By Suzanne Rice

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.

It all started with a blind date in 1970 arranged by Bill’s childhood friend who had just graduated from the USAF Academy – well, not exactly. It was really initiated by his new wife who was teaching next to me at Sperreng Middle School in Crestwood, Missouri. Previously having introduced Bill to lots of girls, they had once even fixed him up on a cadet trip to Colorado Springs with a young lady whose name they claimed to be Cherry Tart or was it really Sherry Tarte? (Never knew if they were pulling my leg or if it was true!) Bill and I had several dates that first Christmas, and then, Bill, by now a First Lieutenant, was on his way back to his assignment in Dachau, West Germany.

This would be my first experience with how it was possible to communicate with an American Army soldier stationed far away.

We wrote a lot of letters for 18 months.

At that time, if I sent an Air Mail letter on a Monday written on very thin airmail paper and placed in special airmail envelopes (it would be weighed to be certain that it was not too heavy), it would arrive in Germany on Wednesday and, if Bill had time to answer immediately, I would get a response by Saturday. Pretty quick turn-around. One week, I received a letter, a cassette, a card and some photos! Over the months, we began to expect quick responses. We even arranged a visit to Germany the next Christmas – all by Air Mail. Not sure how that could have possibly worked but it did. Weeks before my trip, Bill sent me a phone number for the staff duty office in case he didn’t meet me on time at Frankfurt Airport. How could he have possibly known that his car would break down on Christmas Eve, the day of my arrival, that he would have to find a rental car in Augsburg to pick me up from the airport (a trip of about three hours) and that he would be two hours late; I thought I had forgotten what he looked like since we hadn’t seen each other for a year. As I waited in the airport, it took me a while to figure out how to get German money without knowing a word of German and to make the telephone call. After more than an hour of waiting, I decided to call the staff-duty officer who immediately said, “I’m so glad you called. Captain Rice left a message for you.”

Because of this ease of communication, you can imagine the discomfort Bill felt when I didn’t answer the proposal of marriage letter he wrote the next February and sent from Grafenwohr where he was on a field problem.

The letter took more two weeks to arrive in St. Louis. If I had been he, I would have assumed that my answer to his proposal was “NO” and that would have been the end of that! Instead, when he returned from his field duty in Grafenwohr, he worked up his courage to make an international call. To do that, he had to go to an American bank on post, purchase a whole lot of Deutschmark and pfennig coins – about a bucketful – and drive to the middle of town to the Deutsche Bundespost (Post Office).

He then had to get the post office attendant to connect him to a telephone operator in the USA and then proceed to keep the coins continually going into the telephone to keep the connection to me active. Happily, his proposal letter arrived earlier on the same day that he was sitting in the Post Office with his pile of coins and I was able to give him an immediate answer when he asked, “Did my letter arrive?”

We always have had a soft spot in our hearts for the U.S. Postal Service, as you might surmise. There was more to come. I received my engagement ring from the postman on a Saturday in March 1972. Friends of Bills’ from his first unit in Dachau, who were PCS-ing (Permanent Change of Station) back to the U.S. offered to send the ring from Ohio upon their return to the U.S. so that it would be a shorter and safer mode of travel to me in St. Louis

For Bill’s birthday in 1972, I decided to make a phone call to him from my parents’ home in Southern Illinois. He had just been in a serious accident in Grafenwohr in which he had been thrown through the front glass window of his jeep and glass shards had been embedded into his face and eyes. At the time, an international phone call was very expensive, and his mother told me not to call – it would be more than I would spend on a different gift, she said. I did it, anyway, but the bill didn’t come until after our marriage and our return to Germany for the rest of his assignment.  When the phone bill did arrive, I discovered his mother had been right – that one phone call cost $180!

Military families face many times of separation, so communication becomes very important to the soldier and his family. In 1973, when Bill went off to Korea for a year unaccompanied assignment soon after our marriage, we experienced a new way of communicating – the MARS station, that could relay phone conversations. The MARS system was begun in 1926 and has been very helpful for soldiers and families since then (and still today). 

A network of volunteers, licensed amateur radio operators, connect the soldier with his family. This is a free service that uses no satellite connections but is a network of high frequency radios bouncing their signals off the ionosphere providing long-distance communications. It worked like this: a soldier went to a MARS station where he could initiate a call and a connection was established to a network of radio operators. As the conversation began, the soldier would say a sentence or two and then say “Over”. It was then that a response could start which also ended with “Over”. (It was hard to remember!) The “conversation” could only be a few minutes but was better than a letter because we could hear each other’s voices. When the time was up, the soldier ended it with “Out” and it was over. I didn’t realize it at the time that the radio operators were listening to the conversations. (They had to be listening so that they knew when to flip the switch from one side of the conversation to the other.) A friend told me about a conversation with her husband from Vietnam: there was some interference on the line, so she didn’t know how to answer. She was surprised to hear a new and unexpected additional voice – the radio operator – who told her, “Ma’am, he said he loves you!” These “phone patches” still remain an active project and a back-up to our more sophisticated communication should we ever need it.  

 

In 1992, when Bill, now a Colonel, was in Kuwait setting up Kuwait Forward after Operation Desert Storm; he had a room of his own with a phone that could make calls to Army posts in the US. He could then have his calls patched through to our home in GA. What a treat it was to get a call as often as he could find the time. And no “Over” and “Out”. Progress in twenty years!

One of our favorite communications whenever Bill was traveling was for each family member to write some little sticky-notes (crayon drawings from our little son, and short messages from the rest of us) and tuck them into the toes of socks, into the pockets of BDU’s (Battle Dress Uniform), into the ”Dopp-kit” (toiletries case) with the toothpaste and shaving cream, in the toes of boots, etc., etc. Wherever we could hide them. How simple is that?!?

Bill liked these notes so much that when he was no longer the traveler, he would hide notes in our children’s luggage. Being able to relate to the pressures of a New Cadet, he put notes into our son’s bags whenever he would head back to West Point from leave at home.

By 2015, when our son was deployed to Afghanistan, we could email, text, and talk face-to-face and even use cell phones from his room on a forward operating base. Amazing. How will soldiers and their families communicate in the future? Who knows!

I suggest letters, anyway. As nice as all the new-fangled communications are, an old-fashioned letter has some still important features. It can be tucked into a pocket for reading whenever the soldier misses his family and as many times as he likes – no wires, no batteries, no power needed.

Read more from Suzanne Rice.

My expensive, modern vacuum cleaner quit working a short time before guests were arriving to celebrate Christmas, 2016. What to do now – no time for repairs; it was just about time to leave for the airport. There is another, old vacuum cleaner in the back of the closet. I should just get it out to see if it still worked. Instead, I ran to the airport without vacuuming at all! This incident reminded me how we got the old vacuum cleaner.
In 1973, Bill (now an Army Captain) and I had just returned to the United States from Camp Stanley, South Korea, arriving at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma so that Bill could attend the Field Artillery Advanced Course. Along with many of his West Point classmates and their families, we were assigned to live on Snow Road in Artillery Village and surrounded by old friends from earlier assignments. It was a great place to be. Until that move, I was a skeptical, new Army wife. In our two years of married life, we have already moved three times. I asked how it was possible to survive when we would just make friends and then must leave them. Would that be our fate forever? It was at Ft. Sill that I learned that the Army is just a large family – we could keep up with those we had left behind but could also make new friends. It was at Ft. Sill that some old friends from earlier assignments started to re-appear again and it was wonderful to see them and renew our friendships. This reminded me of the old Girl Scout adage: “Make new friends but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold.” All precious.
Most married students attending the Field Artillery Advanced Course lived in Artillery Village. The single officers lived in many different off-post apartment complexes. At the time, it was easy to get onto Ft. Sill – there was no ID check or manned guard post. Just slow down and then sail through to Snow Road which was close to one of the Main Gates.

It may have been necessary for salesmen to register at the Post Headquarters, but it was very easy for them to contact those living on post. Artillery Village was a convenient place to live during the nine-month course; the men could carpool (refer to George Coan’s Diary of a Carpool – https://thedaysforward.com/the-diary-of-a-car-pool/) to class and the wives only had to walk next door or down the street to find an old friend or make a new one. Perhaps, like officers attending other branch Advanced Courses (Infantry, Engineer, Armor, etc.), we received many invitations to events from financial planners and other vendors. As 20-somethings, many with young children or newly married, we were the perfect demographic for many of these companies and salesmen. Many of the students had been either in Vietnam, Germany or Korea and were glad to be back in the U.S. and needed furniture, home goods and advice! Some of these presentations included a nice dinner to attract us and some even wanted entrepreneurs/investors to work alongside the salesmen – maybe, they were trying to recruit some of the officers who could leave the Army in a year or two. Bill and I attended several of these presentations, but didn’t make any purchases, though we did listen to the financial planners and retirement experts and met with them personally at our home after the group presentations. Once, we received an invitation to go to a local hotel to meet with vendors that offered us great deals (!) on furniture, pots and pans, fine china and other household goods. They tempted us with claims of unbreakable china (such ugly patterns) and guarantees for lifetime use for some the goods. We often wondered if others went to that spectacle and if anyone purchased. We were a bit proud of ourselves for not falling prey to the high-powered sales pitches – after all, we needed a lot of the items offered for sale!
One day, a knock came on our duplex door. It was a man who wanted to show us his wares – he was a vacuum cleaner salesman. We didn’t have a good vacuum cleaner yet, since we had spent the first years of our marriage out of the country – first in Germany (with different electric current and electric plugs those appliances were left in Germany) and then, in Korea where we lived in a Korean home that came with a maid to take care of all the necessary cleaning. “Sure, why don’t you come in?” The salesman gave his most compelling pitch (“It is a wet and dry vacuum, has a floor polishing attachment, very powerful engine, large capacity cannister, double filtration system” and on and on.) and we were impressed.

It would be a large purchase, but it was one that we thought we might be able to afford – after all, he said it would last a lifetime. What a good investment! But, we needed to think about it.
In a day or two, when the salesman came back for a follow-up visit, he chatted with us. It seems the company headquarters was in St. Louis, Missouri, Bill’s hometown. That made us more comfortable with the idea of that large purchase – still, so expensive…Then, the salesman mentioned that his training was done in St. Louis where he met the President of the company. Bill couldn’t believe his ears. The owner of the company was the father of one of his high school classmates at Southwest High School. In fact, he and a friend spent one summer doing yard work at that very man’s St. Louis County mansion. When he was the lawn-boy that summer, Bill knew that the man was well-to-do – he paid two of them to work there all summer, but he had no idea he had worked for the man behind the FAIRFAX vacuum cleaner we were thinking of buying (who cared about vacuum cleaners at fifteen years old??). Well, that settled the deal – SOLD; we were buying this expensive vacuum from a friend! I am not sure if we were the only gullible couple that fell for the sales pitch, but the salesman was right – it has lasted a lifetime. The FAIRFAX still works after 43 years, lasting about 25 years longer than the other modern, and, also very expensive and, now useless, vacuum cleaner – even if it has been stuck in the back of the closet for many years!
Time to sweep the carpet.
(Follow-up: The ancient vacuum cleaner, pulled from the back of the closet, still worked perfectly more than 40 years later. In fact, it cleaned better than the expensive, modern vacuum. Why had I stopped using it? It is heavy, awkward and unwieldy to pull all around the house and up the stairs. Our children called it the “spaceship”. No matter its appearance, it worked beautifully and continues to work so many years later. Maybe, it wasn’t such a bad purchase after all!)

I met my sister bright and early at 8 a.m. at Atlanta Hartsfield International Airport for our first ever Sister’s Week in Georgia. She left Southern Illinois, her

husband and two sons at 5 a.m. and we were setting out on a fun adventure together. We planned to drive directly from the Atlanta airport to Savannah to sightsee a bit and to visit the Mighty 8th Air Force Museum to try to figure out what our father had done when he served in the 8th Air Force during WWII. The normally quick trip (4 hours) turned into a 6-hour trip since we were behind a gigantic traffic jam that delayed our plan to get to Savannah for a lunch on the beach! We grabbed a very late lunch but had no time for sightseeing. We had a dinner invitation with Sally and Eric Robyn (https://thedaysforward.com/colonel-eric-robyn/  and  https://thedaysforward.com/sally-robyn/ )  which was the highlight for that day.

The next morning, we set out for Tybee Island for a quick sunrise walk on the beach which offered special surprises for us – being alone on the beach, we found lots of shells, some amazingly colorful seaweed (orange and pink – we first thought it was tangled electrical wire trashed on the seashore) and a gigantic horseshoe crab shell. She would take these jewels of the sea back to Illinois to show her students in the Fall.

We brushed off the sand and headed to the Museum. We went directly to the Museum Research Library to which I had been before looking for information. I knew that our Dad had been in Africa and ultimately stationed at Hethel Air Field in Norwich, England – I had even taken a trip to England as a graduation present to myself in 1969 to see where my father had been and to try to find some of the English people that had been so kind to him. He had put me to sleep as a small child with stories of some of his adventures in England and Scotland, but he never told me what his job was – was it still secret?
The staff at the Research Library is always delighted when family members come to share stories or memorabilia, so we had a wonderful visit with them and they brought out books and did some research for us. They directed us back downstairs into the museum to read and look over some displays that might help us figure out what our Dad did. Our uncle and our brother had differing ideas about what Tech Sergeant Smith had been doing at Hethel in the 389th Bomb Group, “The Sky Scorpions” – besides the fact that our Dad said he stowed away on an Air Force plane that made 5 flights over the over France on D-Day; he wanted to be a part of the epic invasion. Was that possible?
We made a second trip back up to the Research Library to try to make sense of what we had seen in the museum. We were in the midst of that conversation when a man in a flowered Hawaiian shirt came strolling into the library. My sister and I assumed he was just another tourist like us. Instead, the research librarian whispered to my sister that he had been POW in Iran in 1979 and was a volunteer historian at the museum – perhaps, he could answer some of our questions. She called him over to introduce us. Memories came flooding back to my mind.

As soon as the introductions between us and Bill Daugherty were done, I blurted out that his first step back on U. S. soil was at Stewart Army Air Field on 26 January 1981. Surprised, he agreed. I, then, said that he had taken a bus drive to West Point. Again, he agreed.

By this time, he was wondering about me – I had been there. He was, then, delighted (or so it seemed) to hear the rest of my story.
Like all Americans, the Rice family had been watching the Iran hostage crisis since November 1979 and praying for the hostages. It was with the same delight as all Americans that we learned the news that the hostages had been released on January 20, 1981 and were coming home! We were more delighted when we learned that West Point had been selected as the place to which the hostages and their families would come for a week of reunions and recuperation. Bill was a “P” (teacher at West Point) in the Math Department at the United States Military Academy at West Point. Could we get a glimpse of them?

West Point is 50 miles from New York City, even so, somewhat isolated in the Hudson Highlands of Orange County. This is one of the reasons that West Point was chosen for the family reunions and privacy the hostages needed. They would be flown into Stewart Field in Newburgh, board buses to cross Storm King Mountain and arrive at West Point where they could rest and relax in the quiet of the beauty of West Point. The local community wanted to do something to welcome them, so crowds of people lined the streets with signs, flags and banners.

The Rice family took off from our quarters in Grey Ghost on the morning of their return to find the best place to see the buses as they drove past. We were looking for a place where we could have room and safety for our four-year-old and sixteen-month-old daughters. As we drove 9W across the mountain, we saw people everywhere with flags, large and small, and signs of welcome, but no place likely to keep the girls occupied or safe on a cold, but sunny January day. Instead, we drove back to Highland Falls to find a place on the street where we could duck into a shop or restaurant if the girls got cold or the hostages were late.

It was exciting to get a glimpse of the buses when the hostages arrived in Highland Falls, but it was over in a second! It was still an amazing experience to be a tiny part of that historical event for our Country. And even more amazing to meet one of the brave hostages so many years later. What an honor.

And later…
We never did figure out exactly what our Dad did in Hethel – he had been trained as an Air Force radio operator, but when it was discovered that he could type, he was whisked into a different position, maybe a cryptographer. We didn’t figure out if it was even possible for him to have stowed away on D-Day (From the information we learned from Bill Daugherty, we believe he may have been on board, not officially on a roster, but not a secret from the pilot and crew). Little did we know that the Sister Week held more surprises for us. After a few days with me in Peachtree City, my sister was to go to see our brother in Marietta. She did just that, but on the first day of their visit, she got a call from home – her husband, a carpenter, was at work that Monday when he fell off the roof he was working on and had been life-flighted to the hospital in St. Louis. He might have broken his neck, head injuries, other broken bones???? How fast could we get there? We worried the whole time we were driving, but by the time we got to St. Louis University Hospital, all the worst of the outcomes had been ruled out. He had a broken pelvis and 5 broken ribs and would recover – he was home recovering for over six months, but he is now back to work – avoiding roofs as much as possible. Thank the good Lord.

In 1981, we were so delighted with our little brush with history that Bill wanted to preserve the flags that the girls waved on January 26 at West Point, so he attached them together and they have been hanging in our home ever since.

If you would like to know more about Bill Daugherty, Third Secretary of the U. S. Mission in Iran (CIA officer), you can check out his book: In the Shadow of the Ayatollah: A CIA Hostage in Iran.

This story is directly connected to “Birth of the Night Stalkers”. Click the button to read that story.

Night Stalkers