I was four years old when World War II came to end. Now I was in the Air Force and stationed in Germany fifteen years later. I liked the idea of going to Germany, but I couldn't speak the language and knew nothing about the area where I was stationed. I was told that Patton's Third Army came through the area, which didn't mean all that much to me. We were also told that Germany was the land of good beer and better women. Sounds good to a nineteen year old. Well, the beer was better than advertised, the women less so.
One of the things about service life is the new sets of friends one made. I found myself in a rather unusual clique. Manny was my closest friend. He introduced me to classical music, philosophy and how to free my mind. He had a fantastic knack for making friends with people who traveled different roads.
He first introduced me to Lonnie, a black guy who wrote poetry and who was to bring jazz into my life; the MJQ, Coltrane and Miles Davis for starters. Next was Jack. Jack had been in the service for a few years. His ticket to the clique was that he was writing a novel. That was different enough. I'm not sure who brought in Sylvester. His goal in life was to produce and direct Broadway plays. He was also gay. I don't know how he was never outed by some narrow mind, but he made it through.
Lonnie brought Lili to the group. Lili was German, but had lived ten years in the states. She told us stories about life in San Francisco among the Bohemians and their music and art. She never told us why she came back to Germany to with her mother, brother and sister in a town that was not too far from the base. Lili worked on the base, but I never did learn what she did. What happened on the base was irrelevant to us. But her Mother's house is where we began hanging out, drinking coffee and talking or arguing about anything and everything under the sun.
We asked how did a German girl get a name like Lili. She told us that her father was in the Afrika Korps during the war and that Lili Marlene was the most popular song at the time. When she was born, he named her Lili Marlene. It was a maudlin song about a girl and a army base, but I didn't understand all the words when Lili sang it to us.
Among other things that made her interesting, Lili was into yoga and she was fond of showing us various positions, which she then would challenge us to attempt. One night, when we were drinking wine instead of coffee, Lili laid down a new challenge. She would show each of us a different position and if the person assigned the position accomplished it, she would have sex with him. It seemed like more of the joking around that we were always doing. Jack and I were the only ones who took her up. I suspect that Manny and she had already been doing the wild thing. Jack had to put his foot behind his head. I don't think I could have done that. But Lili made it look easy. Jack gave it good try, to no avail. I had to balance on one foot and keeping the other leg straight out and my arms folded across my chest. Then, keeping my back and head straight, I had to hunker down and rise back up three times. I had fairly good balance and by concentrating, I accomplished it. Manny clapped his hands and said to Lili, "Guess you owe him a fuck." Lili laughed and I laughed. I didn't really think she would do it with me. The conversation soon went off another tack before we had to leave Lili and head back to the base.
For the next couple of weeks life proceeded pretty much as it had the past few months. I was on the base soccer team and we practiced two nights a week and played games on the weekend, usually Sunday. I enjoyed the soccer outings. I started as the left fullback because I could kick the ball equally well with either foot, and not many on our team could kick with their left very well. After a time, I became the full time goalie. Most fun was when one of the local towns put on a sports fest. Usually eight teams of different skill levels would play a round of fifteen-minute games. After the games the sponsoring town threw a party. Those parties were fun and the girls found Americans that played
fussball,
especially if they could speak German.
Manny took a suite of two rooms at the main
Gasthaus
