I met Admiral Friedrich Ruge when I was assigned to pick him up at his home in Tubingen and take him to a formal dinner being held at the Deputy CinC's house in Stuttgart.  It was late 1977;   I remember it was a very chilly night.  I was selected, I think, because I could speak a little German and had proven that I was able to get around without too much supervision.  I had never heard of the Admiral Ruge.  I was told that he was a retired German Admiral and I that should be respectful and very careful with him as he was somewhat of a hero to a many of Germans.

I found his house with no difficulty.  It was a better-than-average home in a fairly upscale neighborhood;  (single-family dwellings in Germany are considerably more pricy than  similar houses in the States, so a modest home smaller than 2000 square feet could easily go for more than half a million dollars,  or actually about a million Deutsche Marks).  I rang the bell.  He came to the door,  introduced himself to me very formally,  and thanked me for coming to get him.  He acted as though I were doing him a personal favor instead of having been assigned to transport him.  The drive from his house to the site of his dinner engagement took less than an hour.  Other than ensuring the passenger's comfort,  I did not usually initiate conversations with my "Principals" (that's security provider talk for passengers).  But the old Admiral was very outgoing, friendly, and interesting.  He quickly suggested we switch from German to English (he said he needed to brush up for the dinner but I think that was his polite way of making the conversation easier on me)  He asked about my service record and especially wanted to know about my time in Vietnam,  my impressions of the country,  and how the war had been  prosecuted. 

The conversation was so riveting that it seemed that no time at all had passed and we had arrived at the General's house.  I pulled up to the door and helped him out of the car then turned him over to the house staff.  Then I parked and went into the kitchen to wait with a couple of other drivers.  The trip back to Tubingen was just as lively, conversation-wise, and was over before I realized it.  He thanked me again as though I were really being inconvenienced and said he had enjoyed our "car talk".

On my return to Vaihingen, I considered the things I had learned about the Admiral.  He was then in his eighties.  During WWII, he had been the senior Naval advisor on Field Marshal Rommel's staff from 1943 until 1944, when he went off to "watch ships being built".   He had lived and worked with one of the most famous WWII personalities, had been a part of the planning and execution of the campaign in Africa and had advised Rommel during the prepartations in France for the expected invasion. 

He had been a Prisoner after the war but was released when it was determined he was not a war criminal.  He had retired from naval service but had been recalled to serve as the first Chief of Naval Operations for the new, post-war German navy.  He was impressed to hear that I had read a lot about the war in Europe.  He could recall dates and places with no difficulty, recite conversations from so many years ago, and had clear insights into why things happened the way they did.

Over the next five-plus years I spent at EUCOM, I had the opportunity to drive for the old gentleman at least six or seven more times.  I found out that he requested that I be his driver each time.  Every time I drove for him, our conversations picked up as if no time had passed.  He told me about a running feud he had with an East German magazine that had printed some lies about him and how he had written to them to straighten them out.  They had invited him to come to the East and talk it over.  He laughed at how stupid they must have thought him...he knew they still had warrants for his arrest.  The East Germans considered him a traitor. 

My favorite conversations, though, were when he told me about his days as a young naval officer in WWI, living at sea aboard a destroyer while racing around the Baltic and North Atlantic, where things were always wet and cold.  He was involved in the famous scuttling of the German fleet at Scapa Flow.  He served under four different German governments.  And stories about WWII,  when he took part in operations against Poland, and then in the English Channel and North Sea.  He served in France and Italy before joining Rommel's staff in Africa.  He left Rommel in 1944 to be the Director of Ship Construction where he finished the war.  The Admiral was present in so much of Twentieth Century history.  He was right there!  He never made excuses for what he did;  he wasn't an apologist.  He said he was a sailor in the service of his country and did what that required.  I never asked and he never said if he had been a member of the Nazi Party;  membership sometimes was a matter of survival.  But I knew without asking that this was a man of honor, a true warrior in the traditional sense.

In the years I spent at Patch Barracks, home of EUCOM, I met many interesting and some historic figures.  I met people who thought they were historic, some who wanted to be (but mostly fell short) and a very few who were key players on the world's stage.  I counted it as an extreme priviledge to have the opportunity to meet so many of them.  As their driver,  I often had private, one-on-one time with them.  I feel that Admiral Ruge was by far the most interesting of them all.