The first people we met when our bus from Frankfurt pulled into Baumholder were two E5s from my new platoon. A buck sergeant, whose name escapes me, and a Specialist named Greg. They took me and my family to the StadtKrug Hotel and got us settled in and then took me on post to sign in and begin the "processing" process. Over the next couple of months, I learned more about my new stewardship: twenty-five vehicles, twenty-some drivers and fuel-handlers, ammo handlers and multi-million dollar fuel and ammunition stockpiles. The platoon was the Support Platoon for an Armored Battalion; we brought the fuel, bullets, chow, and toilet paper to the war-fighters in the tanks. Half of the vehicles were fuel tankers and half were ammo carriers. I was also responsible for several ammo bunkers in the Ammo Supply Point (ASP) where we stored the Service Load (the real-deal, go-to-war ammunition as opposed to the Training Ammo used for...training) and several fuel storage tanks. It took awhile to get up to speed on the platoon's operation and I am not the kind to jump in and start ranting about what was wrong (those guys yell to be noticed, not to make corrections). But by the time I had been there for a couple of months I had a pretty good handle on who was efficient and who was...well...in need of a little motivation. The two buck sergeants turned out to be the mainstays of the ammo section. There was a buck sergeant and a corporal in the fuel section who were real ball-carriers so the platoon was basically sound, I really didn't have to do much tuning up to get great production from the platoon.
During the break-in period, we got to know the soldiers' families and MC worked her magic, preparing young wives to deal with being alone, in a strange country, with a husband who would spend weeks at a time away. It is discouraged to "fraternize" with the lower ranks but the wives don't have any rank and several of the younger wives looked up to MC as a mentor. The wife that we were fondest of and closest to was Greg's wife, Teresa.
Teresa was a frail-looking, very pretty, petite strawberry-blonde. She had had Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma as a child and the treatment left had her with some heart issues. But she was a very vibrant and fun person with a great sense of humor. We loved her. We shared holiday dinners, and they came over and played board games with us on New Years Eve (a long-standing tradition in our home).
Teresa's mom and dad come over from Oregon and we hit it off with them as well. They thanked us for being Teresa's overseas surrogate folks. It was a pleasure.
When Teresa became pregnant, it caused a huge stir in their family. They were excited like most new parents, but there was a serious risk involved...the fear that the strain of childbirth would be too much for Teresa's heart. So all through the pregnancy she was carefully monitored.
We had a lot of fun trying to come up with a name for the new baby...I won't go into a lot of detail on how, but some of the ideas were: "Checkbook", "Chockblock", "Bud", and several others. Bud was Teresa's favorite.
We had a lot of fun teasing Greg, who insisted that he wasn't going to be one of those diaper-changing, bottle-feeding, rocking -the-baby dads. That would all be Teresa's job.
When time came for the baby to be born there was still a lot of discussion about a C-section or natural delivery, but Teresa solved the debate by going into labor and delivering her own new little girl. The baby came out with some problems of her own, wet lung and low readings and suddenly the urgency shifted from Teresa, who came through the whole thing smiling and healthy, to little Erica who went into the incubator with tubes and wires and IVs and constant monitoring.
The hospital crew kept the baby in the ICU for days and days. Greg and Teresa fretted and sat with the baby constantly. Finally, she gained some ground and almost overnight, she started putting on weight and needing less and less O2 and IVs and all that stuff. And before you know it, they were able to take her home. Everyone was home and safe, but Greg was a wreck. After months of fearing for his wife, then shifting gears to fear for his little five-pounder ("we got trout in Oregon bigger'n that!"), the relief was almost painful.
From that day on, whenever Greg was not on duty, Erica was permanently implanted on her daddy's shoulder. Teresa would show up at the motor pool after work to pick up Greg and he would get the baby out of the car and carry her around in the barracks while he did his end of the day checks on his troops, went to the mail room, or anything else he had to do. If I had to call him at home after hours for some reason, I could hear Erica cooing on his shoulder. Greg had one bedroom of their house set up with a HO scale train set, a really big one, and he and Erica spent lots of time in there running the trains and watching the lights and laughing.
Erica grew into a red-headed hellion; she was sweet and affectionate, but she kept her folks busy.
I got promoted and had the opportunity to move to Ludwigsburg to take a truck company as a First Sergeant and could not pass that up. We kept in touch with Greg and Teresa but we didn't get to see them nearly as much as before. Greg was able to finagle a re-assignment to a truck company in Mannheim, which put them closer to us by some. They added a little brother, Justin, to the family without a hitch. We visited them, they us, and generally we remained close friends for years. They moved down to Fort Huachuca, Arizona and we went out to California.
Greg got out of the Army in Arizona. He got a job driving over-the road. I retired and moved to Colorado. He stopped by to see us once and we called Teresa that evening. That was the last time we saw him.
We got a call one night; Greg told us that he had lost Teresa to a kind of liver cancer. We went through all the guilt: we should have done more, we should have gone to see them, we should etc, etc, etc. As if anything would have stopped the cancer from taking her. He was moving back to Oregon so family could help care for the kids.
But the little five-pounder, just a healthy-sized trout, grew up to be a real kid, with trophies to prove it. Erica became a national jr Karate champion at age seven. I hope she turns out to be as much like her mom as possible...she couldn't hope for more.