By Suzanne Rice

     Many American military posts might be considered remote to some who live in the large metropolitan areas of the U.S. Those who have been assigned to foreign countries often can feel isolated from familiar scenes, foods and language. Military families learn to take advantage of the special opportunities in remote areas to make their own fun. Though I would not consider Ft. Sill, Oklahoma a remote area, it is about an hour away from the next larger city (Oklahoma City) and two hours away from Dallas, TX. In 1974, there were some, but not many fast-food restaurants, department stores or specialty shops. For anything very exotic, the big cities were the place to go. For many of us at the time, those excursions were few and far between because most families had only one car and that one car was in use for work each weekday.

       To entertain ourselves and to enjoy the company of old and new friends, we started a monthly Supper Club. Initially, it was six couples also attending the Field Artillery Advanced Course – all of whom happened to have been classmates at West Point in the Class of 1969. As we began the club, we decided to make it an international dinner club. Each month, the couple hosting the dinner at their home would tell those attending what the theme would be and each couple would bring a complimentary dish to add to the meal. It could be quite a puzzle finding the ingredients to some of the international dishes, since there were few options for ingredients besides the commissary on post or a couple of small grocery stores – there were no internet purchases available or international groceries in which to shop. Substitutions were often required.
     We had an Oriental dinner one month for which we chose a recipe called “Spring Soup”. It was odd to read the recipe and maybe, even odder to eat – made of peas and lettuce! Never made that recipe again. We had to find a special butcher to prepare the meat needed for the entrée, but we had a fun evening tasting the delicacies.
     When dinner was over, we played some games. We made up a game we called the “Dictionary Game” that we loved and made us laugh ourselves silly. One couple once had a scavenger hunt around their house, clues and all, and we spent a lot of time looking under the furniture and behind the curtains for our prizes. Weren’t they brave to let us look everywhere – didn’t find any dust or anything out of place. They must have spent a busy week cleaning the house besides preparing our dinner.
     The dinner parties were so successful that several years later, after most of the men had gone to graduate school, we arrived at West Point to teach in various departments and the Supper Club was resumed. It was a slightly different set of six couples, but most of the same old crowd. For most of the dinners, the wives and husbands worked together to determine the menu and to prepare and serve the food at their home each month. At one dinner, the men decided that at the next get-together, they would do the preparations without help from their wives. Sounds great!!

     By this time, the dinners had lost their international flair. Surrounded by the mountains of the Hudson Highlands, West Point was more isolated than Ft. Sill.

The “guys” dinner was to take place at the Rice home, so Bill took the lead with the entrée. He asked for my cookbooks and proceeded to look through them to find just the recipe he wanted to make – with no help from me. He, eventually, found just what he was looking for. He liked the photo of the entrée and picked…Beef Wellington. I read the recipe and innocently asked if he was sure he would like to make that recipe. “Of course.” was the immediate response. I did the shopping, but he was in charge of the rest of the preparations.

      On the day of the dinner, I was to spruce up the house while Bill spent his time in the kitchen. Our 18th-month-old daughter was, for the first time in her life, propped up on the couch to watch Sesame Street and whatever else followed on the public television station. It worked well; she loved it! It was soon clear that Bill needed some help in the kitchen. It was a small kitchen, more like a short hallway with no room for even a table, so trying to roll out the crust for the large beef tenderloin turned out to be quite a task; the rolled-out crust was so large that there was no room in the refrigerator to keep the crust cool until it was needed. Since it was November and a cold day, we finally hit upon a great idea – cover the crust and place it on the picnic table in the fenced-in backyard until it was needed. First, the beef and the duxelles had to be cooked and then those small stuffed tomatoes in the photo in the cookbook. There was no recipe for the tomatoes, but they were pretty so Bill made up a recipe. By the time of the dinner, we had both been in the kitchen for eight hours and could barely keep awake to serve and eat dinner. Our guests said it was delicious.

     I don’t remember what all the other men brought to complement the Beef Wellington. Dessert did stand out – all these years later. It was Bananas Foster – flaming bananas. Fancy!

          

It was tasty but had just a little glitch… when it flamed up, the fire went so high that it scorched our dining room ceiling. We lived in the Gray Ghost quarters on West Point and were quite concerned that we would be fined when we left for our next assignment. Luckily, the inspector didn’t notice!

Remembering Marianne 1945-2021

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 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 contact with some of the folks that had been so nice to my father – then, 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; he 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” fiancee 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 there 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, nothing 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.                                

     It was a pitch-black night – early morning, really, long before sunrise. 15,000 of the most patriotic, courageous soldiers in the US Army had marched to the parade ground at Ft. Lewis, WA and were at parade-rest waiting for an encouraging address from the Commanding General of the Ninth Infantry Division. As the wife of the Commander of 1-84 Field Artillery, I wanted to be a part of this special event. We lived only a few blocks away – how to get there in the dark and as quickly as possible? I really didn’t want to be out in the dark by myself. No one was stirring in the family housing area where we lived; Bill had gone to the Battalion Headquarters long before to march with his soldiers across post to the field.

     I decided to ride my bike – that would be quicker than walking and the light on the bike would guide me there safely. So, I left our daughters asleep and sneaked out of the house, jumped on my bike and found my way to the field. I stayed near the street-side of the parade field but could see the stage and podium that had been erected for the Commanding General and his staff who were waiting there. Stretched out over the whole field before the General were all of his soldiers and the 9^th ID band and chorus.

     Are you wondering why all those soldiers were there on the field at that hour? It was Independence Day 1987 and the entire Division standing on the field was preparing for the traditional Division “Independence Day Fun Run”. Later in the day, it would be too warm for them all to start the run, even though it was Ft. Lewis, not Ft. Polk! There would be other festivities later in the day so before dawn was the time to start the race.

     MG John Shalikashvili*, Commander of the 9^th Infantry Division, took to the podium on that dark, warm morning and gave a rousing Fourth of July address to the soldiers of the Division.

He reminded them why they serve and the greatness of the USA because of people like them. Towards the end of the ceremony, he related that he had recently been in Los Angeles for an event, where the attendees were inspired by a patriotic program headlined by Lee Greenwood. Though it had been released several years before, the song that Lee Greenwood sang at the event in CA especially touched MG Shali. He asked Lee if he could have permission to bring the song to his soldiers. It must have taken some time for the copyright arrangements to be made and for the 9^th ID band and singers to learn to play and sing the music, but they were ready for this early morning presentation. For me and for most of the assembled soldiers, it was the first time we heard God Bless the U.S.A. No one there knew the words at that time; we could only listen and be inspired by the soldier that has been selected to sing this new song.  Like MG Shalikashvili, we were touched, and the soldiers ran a little faster that day being motivated by Lee Greenwood’s song.

     What were the other events the soldiers would enjoy throughout the day?  There would be Battalion picnics/BBQs planned for the soldiers and their families along with games to play and watch. At the end of the day, the 9^th ID band would set up at the Ft. Lewis football stadium and play a wonderful concert of patriotic music for the soldiers and their guests. The culmination of the long, wonderful day would be the playing of the 1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky. This inspiring music tells the story of Russia’s defeat of Napoleon’s invading army. It opens quietly with a Russian Orthodox hymn – a prayer for peace. Following this, there is a bit of the French national anthem, the Marseillaise, indicating the invasion by Napoleon. In musical tones, the Battle of Borodino erupts with the cannons firing as the French are driven from the field of battle.

(You can hear the cannons firing at 12:06 and again at 14:10.)

    Have you ever wondered about those cannon volleys in the middle of a beautiful piece of music? As the Commander of the Battalion that included the salute battery for the 9^th ID, Bill and his cannoneers were tasked to be a part of the classic performance. Many days before July 4, the Battery soldiers with their 105mm howitzers had been out on the football field practicing with the Army band to “play” their cannons in the 1812 Overture. Our daughters and I would get to the stadium early, but not as early as Bill and the salute battery.

     When we arrived in the stands, we would see the Battalion howitzers arrayed across the field away from the band and Bill walking around checking his walkie talkie and talking with his “musicians” and the band. He would direct his soldiers to “play” their instruments just at the right time in the Overture. When they actually began to fire, the cannon would sound every four seconds – check your watch – just as in a salute (count the seconds the next time you hear the 1812 Overture or attend a salute – it’s more complicated than you might guess.). They had practiced so often that their enormous sound would vibrate the whole stadium at just the precise moment. I always wondered how Bill knew the exact moment to give the “Go”! He would have answered, “We practiced.” To our delight, it went off without a hitch. The inspiring performance was followed by the rousing Armed Forces Medley. Fireworks would end the salute to America’s 211^th birthday. What a great way to end the day that had started so early. I was so glad that I made the bike ride before dawn that day – as for other Americans, Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the U.S.A. has become very special to me and every time I hear it, I think of that assembled group of soldiers and all who have served our country in uniform who love their country more than self! God Bless the U.S.A.! 

     Follow-up: The next year, the girls and I rode our bikes to the stadium to avoid the difficulty of parking the car. What was I thinking? I was pregnant with our new baby due in three weeks. Having ridden a bike for much of my life, from elementary school years, I didn’t think a thing of it, though navigating after dark was a little tricky. Oddly enough, the baby didn’t wait for three weeks. Was it the startling booms of his Dad’s cannons or the late-night bike ride that caused the baby to come just two days later? Actually, I tripped and fell as I was packing the car with items I needed to lead a Battalion Wives Coffee that evening. I didn’t know it at the time, but this Coffee was to be a baby shower; instead, I was in the hospital in labor – beside me was one of our battalion wives who just happened to be a nurse on duty. She was the one who broke it to the waiting ladies – enjoy the party without the honoree – the baby is on the way!

*Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – 1993-1997

How to celebrate Christmas in a non-Christian country? Because I had showed up in South Korea unauthorized with only a suitcase of clothes https://thedaysforward.com/second-infantry-division-education-program-1973/, there were few options for decorations or familiar Christmas trimmings. It was hard to get to the big PX in Seoul, so it wasn’t possible to depend on that as a source of Christmas decorations for our home in a Korean house in downtown Ui Jong Bu. A soldier in 1-15 FA , who had also been in Bill’s battery in his last assignment in Augsburg, Germany, was a native of South Korea; he told us that there was a Christmas tree market in Seoul where we could find a Christmas tree. Wow! Great! When can we go?  Not that easy, of course, for a battery commander to take time off to go get a Christmas tree.

     When the time came, we had to catch a kimchi-cab (a tiny three-wheeled car common in Korea at that time) at the gate of Camp Stanley that was willing to take us to Seoul. That was the only way to get there in a timely manner and to have a way to get the Christmas tree back to Ui Jong Bu – can you imagine trying to take a Christmas tree on an hour long ride on a bus? A small kimchi-cab would have to do.  That became the plan.                  

     We never found the Christmas tree market. Disappointed, we had the cab driver turn around and head back to Ui Jong Bu. As we were driving through the busy streets of Seoul, I noticed a flower shop. “STOP! BACK UP.” Why? Outside, on either side of the flower shop door were two small potted pine trees. We rushed into the flower shop. Finding the owner, we tried to ask him if we could buy one of the trees. We had a language problem having to use a lot of hand signals – no English for him and little useful Korean for us. (I had taken a course in the Korean language, but I only learned practical words like how to direct a taxi cab driver to get me from Camp Stanley to our place in Ui Jong Bu: “right”, “left”, “straight ahead”.) The owner was surprised and dumbfounded by the two crazy Americans who came running into his shop at dusk waving their hands pointing to the trees outside. Eventually, he understood what we wanted. It was a hard decision for him, but he soon agreed, and we were heaving one heavy potted tree to the kimchi cab. The flower shop owner was not the first one that day who would be dumfounded by our actions.

      The kimchi cab driver, already wondering what was going on, was stunned when we came towards his cab carrying the potted tree. It wasn’t so small when we tried to get it into his cab. I barely fit in the back seat with the tree, but with me and the tree filling the back seat, there was no room for Bill. He had to fit himself into the tiny front passenger seat, knees to his chin throughout the hour-long drive. Luckily, the cab driver accommodated our weird requests.

      Getting back to Ui Jong Bu, we piled out of the cab, opened the gate to our Korean home and found our Korean landlords and their four children watching the spectacle. What in the world were we doing dragging a live tree into their home? (We had done other odd things that they remembered. https://thedaysforward.com/a-refrigerator-in-korea-1973/ ) Luckily, the husband worked at Camp Red Cloud only a few blocks away and knew about American Christmas customs, so that he could explain to his wife and family what we were doing.

     For me, the next step was how to make the pine tree into a Christmas tree. I eventually conceived a plan (no internet purchases were possible back then). I made a trip the few blocks to Camp Red Cloud to see what they might have in their Shoppette and eventually found in the Camp Stanley PX Shoppette some candy canes, a little ribbon and got out some paper and scissors; with them I made a lot of paper snowflakes to place on the boughs of the tree.

adorns the Rice Christmas tree each year

When I was finished, the little pine tree looked festive in our Korean home. On Christmas Day we were able to go to Christmas Mass at the chapel and to the Mess Hall for dinner with the soldiers of Bill’s battery at Camp Stanley.

     To extend our holiday festivities, we decided to invite the ladies that worked with me at St. Louis High School and their husbands over for New Year’s Eve. Bill had given me a beautiful Korean brass punchbowl, matching cups and ladle for Christmas along with a sewing machine. We would have punch for our New Year’s Eve party!

     We decided upon having eggnog for our guests. It was homemade: lots of eggs and cream and some bourbon from the Class VI store. Our American guests liked our eggnog. We invited our Korean landlords in for some snacks and eggnog. They didn’t like it one little bit! They are not used to milk products, so it was overwhelming for them – oh, well, we had tried to be hospitable! They liked the hot buttered rum that we served, too, but the brass cups weren’t too good for the hot liquid – oh, way too hot to even hold the metal cup, let alone drink it until it cooled!

       It was a most unusual Christmas season, but a memorable one! And the punchbowl, besides being a wonderful memory of an unusual Christmas, was used for many celebrations during Bill’s 27-year Army career. Even so, I don’t think we ever made homemade eggnog or hot buttered rum, again!

**This photo gives you an idea of what a “kimchi”cab looked like. We were unable to find a photo the kimchi-cab prevalent in South Korea in the 1970’s. This truck would have been better than the car to transport our tree, but then there would have been no room for Bill and me! If anyone has a photo of a kimchi-cab from the early 1970’s, please leave a comment on the story. We would love to have a copy.

Our daughter, Lesley, was a Fulbright Scholar in Mainz, Germany in 2000. Our daughter, Meredith, still a student at the University of Dallas (UD), had just completed her Rome semester at the UD Rome campus. She was spending some time with Lesley in Mainz before returning to the USA. Bill and I and our son, Christopher, aged 11, decided to try a new adventure – fly Space-Available to Germany to visit them. (Retired military could fly on a regularly scheduled military flight if there were extra seats – space available.) We would meet the girls at the Frankfurt Airport, pick up a rental car and stay overnight with friends in nearby Hofheim (The daughters of both families had participated in a high school Exchange Program in 1996 and had kept in touch.) before going to visit friends in Schwarzenau where we had lived during Bill’s second assignment in Germany from 1982-86. Our plan was to drive from there to Austria to meet friends Lesley had made during some of her foreign travels. Great plan if we could get on the plane in Atlanta!

For a Space-A flight, possible passengers must arrive at the airport many hours earlier than usual passengers, sign in and wait while the ticketed military personnel and their families are checked in and processed for the flight (Most of them are not traveling for a pleasure trip like ours, but are heading to a new duty station with all the apprehensions and stresses of moving to a foreign country). For the Space-A travelers, it was a waiting game; it was only after all the active-duty soldiers and families were on the plane, did it become clear if there were any seats left over. After about five hours of waiting, we were told that we had the last three seats! We quickly went to the pay phone to place a call to Germany to say that we would be in Frankfurt the next day. Yeah! The adventure was only beginning as we grabbed our bags and rushed to the plane.

No sooner did we store our carry-on bags under our seats and buckle our seat belts than an announcement came from a stewardess who was walking up and down the aisle, “Colonel Rice, Colonel Rice” repeatedly until Bill responded. The stewardess stopped at our seats and said, “All three of you come with me and bring your bags.”  Were we being removed from the flight? Why would that be? What about Lesley and Meredith in Germany?

As we re-entered the terminal, the stewardess told us quietly that Bill was the highest-ranking officer on the plane and that is why we were escorted off the plane first. It seems everyone would be getting off the plane behind us. The plane’s radio was not working, so the plane could not fly. We were given a voucher for dinner, as was the entire passenger list. They had no idea how long the repairs would take so we were advised to have dinner and listen for announcements about the progress of the repair team. In case of a long delay, we were offered a voucher for an overnight stay at a nearby motel which we declined; we could drive home in 20 minutes, if necessary. We ate dinner and then went back to the gate for a few hours sitting on the floor as we awaited the outcome of the repair work.

About six hours later, we got the word that the radio had been repaired and we could board the plane again. Because of the difference in time and the fact that Lesley lived in a dormitory where the phone was in the hallway, we had been unable to contact them about the delay and when we might arrive (they only discovered our long delay after they arrived at the Frankfurt airport – six hours too early). Later, we learned that part of the long delay was that their usual procedures for replacing the radio were unsuccessful; someone eventually thought to buy a new radio at RadioShack and install it. Only problem with that was that all the Radio Shack stores were already closed for the night. Getting a replacement meant getting a manager to open his store long after business hours.

When we finally got into the air, the rest of the trip was wonderful and went off as planned: visiting with old friends and making some new ones. The return Space-A was another story.  

We returned to Rhein-Main Airport following the same instructions: be there hours early and this time even a little earlier since we had to return the rental car beforehand. Luckily, the rental car office was in the same building as the check-in counter, so it didn’t take us long to return the car. It was only then, that we realized our lovely May trip to Germany was ending on Memorial Day weekend. We didn’t think that would affect us in Germany, but it seems that the school year for Department of Defense schools had just ended and many American dependents had decided to use this weekend to take a trip back to the USA. Why not? Summer was just beginning! Who would make the cut for travel – most of us were Space-Available? At the Rhein-Main desk, we were told to sign in and see what would happen. At some point, we were told that we were on the flight list; that would get Bill back to work on the day after Memorial Day as planned. We were on our way – at least until an announcement: this airplane needed some repairs, could not fly and we should come back tomorrow when they hoped repairs would be completed. We got the rental car back and went to find the military transient billets (hotel) on Rhein Main. No luck – no rooms at the inn! That is when Bill decided to drive back to Mainz and spend the rest of the day with Lesley and Meredith – there was no answer when we called the dorm phone, so we drove the hour trip to Mainz to surprise them!

We expected them to help us find a gasthaus (bed and breakfast German-style) for the night and have dinner with them. Turns out that Lesley had a better idea: stay in the dorm with them, Bill and Christopher in her tiny room – on the floor and in the twin bed; the three Rice ladies on the couches in the dormitory common area. She fixed us a lovely German oatmeal breakfast before we headed to Frankfurt again the next morning.

Getting back to Rhein-Main, we found a different problem: the original plane was not in service, yet, but a different plane might be possible transportation if they could get special permission to carry civilian passengers – it was a C-130 cargo plane that could carry 90 passengers and crew above a large open bay below for cargo.

If civilians were to travel on this flight, special permission was required because of the hazardous cargo aboard that had priority over Space-A passengers. Eventually, permission was granted, and we were ready to travel. Next problem: the flight was going to Dover, Delaware instead of Atlanta, Georgia.

No problem. We’d get a rental car in Dover and drive home. That turned out to be easier said than done because it was Memorial Day weekend and there were no rental cars left when we arrived in Dover. We could get an airport shuttle the next morning to Baltimore Airport (two-hour drive) where there would be more cars available. We did that and from Baltimore, we started on the additional 14-hour drive. However, the trip ended up taking a lot longer. As we entered the city of Washington, D.C. on that Sunday morning, we made our first acquaintance with Rolling Thunder. We were met with hundreds of bikers on the streets of D.C. as we tried to pass through.

Rolling Thunder had been coming to D.C. on Memorial Day weekend since 1987 to commemorate the lives of their fallen comrades and to keep a light shining on the POW/MIAs of foreign wars. Coming from all over the country, these veterans would spend Memorial Day together, reminiscing and honoring our fallen military heroes. To accommodate all the bikers, the roads around Washington were closed or re-routed.

We found ourselves going around and around in circles not knowing where we were, where we were going, or how to get out of there. The map that we purchased to get home did not reflect the temporary closings and gave us no clue how to get out of town. (This was long before GPS.) Though we thought we would never find our way out of the big city, it was an unexpected, heartwarming and patriotic end to our Space-A adventure. And Bill did get home in time to go to work on Tuesday morning, though often along the way home we doubted if we would ever get home! It was quite an adventure.