Germany 1969 and 70 - a fragment for Marilyn

I was talking with my friend, Marilyn Quinn, today about our years in Germany when we were 21 and 22 and we discussed writing our memories. She had been a student in Munich and I had been an army wife in Heilbronn am Neckar. I have books worth of memories but I will put only a fragment or two here and send the link to Marilyn.

My landlady's name was Frau Froeschle and she ran a butcher shop as well as several rental properties in a kind of atrium style modern architectural houseing complex The buildings were concrete and two stories tall. Our apartment faced a paved courtyard in the front and a cooperative garden courtyard in the back. our apartment, which we were able to rent because it was the Vietnam war and the army post, Wharton Barracks, was full of soldiers either going to Vietnam or getting put together to go home from Vietnam, so officers had the option of living "on the economy" which meant an apartment in the village, rather than on the army post. It was a remarkably clean little town and all the windows had window boxes with red geraniums in them.

Our apartment had a small back bedroom with one plump bed and a red down duvet, a slanted ceiling and a window with a view of the back garden where each morning I could see half a dozen stout housewives in cotton dresses, aprons, head scarves and laced up construction boots hoeing and raking and working on their vegetable patches.

There was a small central room off of which was a tiny living room, furnished with contemporary modern German "mobel" (furniture) a small slim wooden frame sofa, matching chair and a coffee table. My favorite piece of furniture was in the kitchen which faced the concrete courtyard; it was a creamy yellow cabinet with a door behind which there was a built in sifter for flour, and a pull out tray for rolling out dough. There was a small table and chair set, a kitchen sink and gas range. The bathroom was also small and had a 'new to me' fixture, a tiny backpack sized tank that held the hot water - that was it - no more hot water when that was used up!

Below us lived an interesting array of temporary neighbors. At first there was an American couple from New England but my first lieutenant husband told me I couldn't fraternize because her husband was a lower rank and it compromised his position as an officer. The Boston wife told me the landlady's butcher shop specialized in horse meat and they had bought some and made hamburgers and it was good. I was horrified. I don't think she and I would have been friends anyhow, but they moved back to the states and were replaced by a group of Middle Eastern, maybe Turkish, foreign workers. We only ever saw the women, about three or four of them, draped head to toe in long swaths of colorful fabrics.

The landlady, Frau Froeschle, was a strangely malevolent person who wore a phony smile below remarkably hostile eyes, they fairly gittered with some kind of malice. I remember coming out of the bedroom one morning and finding her standing behind the full glass door of our apartment like a character from a horror movie. It wssn't easy to ascertain her purpose other than to check on my housekeeping because she spoke little to no English (allegedly) and I spoke little to no German at the time. Soon, however I was enrolled in a language class on the post.

Frequently Frau Froeschle got drunk and raged out her kitchen window, also second story (over her butcher shop) and facing my kitchen window. She would hang out the window in a black satin slip with a bottle of wine in her hand and scream curses at me, or at our apartment, hard to say which. In all our other encounteres she was coldly polite.

One of the few major incidents we encountered was the day the draped women in the apartment below left their apartment with the door open and a toddler inside. He closed the door on them and there was something cooking which was soon burning and smoke was coming out from under their door. They were screaming in their language, speaking no German or English, and I came down to see what was causing the commotion.

By tht time, I knew at least these a few words: "Feuer" und "Hilfe, bitte hilfe!" which I shouted at Frau Froeschle's grandson who was working in the paved courtyeard. He was a surly and hostile youth of about 16 or 17, who usuallyignored my greetings but he put aside his dislike long enough to come see what was the matter. A stout, muscular youth, he put his shoulder to the women's apartment door and smashed it open. They ran in and grabbed the todder; he opened the windows, and then they all left as quickly as they had arrived. The women went into their apartment immediately and closed the broken door the best they could, all leaving me in the hallway without a word or nod of thanks.

We never managed to cross the cultural barrier and whenever they saw me they covered their faces and fled as though I were a plague carrier.

The only friend I made those years was a German bar girl named Trudy who also lived across the couryard next to Frau Froeschle's apartment. A beautiful platinum blonde in her early 30's who spoke fairly good English, She was supported by a succession of young American soldiers, as a sort of wife. That made it possible for the soldiers to spend free time off base in a home and family type setting. She often joked to me about her boyfriends and how she would trick them into buying her new furniture or other expensive items by telling them she was pregnant and needed to get an abortion. She had three small children already. That is a story for another time.

In those years, I was so young, only 21 and 22, I really never gave much thought to Frau Froeschle or her personal history, and it is embarrassing to me now to think how little I thought of anything like history or the war which had only been over for 25 years at that time. Many of the storekeepers as well as Frau Froeschle would have been alive during the war and enemies of the Americans. We were occupying their country. Next time I write, I will tell about what I learned about the history of Heilbronn am Neckar and how I found out about it.

Auf wiedersehen, wrightj45#yahoo.com