORY
See Also Duane Hanekow's email comments
|
