By Suzanne Rice

     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.

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.