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Too important to have a beer with an Army buddy - Fate Fairies - book version
This entry was posted on 11/14/2011 1:45 AM and is filed under Fate Fairies:Fate Fairies - book version.
Aside from my own name and my wife's name, I rarely use real full names when writing stories regarding experiences I have had in life. I do it out of deference to people's privacy. And, like the old TV show said, "The names have been changed to protect the innocent"; or, in my pen's case...often the guilty. I will also often use a good amount of first names - some real; some made up. And, I must admit, if someone is really turning over every stone in my vignettes, they may very well recognize themselves.
I think I will break ranks in this vignette and use a real name. I am not sure what prompted me to look at some Websites dedicated to military lore. Not long ago, I had to go in the hospital for a rather serious episode - perhaps I was prompted to search for things from the past by yet another bout with mortality. I have searched for my old duty stations before on the Internet. There are dozens of Websites set up to help former GIs find old buddies and see what their old bases might be like today...if they are even still in existence.
My old duty station was in a decrepid facility the Nazis had used in Nuremberg (Nurnberg), Germany. It was called Merrel Barracks. It still had damage to its outside walls from the war. While perusing a Website about all the Army units that had been stationed there after World War II and during the Cold War, I only ran across one guy from my small engineer unit (84th Engineer Company) that was throwing out a holler to anyone that might remember him. When I emailed the address he had posted, it was no longer good.
I actually have thought of Ol' Jim Divelbiss now and then. He was in a different platoon than me. He was about the same age as I was. And, he had arrived at that poor old engineer unit, in that facility from hell, about the same time I did. We nodded to each other now and then. And after almost three years we had become as familiar to each other as some teacher from school and a student; a teacher you never took a class with yet saw in the hallway all the time.
Jim was a quiet guy. They called him "Woodstock." Had I taken the time to actually get to really know him, perhaps I would know what the nickname meant. He was from California as far as I remember.
For three years, we traveled through time together with about 120 other GIs that rotated in and out of the small unit. In those years we were dragged to every corner of Southern Germany for some reason or other. All the time working at arm's length, yet never really getting to know each other.
And, when it came time for us both to go home, that too we forged through in sync. One day, I was sitting in some other guys' room in our corner of the creepy old military barracks. In sauntered Jim in his usual laid-back, California way. To my surprise he headed straight for me.
"Hey Bob, you want to go get a beer before we head for home in a couple days?" Jim said.
I did not take too much time to return, "Pretty busy Jim, maybe tomorrow."
But, tomorrow never happened. I blew off the offer. For some reason, of a million moments in the Army, that moment often comes back to my mind. Not the big guns, not the girls, not the Russians, not the beer, not the tactical nukes, not the stress, not the homesickness, not our junk equipment, not the Germans, not the assholes one deals with in the military...but there, there often comes to my mind, that moment when I flippantly blew off a comrade's olive branch.
Jim was wiser than I was. He must have known we would never meet again. He also must have had the intuition to understand that two guys that had experienced so much bullshit together, might regret not having sat down to have at least one chat over a beer.
Jim Divelbiss, I hope if you Google your own name, and you find yourself on my pages. You are a rare dude indeed in these high tech / hyper-information times, because when I Google you, only that one sight comes up with your old out-of-service email. You can find my email on the Webpage version of my platform at www.cooldadiomedia.com , or...oh what the hell? Just email keithrg13@cooldadiomedia.com and that should do the trick.
I hope you are well Jim; and, I hope there is still time to have that beer.
Note: This blog "Fate Fairies" book version Category is a work in progress. The original vignettes are being edited for book form. Go to the Cooldadiomedia Web site and the Fate Fairies Page for an ordered chronology of the book vignettes (chapters).
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