The good Army Administrative folks in Frankfurt shooed me on a bus with a sack lunch. I had only learned a couple hours earlier that I would be stationed somewhere near Nuremberg (Nurnberg - Germany spelling has an umlaut mark over the "u"). The bus was a contractor rig with soft seats - like the kind senior citizens ride around American in. I later learned it was called "The Cruit Bus." "Cruit" short for recruit. It really came to fruition when the big bus pulled into the quadrangle of the old German Army compound I was to call my duty station. It was a multi-story brick menagerie with bullet holes from World War II still on some of the outside walls. The bus parked itself in the center of the parade grounds surrounded by the four multi-story billets. Suddenly from some of the windows flew beer cans, garbage, flashlight batteries, and various fruit. As the handful of us exited the bus we were jeered and screamed at by onlookers hanging from the open windows. Their screams echoed in the old architecture. Are these my fellow soldiers? Perhaps this is the brig.

   The smell of the old city hit me immediately. It just smelled like a place that had been around for over a thousand years - coal, wood, brick, smog, electric street cars, home cooking from the surrounding neighborhoods, the lake down the road, and maybe even - death. I was informed my Engineer unit was out of town. They spent a bunch of time out of town. After a couple nights in the transit center I was whisked up to my unit by the Czechoslovakian border. 

   The station was dingy and dusty. There was stucco barracks, with cement floors. The hole of the landscape in the post was dust and dirt. I was introduced to my platoon. They were all playing poker in there building. German beer bottles lined the tables and walls like sentinels. I guy with a beer bottle sticking out of his Army jacket introduced himself as the Lieutenant and then sat back down and dealt the cards. The next day I was shown my vehicle, a large scoop loader tractor like the one I had trained on back in Missouri. A guy named Chaggo from Puerto Rico said not to bother trying to start it up. It had not run in a year. Besides, they did not have enough diesel to fill it anyway. They just moved it back and forth from Nurnberg to the border on a flatbed truck. All our equipment was in a perennial state of repair. "'Nam" has sucked the life out of the military. 

   Back in Nurnberg I stayed rather introverted for the first six months. One of the first tasks a cruit must do is run to McDonald's and get everyone in the squad Dupple Burgers and Pom Frits (burgers and fries). In April of '75 we watched the collapse and evacuation of "'Nam" on TV. Most of my unit had been there. They talked quietly amongst themselves about it for weeks. 

   I began to wander out of post after work and started what I called "midnight Schnitzel runs." Most of the ubiquitous Guest Houses served great Wienershnitzel. Our barracks was in the region of town with all the old Nazi rally grounds. The Germans still used them for various functions. They were in various states of disrepair. We played football in one of the old parade grounds. German girls would watch us with incredulous expressions on their faces. Down the road was a park called the Dutzendteich or I believe Dozen Lakes. Street cars were also ubiquitous - the rattle of the cars was alway in your ears. 

   At the end of that first year in Germany our company commander sent us down to Bad Tolz in the mountains to train with the Special Forces guys. They had a two to three week training program on some of the skills they practiced in their trade. We were trained in rock climbing and ropes, escaping capture, stealth troop movement, and the use of an assortment of enemy weapons among other things. It was one of the more influential experiences in my military time - Self Confidence Training.

   This week's Wisconsin soldier to remember is Army Specialist Eugene A. Uhl III, 21, of Amherst. Uhl was with Battery C, the 1st Battalion, 320th Field Artillery Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. Eugine was Wisconsin's seventh soldier to die in Iraq. Uhl was his family's only son, the youngest of four children, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel quoted his mother as saying he would have been the last male family member likely to pass on the Uhl name. He was scheduled to be married in June of 2004. According to the Journal Sentinel his mother also said he would have turned 22 on Thanksgiving. Uhl had been stationed in Iraq since February. He entered the regular Army in June 2002 after first joining the Army National Guard in 1999 and he expected to make the military a career. Eugene was killed when two 101st Airborne Division UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters collided in mid-air over Mosul, Iraq, on November 15, 2003. This was the same crash that killed Army Sgt. Warren S. Hansen, 36 who was last week's Daily Dadio honored Wisconsin soldier.

   3,422 Americans have been killed in Iraq since Spring 2003.

   25,378 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Iraq since Spring 2003.

   75 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring 2003.

   102 journalists (several nationalities) have been killed in Iraq since Spring 2003.

Soldier of the week, military casualty, and journalist casualty information sources: Committee to Protect Journalists; cnn.com; and, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.