Suzanne Rice

Jul 12 2021

Off to War – 1971

During the class of 1969’s tenure at West Point (1965-69), the peak of the Vietnam War occurred. US combat units were dispatched in 1965, the bloodiest week of combat occurred during Tet of 1968, and the peak strength of 549,500 was reached in 1969. Our daily lives, especially with respect to military training, were inundated with war-themed events. When the time for branch selection and assignment preferences arrived, a significant percentage of us volunteered for Vietnam.

In June 1969, we graduated, took our 60 days of leave and the vast majority of us went on to Airborne School, Ranger School and the branch basic officer’s course. Army policy at that time mandated that all Vietnam volunteers had to complete two months of stateside unit duty, before deploying to the Republic of Vietnam (RVN).

I had been assigned to Fort Carson, Colorado to the 5^th Infantry Division (5th ID), later redesignated the 4^th Infantry Division (Mechanized) (4th ID Mech), which had rotated back from RVN. I was the battalion Assistant Operations Officer (Asst. S-3) in the 2/10 Infantry. My new bride, JoAnne, who had a degree in education, but was unable to find work as a teacher, did secure temporary employment using her sewing hobby skills as an associate in a fabric shop. Since nearly a year had passed without me receiving my orders for Vietnam and Jo wondering when I’d be leaving, I decided to call Infantry Branch. I was connected to a major, whom I’ll call Prevaricator. I identified myself, explained the situation and waited while he pulled up my file. After a few minutes, he said, “Let’s see. Oh, yes. Well, with the drawdown of US troops in country, the earliest you’ll be there is March of ’72. Now, I just finished filling an October requirement for 150 Captains, but I could swap you out for someone on the list and get you there sooner.” I respectfully declined and said that March of next year would be soon enough. Before hanging up, I repeated March of ‘72, which he confirmed.

In addition to my regular duties, I performed “other duties as assigned”, to include sitting on a brigade board considering promotions to the grade of Staff Sergeant (E6). About three weeks after I talked with the Infantry Branch assignments officer, one of the brigade administration NCOs, who had played on the brigade softball team with me, appeared before the board for an interview. After the board adjourned, as I was leaving brigade headquarters, he approached me and asked how he did. As I was not permitted to discuss actions of the board, I told him I couldn’t reveal the results. He jokingly said,” Well sir, if I don’t get promoted to E6, I’ll have to put you on orders for Vietnam.” I simply smiled.

I continued assisting the Battalion Operations Officer (S-3) in planning field operations and riot control training for the Battalion. Then one day, I received a call from that brigade admin NCO, who said (somberly, “Sir, I’ve got some bad news; I just received a Request for Orders (RFO) for you for Vietnam. “Back in those days an RFO was the precursor to receiving a hard copy of reassignment orders. Thinking this was part of a joke, I glibly responded,” Sure Sgt., and let me guess, I‘ve gotta be there in two weeks.” “No sir, not two weeks, but by 1 November.” I could tell from his tone that he was serious. Just having been assured by the assignments officer that the soonest I would be there was March of ‘72, I assumed somebody had screwed up.

I waited until the following day to call Major Prevaricator and when I finally got a hold of him, he said he had just received a rush requirement for another 150 captains and was scrambling to fill it, by moving everybody up to a sooner deployment. Since there were few American troop units still remaining in Vietnam, he told me I would be assigned to Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV).

Later that night when I got home, I told JoAnne about our accelerated schedule and suggested we revise our calendar to shift to the earlier date. Like the fine understanding Army wife that she is, she contained her consternation and decided that we would make the change sooner rather than later.

At the appropriate time, we completed the Permanent Change of Station (PCS) process, spent time with family, said our farewells, and I boarded the “big iron bird” headed for Oakland Army Air Terminal enroute to RVN.

Once I arrived in-country, 1 November 71, I began in-processing. During my initial reporting in to the administrative Specialist 4 (Spec4) at Military Region III (MR III) headquarters, he looked at my orders, glanced at me, uttered an epithet, followed by, “Sorry, sir, the last thing I need is another captain. I‘m not sure what to do with you, since I have no open slots.” This revelation appeared to contradict what Major Prevaricator led me to believe. Fancy that.

In the midst of doing the initial processing at Bien Hoa, I was suddenly told to report to the MR III adjutant. When I did, I found out that it was our classmate who was better known as the hockey team captain, who had just been tasked to recommend a Captain (O-3) for consideration as the MR III deputy commander’s aide de camp. He was reviewing files of O-3 officers who met the criteria and saw my name. Not wanting to put him in a bind and being somewhat curious, I agreed to be interviewed by the general (whose name I’ve forgotten). During the interview, I expressed appreciation for the opportunity, but thought I’d be more effective in that role after some combat time in the field. He appreciated my honesty and deferred to my wishes.

I was assigned to MACV Team 89 in Dat Do District, Phuoc Tuy Province, 50 miles southeast of Saigon on the South China Sea.

With Richard Nixon’s Vietnamization program in full swing, our orders were basically: “don’t get wounded, captured, or dead.“

For the most part, activity consisted of inspecting Vietnamese local force units, gathering intelligence and setting ambushes and patrolling with those local force units. We had a few enemy contacts, but activity was relatively “quiet”. The village in which our team compound was located was stable, although in other parts of the district, there was some guerrilla activity, typically handled by the Vietnamese. During this time, Jo and I stayed in touch via mail, and once I was even able to break away to the US base at Vung Tau, to my south, for a MARS call (the telephone/volunteer ham radio connection. (To learn more about a MARS call, read: Keeping in Touch With A Soldier). We began planning for my Rest and Recreation (R&R). Every soldier in Vietnam was permitted one R&R during a year’s tour of duty. One had to complete 30 days in-country to be eligible. Of the various choices, we had decided on Hawaii, which allocated seven days (including travel time). I put in my request and waited for the dates to be assigned. Jo, who was living with her parents, was then enrolled in a graduate program in education at the State University of New York (SUNY) – Oneonta, which would factor in to the logistics of us meeting in Hawaii.

Time passed, Thanksgiving came and went and a month later Christmas care packages arrived. Jo even sent me a small tree for our hooch. My mother-in-law, bless her heart, sent me a hip flask of bourbon (verboten) and a puzzle of the 1971 Playboy Playmate of the Year. That’s right – my mother-in-law! She always was very cool.

The American holidays of Christmas and New Years were mere precursors to the Lunar New Year (Tet) which was celebrated by the Vietnamese during the February timeframe. Prior to 1968, the holiday had been the occasion for an informal truce in the Vietnam War between South Vietnam and North Vietnam (and their communist allies in South Vietnam, the Viet Cong). But the fiasco of Tet of 1968, while an overall failure tactically, but a victory psychologically, put an end to that notion. We paid close attention to intelligence reports, planning operations carefully. All indicators were positive so we cautiously and optimistically, were still hoping for a “come home early surprise” – a 60-day drop. In any event, Jo and I had Hawaii to look forward to. When I finally received my R&R orders, the timeslot was a week, including Memorial Day on the front and & my 25^th birthday on the back. Jo made arrangements to stay at the Honolulu Hilton, and we would meet after my flight arrived and go to the hotel. This was done via snail mail, since Al Gore had not yet invented the Internet. Jo was, and still is, a master at vacation planning.

**Honolulu Hilton on Waikiki with Marblehead in the Background**

Little did we know then, what was in store…

Jun 29 2021

NRAS – 1973

In the fall of 1973, I was a lieutenant in a Howitzer Battery, 2^nd Squadron, 11 Armored Cavalry. The squadron was stationed at Daley Barracks in Bad Kissingen, Germany.

Our mission was to watch over the East German border portion of the Iron Curtain near Bad Neustadt in the Meiningen Gap. Our border camp was at Wollbach.

On October 6, 1973, The Arab Coalition started the Yom Kippur War with a surprise attack on Israel. West Pointers are trained military leaders, so it was no surprise that every classmate and graduate I knew paid very close attention to the conflict. (Related story: https://thedaysforward.com/panic-1973-war/)

Israel didn’t do so well during the first week of the war. Egyptian forces crossed the Suez Canal and drove deep into the Sinai desert. Syrian armor threatened to overwhelm the Golan Heights. The nation of Israel was in danger of being cut in half. Israeli losses of armor and aircraft were horrific. In spite of this, Israel held at the Golan and began to push back in the Sinai.

Now, lieutenants are not privy to a lot of military secrets, but they do hear rumors, and between October 10^th and October 22, there were rumors a-plenty. Rumor was, the US was pulling ammunition, M-60 tanks, artillery, armored vehicles, and F-4 Phantom jet fighters out of European war reserve stockpiles and flying them to Israel as fast as aircraft came available. Other rumors said the Russians were doing the same for the Egyptians and Syrians.

What the lieutenants didn’t know was that the Russians sent a letter to President Nixon early on October 23. The letter said Russia would unilaterally enter the fight against Israel if the US did not join them to force a cease fire. Russia alerted seven Soviet Bloc airborne divisions to be ready to move to the Mideast. One division, with its air transport, mobilized at an airfield in Yugoslavia. In addition to this, the Russian fleet sortied 97 combat ships into the Mediterranean to shadow US Navy assets. Both fleets were ready to shoot.

Israel was in danger of being destroyed if the Russians entered the war. Golda Meir authorized the IDF to arm some of its nukes. The Russians, in return, moved a ship with their nukes into a harbor in Egypt. World War III was in the air.

Around midnight, DC time, on October 23, the Nixon Administration ordered the US military to DEFCON 3. The DEFCON scale defines stages of US military readiness with 5 being normal and 1 being war is imminent or underway. DEFCON 3 directs selected US forces to increase readiness for deployment. The US wasn’t about to allow unilateral Russian intervention. US action made that perfectly clear to the Russian government.

Midnight October 23 in Washington DC is early morning October 24 in Germany. The day dawned as a beautiful crisp sunny autumn morning at Daley Barracks in Bad Kissingen, Germany. Around 0830 on Wednesday, October 24 (midnight October 23, Washington DC time), an NRAS B Team member and I, an NRAS A Team member, were called to the 2/11 ACR HQ to decode an NRAS message.

NRAS stands for Nuclear Release Authentication System. This system is designed to prevent a single individual from exploding an atomic bomb. The system works by requiring classified codes to be stored in a safe with two locks, an A Team Lock and a B Team Lock. Each lock has a different combination. Access to any coded material under two-man control requires the presence of an A Team member with the A Team combination and a B Team with the B Team combination. Armed guards prevented any monkey business.

Higher headquarters often transmitted NRAS messages to 2/11 ACR via 3-character alpha-numeric code groups. The first code groups of a message identified a specific sealed plastic card. Popping the seal on the appropriate card allowed us to open one of two books and get instructions for decoding the message. The first book was the “practice” book. The second was the “real” one. There was little distinction between the “practice” books and the “real” books.

2/11 Howitzer Battery NRAS teams were very experienced. Practice messages came in several times each week. All of us had worked together for 18 months and decoded dozens of practice messages and we were good at it. On October 24, we unlocked the safe, opened the practice code books, decoded the message AND THE CODE DIDNT BREAK.

So, we tried it a second time and THE CODE STILL DIDN’T BREAK.

We looked at each other and in a split second, in unison we said, “Oh Shit, it’s real” This was not a practice message. We opened the REAL BOOK and popped the sealed WAR RESERVE card. THE MESSAGE DID BREAK AND IT WAS A REAL NRAS ALERT. We and the US military all over the world were at DEFCON 3, one step away from war.

The message told us info we never imagined. It sent units all over the world to alert assembly areas, it released weapons we never heard of and put us one step away from sending our wives and children to Rhein Main Air Force Base for evacuation to the United States.

Suffice it to say, this presented Howitzer Battery, in Bad Kissingen with a serious issue. Our 2/11 Squadron E, F and G Cav Troops and the H CO M-60 tank company were doing tank gunnery at Grafenwöhr. Graf is a long way from Bad Kissingen. This meant the only thing patrolling our section of the East German border around the Meiningen Gap was an under-strength artillery battery with 6 155mm howitzers.

We didn’t have enough people to move out of Bad Kissingen to our alert position.

So, how do we tell our Battalion Commander about this? Turns out we got him on the phone and suggested he go have a conversation with any neighboring nuke capable 155mm artillery battalion commander about current events. He did. Before he could arrange rail transport to bring the 2/11 tanks back to BK, cooler heads prevailed. A truce was arranged in the Mideast and the alert was called off before the end of the day.

I didn’t play any kind of an important role in this incident, but I did get to see a tiny part of history.

Jun 27 2021

Adventures of a Firefighter – 1974 – 2007

Fort Lewis, WA was my next assignment after returning from Vietnam in 1973. It was at Fort Lewis that preparation for a second career began. I joined the local Fire Department (Thurston County District #3 (Lacey)) as a volunteer and became a certified Firefighter and Emergency Medical Technician. I started a Paramedic class in Pierce County but was dismissed when they excluded everyone who did not reside in Pierce County. When next assigned to complete the MP Officer Advanced course at Fort McClellan AL, I enrolled in the Paramedic course at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. This involved driving to Birmingham on Tuesday and Thursday evenings and living in my van on weekends when completing the hospital clinicals at various hospitals there. I had joined the Anniston Rescue Squad, was licensed as an Alabama Paramedic in 1978 and was the first Paramedic in the Rescue Squad. There, I saw more blood and guts than in the Republic of Vietnam. Disputes involving knives and shootings were a frequent occurrence.

Next selected for a graduate Fellowship in Forensic Medicine at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, I also completed a master of Forensic Science degree at George Washington University. Then assigned to the 172^nd Infantry Brigade in Fort Richardson Alaska, I volunteered with the Palmer Fire Department for about two years years. Later, in response to a request for an overseas assignment, I was stationed at the Army Training Center at Fort Irwin CA for four years as the Provost Marshal, and later as an Engineer Officer in J3, Force Modernization, US Forces Command located at Ft. McPherson in Georgia. After arriving in Georgia in1989, my family and I settled down in Peachtree City and I joined the Peachtree City Fire Department as a volunteer firefighter/Emergency Medical Technician. Since Georgia did not have reciprocity for Paramedics with Alabama, I took the Paramedic course again to be a Georgia-certified Paramedic. For two years, I served in a Volunteer capacity as a FireMedic. I retired from the Army in 1992 as the O-6 board was convening. Regardless of the outcome of promotion, it seemed apparent that I would finally be sent overseas, and I was determined not to disrupt the education of our two sons who were close to graduation as had happened to our eldest son. I decided that if I was going to continue in emergency service, I might as well get paid something. So, I became a career FireMedic with Peachtree City Fire Department working 24 hours on and 48 hours off. I responded to virtually every kind of known emergency: significant residential structure fires, industrial fires, numerous vehicle accidents and fires, aircraft crashes, flood rescue, and various accidents and injuries. In the early days we responded to calls of “general weakness”, which often turned out to be a patient in respiratory and/or cardiac arrest.

A couple of the more memorable calls included a small boy (3 ½ years) who had fallen and struck his head on the brick fireplace. That had created an obvious bruise and a laceration which was freely bleeding. The boy was near hysterical and no one had been able to calm him. When I walked into the room, the boy saw me, came running over to me and jumped into my arms. We stopped the bleeding, applied a temporary bandage and transported him to the hospital where they could close the wound. No one knew why I had such an impact on the child; perhaps it was because I had ten grandchildren of my own.

Another case involved a multiple vehicle wreck with multiple victims and a vehicle fully involved in fire. As we were working to extinguish the fire, we noticed a man slumped over in the front seat. Shortly thereafter, we noticed that he was still alive and pushed the fire away from him as we proceeded with extrication attempts. This was complicated by the fact that the boot on his right foot was melted into the base of the floor shifting mechanism. He had survived the fire because he was wearing heavy hunting clothing which shielded him. He was airlifted to the burn center where he lived for about three weeks before succumbing to respiratory distress.

The next incident involved a man who was operating a Bobcat loader on which one of the side safety screens was missing. He managed to get his head outside the cab while the hydraulic arms were in motion and they sheared off the top half of his head. He was still breathing so he was intubated and transported to the nearest hospital where the physician on duty observed his condition and immediately determined that further medical treatment was futile.

In 1997, I was designated as the department Accreditation Manager and began working on the many issues needed to improve the Insurance Service Office (ISO) rating which effects the insurance rates for property within the city and achieve National Accreditation. In December 1999, the current Fire Chief died after a battle with cancer. In January 2000, I became the third Fire Chief of the Peachtree City Fire Department. I continued in office until my retirement in April 2007 and remain the only retired Fire Chief of Peachtree City.

**Presentations for Peachtree City Firemen**

Like many Fire Departments, it had started as an entirely volunteer organization with minimal equipment, minimal training and minimal funding. Some members had mortgaged their homes to get money to buy the first fire engine, a 1949 Chevy 750 gallon per minute (GPM) pumper. The city grew and was continuing to grow, and the Fire Department had not grown with it. Since I had been the first person in the Department to attend the National Fire Academy, I immediately started increasing training opportunities and acquiring more modern and capable apparatus and equipment.

Morale increased, and both fire and medical service provided was excellent. In response to a request for help to recover from Hurricane Katrina, The Peachtree City Fire Department sent an ambulance with Medics and provisions to Louisiana for about one month. During my term as Peachtree City Fire Chief, no firefighter was killed or incurred significant injury in the line of duty. No fire apparatus broke down while fighting a fire and no ambulance broke down while transporting patients to a hospital.

On September 11, 2001, I was at a Mass Disaster Operations class. Just before the class started, we received a phone call urging us to turn on a TV set and watch the news. It was activated just in time to see the second aircraft strike the Twin Towers, and everyone knew instantly that it was not an accident. Within minutes, everyone’s pagers started activating calling them back immediately to their primary duty stations. I and the rest of the class returned to our duty stations to begin immediate checks of apparatus, equipment and staffing in preparation for whatever might next occur.

When we moved to Georgia, we were looking for quality schools for our sons, quality emergency services for a safe place to live, and some activities and amenities to keep our sons involved in wholesome activities. My 33 years in the fire service and 29 years as a Paramedic have clearly demonstrated that most persons have the same outlook. Also, that whenever most people need directions, information or help, they almost always call the fire department either first or when they cannot find someone else to help them. The quality of the fire/emergency medical service is definitely a major determinant in how the community’s quality of life is perceived and maintained.

Jun 27 2021

West Point Wedding Hostess – 1981-84

As an Army wife, I served in many capacities as a volunteer. The one that stands out as the most enjoyable was that of Wedding Hostess at the Chapel of the Most Holy Trinity at West Point.

Mrs. Jinnie Pollin (wife of the head of the Math Dept.) was in charge of this ministry. We incoming hostesses received training at a luncheon held by Mrs. Pollin in her beautiful quarters in the Lusk Reservoir Housing Area. The gracious Mrs. Pollin regaled us with many delightful stories of the weddings she had served. What fun we had! We couldn’t wait to start our “ministry”.

My friend, Kathy, and I decided we would co-host. She lived in Grey Ghost, and we lived in the “Lonely Old Brick” on Merritt Rd.

That made it easy for us to walk to the Chapel most of the time. Parking was tight, and we didn’t want to add an additional car to the mix.

**Most Holy Trinity Catholic Chapel at West Point**

Most of the weddings were small to medium in size. One of the most memorable weddings stands out because it was the largest and because the weather was the worst. It was every bride’s nightmare. It was hot and humid with a severe thunderstorm booming and crackling overhead. Inside the Chapel,

there were 6-8 excited little flower girls and an equal number of squirmy little boy attendants. Add bridesmaids, and we had quite a crowd. Ordinarily, the hostess prepares the attendants to walk down the aisle. We remind them to hold their bouquets at waist height, straighten dresses, and with the bride, fluff her veil and train. We also cued the bride and her attendants when to walk down the aisle. For this particular wedding, the bride’s father took over all the hostess duties. I stood aside as he did everything. He was darn good, I might add. Most Holy Trinity was not air conditioned. The Chapel was so stuffy and so hot. One of the attendants passed out at the altar. Guests started getting up in search of a breath of fresh air. Unfortunately, they weren’t able to go onto the portico because of the downpour and lightning. It must have been disappointing for the newlyweds to have their arch of sabers held indoors. It was still a beautiful wedding, and I’m sure the bride and groom have many happy memories of their wedding day despite the mishaps.

Then, there was the “Crisis in the Choir Loft” wedding. Before this particular wedding, I went up to the choir loft, as usual, to check in with the organist. The organist told me he….ummm… had “the runs”. He told me in no uncertain terms that I was to get that wedding going promptly and to get the wedding party down the aisle ASAP. He didn’t know how long he would last. He also told me he had talked to Father. Father would keep an eye on the choir loft and add special blessings and prayers as needed. As promised, during the ceremony, Father would glance up at the choir loft and add whatever flourishes needed to work around the organist’s absences. To this day, I’m sure that couple doesn’t realize how many extra blessings they received on their wedding day.

Kathy and I always arrived early for the weddings. We were in the Chapel making sure everything was in place for a wedding when a young man walked in and took a seat about halfway down the side aisle. He wasn’t dressed as one would expect for a wedding, but we thought nothing of it. Probably a relative or friend who had just arrived from out of town and didn’t have to time to change clothes. It didn’t take us long to figure out this wasn’t a regular, run-of-the-mill guest. As the ceremony proceeded, this man started making comments. You could call it loud mumbling under his breath. He also made some comments out loud. The priest would say something, and he might comment, “yeah, right”. Kathy and I looked at each other with raised eyebrows. This must have been the bride’s disgruntled boyfriend. Mrs. Pollin’s instructions did not include a chapter on, “Disgruntled Boyfriends”. We sat in the back quietly trying to figure out what course of action we should take. Was he going to escalate his disruptions? We nixed the idea of asking him to leave. It wasn’t likely that he would agree to do that without a scuffle. Should we call the MPs? We hated to cause a disturbance at this otherwise beautiful wedding by having the MPs remove this gentleman, possibly by force. We decided we would call the MPs and ask if they could at least have a presence in the back of Chapel. There were no cell phones back in those days, so Kathy got up to go to a phone to make the call. Thankfully, just as she was doing that, the man got up and stomped out the door. Phew! Crisis averted.

All in all, it was a great honor and delight to serve at weddings. When I meet someone who was married in the Chapel of the Most Holy Trinity during the early 80s, I always wondered if I might have been their hostess.

Jun 23 2021

It Was July 21! – 1969

It Was July 21! – 1969

America’s amazing feat of landing on the moon has been celebrated for over 50 years. For most of those years, I was a busy Army wife and mother moving all over the world every few years. Though I noted the fantastic American accomplishment and have always been proud of my country, most years July 21 was just another day. Military families most often move in the summertime, so for many years my main focus was which packing box to open and where to put what was inside. Or see what the children were doing – where are the kids about their age with whom they could become friends? Or meeting the new people at my husband’s new assignment and the new neighbors near our new home. Or registering at the Church nearby – is there vacation Bible School? Sometimes, we would put the boxes aside for a little while and venture out of the house to go to the neighborhood pool. Besides moving, for the Rice family, July was a month of celebrations: Bill’s birthday on the third, the birthday of his uncle who had died at Normandy and for whom Bill was named on the Fourth – and the big celebration, the birthday of our Country! That’s not all – we had welcomed our son to the family on the sixth of July. Cousins and other aunts and uncles’ birthdays cluster all around those celebrations. By July 21^st each year, I was partied-out. Still had more boxes to open…

It was only recently that I noticed something that seemed strange to me. Everyone in the U.S.A. thinks that the lunar landing happened on July 20. Why did I always think it was July 21?

Here is the story. My father served in the U.S. Army Air Corps during WWII. He trained to be a radio operator in Madison, Wisconsin. Near the end of his training, there came a memo asking for anyone that could type to identify himself. In those days, women were more likely to have taken a typing class in high school than men. I’m not sure why my father learned to type, but it may have saved his life. He stepped forward and was whisked out of radio school and into a different job in the 389^th Bomb Group (“Sky Scorpions”) ***

He spent most of his service at Hethel Air Field, Norwich, England, at a desk rather than as a radioman on one of the B-24 Liberators. He did hop aboard one of the planes flying over D-Day, without orders, because he “wanted to be a part of the mission.”

The plane on which he hid away made 5 sweeps over the armada on June 6, 1944. (As a child, I used to play with the air medals that he was awarded. Guess he thought he didn’t deserve them. He had served in the North Africa Campaign with the 389^th in 1943. We haven’t been able to figure out exactly what his job was, though we have researched it at the 8^th Air Force Museum in Savannah – maybe, a cryptographer. He never said.)

What does this have to do with the moon landing? When I was a little girl, my father, having survived the War, would often put me to sleep with stories of his Army Air Corps adventures while in England. I loved the stories and became a real fan of things English. Most of his stories were from his off-duty time. Since he was stationed in England for three years, they were allowed some furlough time when possible. When I was old enough to babysit, I saved that money for a trip to England planning it for after I graduated from college. In my child’s mind, I would go there, see where my dad had been and one of my friends would surely like to accompany me. Wouldn’t that be fun! My aunt in Chicago even arranged for me to become a pen pal with the niece of one of her neighbors who was from England. We sustained that email friendship from eighth grade to adulthood. I could visit her? A plan is coming into place – oops, after graduation, no one could go with me (weddings, new jobs, no money, etc.), so I headed off for the adventure of a lifetime by myself.

My first step after arriving in London was to get a cab to take me to Paddington Station where I would hop the train for Liverpool. My pen pal was graduating from college that very day and I would get there just in time for the formal ball that evening. (I carried a formal gown to wear as well as an iron to make it presentable after being crushed in the suitcase for so many hours of travel. Little did I know that the plug of my American iron wouldn’t fit into the British electric outlet. I carried that iron and gown all over England for the rest of the six-week trip!) Caught up in the excitement, I barely remembered that I was supposed to send a telegram (How do I do that?) to my parents telling them that I had arrived. Good thing I didn’t forget that detail!

The next day, we went to her family’s home in Cinderford in the Royal Forest of Dean for a few days where I recovered from jetlag. Then, I was off to the places that my father described. In Norwich, I found a phone booth and a phone book and attempted to get in contact with some of the folks that had been so nice to my father – 25 years earlier. In one case, I called the wrong person, but when I described what I wanted, she said, “Oh, you must be looking for my husband’s parents. Where are you? Stay right there; they will come pick you up – don’t move.” The rest of the story is that my father almost married her husband’s older sister while in Norwich; her husband had been a small boy during the war and remembered my dad like an older brother. I had a wonderful visit with the parents, but the “almost” fiancée had moved away. I wasn’t there long enough to meet her.

Many of my father’s stories were centered around a resort in Scotland where American soldiers went on furlough. Being there for three years, he and his buddies went there several times for rest and recuperation. I decided to go there, too, taking the train to Edinburgh from Norwich. It was in Edinburgh that I realized that the monumental effort to reach the moon was on schedule. I learned that the landing was expected to take place in the middle of the night, about 3 a.m. Edinburgh time. Wow, I needed to find a television. Would it be televised in Scotland? I looked around the hotel to see if there was a television somewhere – at that time, there were no televisions in hotel rooms. I found one in a sitting room and checked to see how to turn it on. Then, I went to sleep, setting my alarm for 2:45 a.m. When the alarm went off, I crept down to the sitting room in my pajamas, turned on the television and waited for the rest of the crowd to arrive. No one ever came, but the television worked and the first steps on the moon were televised.

It was such an amazing experience to know that so many Americans had been a part of this unbelievable event. It was an exhilarating event to witness especially so far from home – even if it was by myself. What a thrill!

I went to church the next morning at the closest church I could find. I was delighted when the priest spent his entire sermon relating the landing on the moon as a gift from God, the ingenuity of the American Space Program and getting to know more about God’s wonderful creations. It was wonderful – I wanted to raise my hand and I shout, “I am an American. You are talking about my country. Thank you for your inspiring message.” (I didn’t do it!)

It continued to be an exciting day when after church I went to the bus station to go to Blairgowrie, Scotland, the location of the resort. Everyone was buzzing about the moon landing. I didn’t realize at the time that on Sundays, stores are closed, so my only way to get to the resort – some miles out of town – was to ask at the bus stop. How can I get there? When I identified myself as the daughter of an American soldier who visited 25 years before, they called the hotel, and the owner came for me. The lady who had owned the resort at the time of my father’s visits had moved to a cottage on the grounds when her son took over the administration of the resort. He took me to her home; when I was introduced, she exclaimed, “You are my first American grandchild! Come in so we can get to know each other.” She related the same stories to me that my father had told me as a child – I thought it was amazing: with a name like Smith, I was really surprised anyone would remember him. It was quite a memorable day – it was July 21 in Scotland, but July 20 in the U.S.A.!

*** Called “The Sky Scorpions”, the 389^th Bomb Group flew B-24 Liberators from Hethel, near Norwich, England. In 1943, 389^th detachments were sent to North Africa at Benghazi, Libya and at Massicault, Tunisia. The 398^th also participated in bombing raids over Austria, Italy, Sicily, Crete and Romania, particularly the oil fields at Ploesti.