By now I had finished basic training and I was receiving my admin training at Fassberg Air Base. It was near home, which was nice, and I was also able to keep up with friends, and attend Youth Club events now and then. By now I had become a familiar face at Dennis Barracks, and I would go there often after work, sometimes even in my dashing blue Air Force uniform. The guards knew me by now, getting in was a breeze back then, no major terror threats, the IRA had chilled by the late 80s, and there were no such things as Al Quaida or ISIS. Due to my special NATO assignment I was authorized to wear patches and insignia on my uniform that a normal German airman or soldier was not allowed to wear, such as a tag saying "German Air Force", or the shield of the NATO HQ I was to join... I sometimes drove around town, went to stores or the bank in my uniform, even if I was off duty, so that I would see the looks of the army guys running around all over Munster. I loved that uniform, and wore it with great pride. But damn, I don't want to go to Canada now. What was I to do? I asked for something like this, and I got it. There was no way out. Or was there? I consulted with my sergeants at the HQ I was working at, IV / 33rd Signal Regiment at Fassberg Air Base to find out if they had an idea.
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| The Fassberg "Gang" during an exercise in the spring of 1988 |
TSgt. Peter Zerbe, MSgt Kay Peters and MSgt Harald Dening had become friends by now, and I needed their advise. They told me that the position at Goose Bay was for an airman, so if I were to put in a request for NCO Training, I wouldn't meet the requirements for the position, and they would have to find someone else, and something else for me. Wow... that simple... so, I wrote up a request, of course in proper military format and submitted it to my commanding officer.
Lo and behold, a few weeks later I received a change in orders. I was to report to the Air Force NCO Training Academy at Appen Air Base North of Hamburg. At this point, I even got an extra stripe on my insignia, to signify that I was now an NCO-in-Training. My rank now was "Obergefreiter UA in integrierter Verwendung" or "Airman First Class NCO Trainee in Integrated Assignment".
NCO training at Appen Air Base was a cake walk. It was during the 1988 Seoul Olympics, and our flight (platoon) commander and drill instructors only required us to attend classes in the mornings, allowing us to self-study in the dormitories in the afternoon. But instead of self-studying, we watched the Olympics. Often our flight chief joined us. Sometimes, during outdoor tactical training sessions, we either picked blackberries, or listened to our instructors tell us about inconvenient, or messy military assignments, that the army would end up having to deal with. After all, we were Air Force, and Air Force don't get dirty. Other flights were not so lucky. There was one flight commander who seemed to have watched Full Metal Jacket too many times. He made his flight get up at inhumane hours in the middle of the night, and run or march the poor guys across the base, shouting marching cadences from the movie. Crazy dude... he ended up getting reprimanded after one of his drill exercises ended up with a guy getting hit in the face with a rifle butt.
After graduating the academy, I was now "Obergefreiter UA mit bestandener Prüfung in integrierter Verwendung" or "Airman First Class NCO Training Graduate in Integrated Assignment". I also got to tie a golden ribbon to signal the successful completion of NCO training around my shoulder sleeve insignia.
My time at Fassberg Air Base was very enjoyable. I had a great job, assigning training classes to recruits coming out of basic training, and sending them off to either places near their home or somewhere to the middle of nowhere. It was cruel actually, how Peter Zerbe and I chose the plight of some of these poor fellows. If one had a funny or strange name, off to Bavaria with him. If another had good reviews or other positive signs in his military records, we assigned him to our unit. Overall, we had a lot of fun, and we enjoyed the summer of 1988. I received two letters of commendation for my outstanding performance as Training Assignment NCO. In the fall, I was informed that my NATO assignment would not be abroad, but instead on some NATO base somewhere in Southern Germany. That wasn't really what I asked and hoped for, but at least it beat being stuck in Canada in the middle of nowhere for three years.
During that summer of 1988 I managed to get the German Sports Badge to pin to my blue uniform, as well as the German Armed Forces Badge for Military Proficiency Grade I in Bronze. I was physically fit back then, running 5,000 meters in under 20 minutes.
At the end of 1988 my time at Fassberg came to an end and I received my orders to report to Allied Sector Operations Center 3 at Boerfink MTK, whatever the hell that meant. Trying to find this place was a pain in the ass at an age with no Internet and no GPS. Maps didn't help much either, since the place must have been top secret or something, because there wasn't any such place on any of the maps we looked at.
Luckily, I was to report not directly to Boerfink MTK and hopelessly get lost, but to a German Admin Office by January 29th, 1989 at Birkenfeld Heinrich-Hertz-Barracks in the Hunsrück mountains in Southwest Germany, home of the 2nd German Air Force Division. So off to Birkenfeld I went.
