After days and days of sitting on our thumbs, we had to move to the washracks and get everything washed and steamed and tested and washed some more. Apparently there is some deadly little something in the sand down there that we were absolutely not allowed to bring back to Germany. The fact was that it was ground into every soldier's skin, clothes, boots, teeth, hair, and...well, you get the idea. Once the scrubbing was done, we were bused to an airport that was still under construction. The runways and the parking garage were finished, at least finished enough to house thousands of GIs long enough for their plane to come in...up to a three-week wait.

The Powers That Be didn't want us to bring AK-47s back to Germany. Amnesty barrels were everywhere; just drop in your contraband weapons, explosives, etc...no questions asked. The commander had a barrel outside his tent that grew five or six new AKs every night when no one was looking. The PTB warned us that if they found any unauthorized weapons or explosives during any of the three or four customs inspections we would go through before we left the desert, we would be moved to the bottom of the re-deployment roster. That would mean at least another two to three months in Saudi. The commander told the troops the terrible things he would do to them if anyone caused us to be bumped out of our peach of a re-deployment date. When he was done I told them that as bad as all that sounded, what I would do was make sure the wives back in Germany knew who caused the delay...so John, my driver, and I took a trip out into the desert, found a quiet intersection of two MSRs (Main Supply Routes), dug a three foot deep hole, and buried our AKs. Nice ones, too; paratrooper models with folding wire stocks and folding triangle bayonets. Sigh.

The good thing about the garage was that it was mostly underground and stayed a lot cooler than the surface. There was a Baskin-Robins Ice Cream shop, a pizza place, and every now and then some band I never heard of would come along and play for us...real loud...head-banger crap...but it was free and it was live.

While we were in the garage, we were issued the sand-colored BDUs that all the Stateside units had. Most of the units that had come from Germany never got issued the "chocolate chips". But we had them now. Everyone going back to Germany had to wear their "sandies"...there would be people taking pictures. And there were. We flew out of our incomplete airfield non-stop all the way to Stuttgart. On the way we had to watch a video presentation put together in Hollywood...Whitney Houston leading a bunch of others telling us what a great job we'd done and how proud they were of us...it was... almost... touching ...almost...ahhh... it was crap. I kept asking them (to myself), "Where the Hell were you twenty-five years ago?" Anyway, it did help me get to sleep.

We landed at Stuttgart and were met by a General and he shook every one of us by the hand and then we waited in a tent for a bus to take us home. The buses pulled onto Flak Kaserne and our families were waiting and we unloaded; hugged and kissed; we counted the weapons; hugged and kissed some more; locked up the guns; hugged and kissed; then took off for the house. It was just shy of five months since we'd boarded those buses to go to DESERT SHIELD/DESERT STORM. I had thought we would be gone for two or three years. Anyway, I told you all that so I could tell you this. Things were changing...a lot.

Within a couple of days we were summoned to a meeting in Mannheim where we were informed that our unit was being transferred from the 4th Trans Battalion to the 181st Trans Battalion. The 181st was stationed in Turley Barracks but we, the 515th, would remain in Ludwigsburg until further notice. You see, because the war was over and the cold war was over and the PTB had decided to send a bunch of units back to the States and the Army was gonna be a lot smaller and places were gonna close and some mass confusion was on the horizon, we would remain in Flak Kaserne so we could close it up and turn out the lights when everyone else left...then we would move to Mannheim.

We no sooner got our minds wrapped around that when I got a call from the Greater Stuttgart Community Headquarters in Robinson Barracks informing me that I was now the Post Sergeant Major for Flak Kaserne. Even though there were a couple of real sergeants major on the post, they were involved in moving or de-activating their units. And besides, my trucks were on a big boat and wouldn't be in port for a couple of weeks...I had nothing else to do.

Units were leaving right and left; some had already gone, and we had to close out all the barracks and get them ready to turn over to the Germans. We couldn't sell or turn in any of the equipment; it wasn't worth the money it would take to ship them to the authorized disposal location. So we had to trash practically new barracks furniture, desks, chairs, and lockers and haul them to the dump. All accounted for by notarized inventories in triplicate. There were upgrade contracts that had to be finished...because the quit clause penalties would cost more than having the work completed. So empty barracks were given new paint jobs, upgraded mess equipment, etc, etc, etc. It was a crazy time.

There were some advantages to being the Post Sergeant Major. In a matter of a couple of weeks, most of the troops were gone. The 4th Trans was going to be arriving soon, but almost everyone else was out of there. We owned the ball field, and the gym; we had the PX and snack bar all to ourselves. No crowds; it was cool. Then...the 4th came home from the Storm. And the very next morning very early, I was summoned to the 4th Battalion headquarters to see the Sergeant Major. The one I didn't like.

I had no sooner stepped into his office when he began to unload on me. Not in a screaming way, but sort of a drooling, hand-wringing, boy-have-I-got-you way. He informed me that now that we were all back in Germany and his unit was being split up and several of his companies were going to different commands in the States, it would be up the the 515th, which he understood was not going to go back to the States, to take care of all the nastiest, dirtiest, ...in fact ALL of the work details, cleaning every other unit's equipment and vehicles and tents and everything. Because his soldiers were going to be too busy, resting, recuperating, and preparing to go back to the States. All delivered with that cat-swallowed-the-canary smile.

I took a deep breath and informed him that, while I understood there was a lot to do getting ready to clear out of Flak and rotate his units back to the States, that his troops needed to recover (this is an Army connotation, it means all that cleaning the tents and field gear and equipment and vehicles so you can get back to doing your job stuff), and should have some time to be with their families and such, I was afraid he would have to find some one else to assist him in these things. Unless of course, he cleared it with my Sergeant Major, one I was beginning to be fond of, the Command Sergeant Major of the 181st Trans Battalion, an asset of V Corps. But since our vehicles were back and would soon be road-worthy, the 515th would soon be in full operation, fueling the units of V Corps. And oh, by the way, since my new duties as Post Sergeant Major covered all the tenet units of Flak, regardless of their parent units, I needed a five-man detail from each of his companies every morning at my office at 0700.

Yeah, I know, I pushed it. I had gone into his office intending to be civil with him but he started in on me and I lost all sense of accomodation. He was a jerk. And as for the work detail, I made that up on the spot...a reaction to his jackassedness. He turned an interesting color, a purplish black, and ordered me out of his office. I learned later that he made a few calls to various agencies, trying to change the status of things. The 515th was the custodial unit at Flak; everyone else was considered a transient, and things were getting done efficiently so no one was interested in changing the status quo. He had a conversation with my new Sergeant Major, who I was really getting to like, about attaching 515th to him until he left. That was met with near laughter as my new Sergeant Major, the one I was getting to like, explained to my old Sergeant Major, the one I didn't like, that the 515th was no longer even in VII Corps; there were a half a dozen Sergeants Major that would have to get their commanders to sign off on a move like that...right after they had gone through the whole mess of moving us the other way. When he told me about the phone call, my new Sergeant Major asked me, "Who is that Bozo?" I just pointed and said, "Nailed it !"

One of the things about Army life that holds true is that things always change. Sometimes for the better, sometimes not. When you have a jerk in your midst, either you move on or they will. I met a lot of jerks in my career; some of them worked for me and some of them I worked for. And to be fair, I suppose there are a number of folks out there who were glad to see me go a time or two. There were lots of times that I had a jerk over me who made my life miserable and there was nothing I could do about it. This particular jerk had targeted me on the day we met. I was friends with someone that he had history with and that made me his enemy. I had never even seen him before. This could have been so much worse, but it was one of those times when the stars and planets all aligned and I was able to best him at every turn. I have to admit it...it felt good