The four of us met 5,000 miles and 50 years ago. Bill, Jim and I had lived our entire lives in Colorado but never knew each other until we landed in the same U.S. Army outfit. The fourth, Ray, moved to the Denver area after being discharged.
We served together during 1960 and ’61 in an engineer battalion located at the site of the great World War I battlefield of Verdun and, with the exception of Jim, were there when the Berlin Wall crisis erupted in the late summer of 1961. War and the possibility of war was never far from our thoughts, and during those tense months, as the bricks were laid one upon another and the tanks sat facing each other, it seemed too possible.
Serving in the Cold War was a strange period. We had suspended our lives for a few years to stand watch and to present a warrior’s face to the Communists while high school classmates back home went off to college, got married and landed jobs. Now there was a real possibility that we would be on the new battlefield when the third world war began.
Every day during that time, we drove by the still churned up front lines, where nearly three-quarters of a million young men died between February and November 1916, and we wondered if that was to be our fate.
It never came to that, of course, but that was known only to the future.
By late 1962, the crisis simmered down to what passed as normal tensions, and we returned to “the world” as civilians. For the next few decades, we went our own way, earned a living and raised our families. We were too busy to deal with the experiences of the service, and filed them away along with our uniforms and DD Form 214.
Thanks to the Internet and the time available because of retirements, we reconnected, and began to meet for breakfast. And to dredge up memories.
Having served so long ago, those days took on the coloration of myth. Working in mud that seemed to have no bottom while always wet from Europe’s incessant rain, pulling guard duty from 2 to 4 in the morning when even the crickets were asleep, and drinking too much when off duty in town became instead the labors and triumphs of Ulysses.
It was a form of code used when you don’t want to sound heroic but when you feel, well, proud of what you endured.
This past week we met at the usual place, the Valley Inn in Lakewood, and the conversation took its usual course as we compared the bases where we had survived basic training. From there, the talk drifted to our experiences on a troop ship. It amused us greatly, but had to be boring to anyone listening in. That’s the way it is with old soldiers: We have each other, and we understand.
But we were overheard. When it was time for the check to arrive, the waitress told us that another customer had picked up the check and wanted us to know that he appreciated our service.
The one thing we never expected happened: Our long-ago service was acknowledged and saluted. Had we met the secret benefactor, we would have said, truthfully, that it had been our privilege.
Harry Puncec of Lakewood is a retired printer.
