ABURG REUNION – OCT – 2015 – SINGER ISLAND, FL

REMARKS BY TED RONEY

 

When Saxon put out the call for each of us to appear with some kind of entertainment to offer, I had a moment of fright, and choice to make.  I haven’t played my trumpet seriously since high school, so you’ll be glad to hear that I left it home!  I sing a little, but musical accompaniment would probably be difficult to arrange.  I am handsome, but a Justin Bieber I am not!

So – what to prepare?  As you are about to hear, I am not a great orator!  I’ve done a little public speaking, a little teaching, and pitched to GE execs from Jack Welch on down.  And I was always nervous!

But I offer this monologue as a combination of my feelings about this group, and of the experiences that engendered those feelings.

Every year in September I re-read four of WEB Griffin’s historical novel series – specifically Semper Fi about the Marine Corps, Honor Bound about the WWII Office of Strategic Services in South America, Presidential Agent which describes a President’s special agent working against terrorism in a post-9/11 world, and the Badge of Courage about the Philadelphia Police Department.

Why do I re-read these series every year?  Simply put, I relate to the central character in each series.  It’s not that I could ever be one of these larger-than-life heroes depicted in the novels.  For the most part, the situations they find themselves in are always crafted with a rat-hole that allows them to escape, or to manage their way out of difficulty.  Real life situations often do not present such serendipitous outcomes.  Often, good people with good intent get cut off at the knees by the super egos or political ambitions of others.  But these characters are definitely heroic – and their exploits draw me.

I am sure my addiction to these novels stems from my experience with you guys – whether we served in exactly the same time frame or slightly offset from my 21 months with the 9th.

Look at us – most of us were engineers of one sort or another.  One physicist?  One West Pointer?  We’ve had a dentist or two, and some quick wits who went to OCS, some business degrees, some with no degrees.  

Think of some of the characters we served with – Aloitious McGurr, Gary Marchand, Phil Heimeman, Chauncey Veach, Bill Koenigsecker, Dave Deka, Charlie Davis, Gene Tickner, Artuso, even Rees Morgan ………  what an assortment of personalities.  And, what an assortment of backgrounds, and education.

I didn’t know horse manure from concrete when I reported into the battalion at Grafenwhor in late August of 1964, and I had a squad leader named Mulcahy that tried to cover me with both.  51 years ago!

Fortunately, Art Biddle left me with a very understanding platoon sgt, so I muddled through as a platoon leader. What Biddle did NOT prepare me for was Tickner, CO of D company, my commanding officer.  Among my most lasting memories of my first days with the 9th was after hours when Tickner and I were racing up and down the meandering byways of central Germany in his MG-B in search of just one more beer tent, blind drunk!

I remember the monthly alerts – some of which entailed not just assembling at Smith Kaserne, but also mounting up and running off to Bad Hersfeld and our other target points.  Hmmm – target points ….. Just why was the 9th Engineer Battalion over there?  

A thousand years of history demonstrated that any attack into Western Europe through Germany would come thru a mountain gap at Fulda, especially since that terrain would lend itself to an incursion of armor from the East.

Our mission, if the balloon went up, was to cut the roads around Fulda – hopefully before an attack actually took place.  To accomplish this, the ammo trailers towed behind our 5 ton dump trucks all had conventional explosives in them – to cut holes in the roads, drop bridges, create tank traps, etc.  

I’ve never seen the mission orders for our Atomic Demolition Munitions (ADM) platoon, but I suspect they were to place their suitcase nukes to block major armor approaches to the Fulda area.  Amazing – first lieutenants actually had their fingers on nukes!  My, were we good!

I don’t know about the rest of you – but once the plan was laid out for me, I was pretty sure that if the balloon ever did go up, there would be no more 9th Engineer Battalion.  We’d have to be in place to set off the explosives, and that would mean that the evil forces of the black hats were already on the move!  Bend over, put your head between your knees and kiss your posterior goodbye! …………….

There is a certain amount of stress involved in being on the cusp of receiving an overwhelming military attack.  The psych folks will tell us that groups exposed to a common stress can develop a lasting camaraderie - That is certainly one of the reasons we’re here, and why we have bonded.  It took me a long time to get to this point in my monologue – but the background was important.

What else?  Oh yes – stress ….. one of the things that alleviates stress is work, and working for a common purpose.  Colonel Denison reported into the 9th EBC just days before I did in August of 1964.  He was quite a guy, and a darned good civil engineer.  The engineer battalion preceding us had not finished their allotted projects, and the 9th was asked if we could accomplish our own, plus finish theirs.  Colonel Paul held an officer’s call to tell us that he had accepted that challenge.  I’m thinking we had the right tools in the right places (round pegs in round holes) – because we were able to meet that challenge.  

I remember a lot of long days, a very young foreign cadet from South America tamping dynamite charges into drill-holes at the quarry – almost starting to do so with a steel pry-bar, lots of crushed rock, and a general feeling of accomplishment as we drove back to Aburg after our month at Graf.  We were proud!

Stress – work – IG inspections, alerts, sports platzes, bridging the Rhine, Army Training Tests in support of the 3rd Brigade, schools, etc.  I calculated that in 1965 portions of the Battalion had spent 9 months in the field.  

Isolation – The 9th EBC was part of the 540th Engineer Group.  We were far from Group headquarters – my recollection is that we almost never saw anyone from Group at Smith Kaserne – at least not down at the platoon level.  Consequently, we became a small enclave in the midst of all the units stationed with us in Aburg.  Certainly we were different from the infantry and armor guys – I’ve heard the Special Service gals, ladies, women? say that the officers of the 9th were a cut above what they saw in other units.  Perhaps they were sensing what we felt – that we WERE special – that we flew thru IG inspections, aced Army Training Tests, were the go-to engineer outfit when a serious task was to be meted out.  Esprit!!  I think we had it.

Leadership – About my only negative recollection of Paul Denison as CO of the 9th was one day when I was walking the hall in the Headquarters building and overhead him berating Boyd Jones because one of his troops had pinned a pedestrian Rad up against a stone wall with his POV while drunk.  At that point I was just about to receive my silver bar and I was considering going Volunteer Indefinite.  That experience wiped that notion right out of my mind.  Particularly on foreign shores the US military is expected to be responsible for the behavior of the troops – and I could not conceive of any way to control some drunk troop outside the gates of Smith Kaserne.  Hence, it was to be back to GE for me.

I said that was the only not-so-fond memory I had of Colonel Denison – that’s true.  I must admit, I got a little sloppy as my months in the battalion wore on and I knew I was not to be a career officer.  On one alert, when we had deployed out to the boonies, I was in the mess tent – fatigue jacket unzipped, ball-cap a bit askew – not sloppy, but not especially strak-looking either.  Paul said something like “Just get up, lieutenant?”  I’m sure I made some flip remark, but managed to straighten up a bit and then raced off to shave!  He knew I was not going to make the Army a career, but felt I needed a bit of bracing for the encouragement of the others.  Just enough…..

Denison demonstrated his leadership ability with his challenge to the battalion that first August, by his mild manner when dealing with most problems, his expertise as an engineer, and his managing of the battalion officers and their personalities  - Artuso (who was S-3 and probably not as intelligent as Paul might have wished), of Cloyce Rogers (S-4 – certainly not competent, hoping to eke out his 20 years for retirement), Chauncey Veach (Bn Exec, and a chopper pilot pulling a “command” slot rotation, but who played his role a bit aggressively to compliment Paul’s mild nature), Phil Heineman  (came in as D company CO when Tickner rotated out and thought he knew exactly how Army should be run, it’s right there in the book!)  Even me – a fairly intelligent EE with no civil background and dwindling interest in the military as a career.  

After almost a year in D Company, Paul sent me to the Supply shop to replace Herb Hash who had just rotated to Conus.  S-4 Rogers needed a young buck under him to make the supply shop work – competent NCO’s, but Rogers was a bit shell shocked – perhaps literally.  The role Herb, and then I played was to under-pin Rogers so the Supply shop would run efficiently and Rogers could get his retirement.  It worked – I didn’t have to pour any more concrete (what the hell is a slump test, anyway? – something you do on the morning after?), and the Supply Shop got someone who could read, handle paper, check the mess halls, keep the Rads from stealing rations from our allotment and making sure they followed Army regs in the process, precede the battalion for movements to Grafenwhor and Vilseck for billeting, rations, range firing, etc.  In fact, I burned out the engine in my brand new VW beetle racing Mercedes on the autobahn!  VW paid for the parts, I paid for the labor!  In 1966 the battalion got the new set of solid state radios – and Paul asked me if I would use my EE background to supervise their installation and start-up.  Bottom line – Paul was very good at using people where their skill set would contribute.

All that’s wonderful – setting goals and challenges, managing personalities, fitting skill sets with tasks, all great attributes needed by a successful leader – and Paul had them in spades.

However, Paul’s best attribute from my standpoint was Mary Denison – Paul’s wife.  In my mind Mary was the Grand Dame of the 9th Engineer Battalion.  Calm, always gracious, always trying to help someone - in particular the young wives of second lieutenants and doctors reporting into the battalion.  I remember  one New-Years Day open house at the Denison’s where we stayed longer than I think she and Paul intended, and the punch bowl kept emptying – so a couple of us just about emptied their liquor cabinet to keep it from running dry.  I cannot imagine any other pair in their position, as the Colonel and his Lady, reacting with such benevolent calm!  Amazing!

We lost Paul a couple of years ago, and Mary just recently.  

Early on, for those of us who served in the 64-66 era, there was another unifying element in our Aschaffenburg experience.  That element was a large, second floor, rented apartment dubbed the DOG House because the principal lessee was Dunbar Oswald Godbold.  Dunbar was one of the Army Dentists in Aburg – along with Ron Goldstien.  Dunbar was a bachelor, a party-loving bachelor!  While not officially attached to the 9th, Dunbar had developed an affinity to certain bachelor officers of the 9th – especially to Gene Tickner – another party-loving animal.  If either one was in town, it would have been hard to find a weekend when there was not a social gathering taking place at the DOG House.  

Even those of us who were married found a large segment of our social calendars filled with appearances at that party hall.  Officers coming into the 9th, or shortly leaving, found a temporary warm bed in those quarters.  It was a hub – a hub all the 9th’s officers had witnessed, and found appealing.

I left in April of 1966 – sailed home on the USNS (or MATS?) Rose – a twin screw liberty ship built during World War II.  Slow and ungainly, It did not have stabilizers.  Carnival did not operate that ship!  

For me that was the end of my experience with the 9th – Active reserves for a while, then inactive, and eventually the DD214.

For some of you, my ending was your beginning – and I’ve heard enough of your stories to know that while your experiences were not the same as mine (I mean, WE never blew up an ammo trailer!!!), they were as important to you as mine were to me.  What I find really interesting is that we have found enough common bond to merge.

Since leaving the 9th, we have been printers, photographers, architects, executives and middle managers in major corporations, independent contractors, farmers, a printer, Art Biddle is a lawyer, Gary Pritchard is a pastor, Phil Shoemaker and Hal Morgan made the Corps their careers –

We came from all sorts of childhood backgrounds, and we pursued a host of careers after our military service.  We were diverse before we came to the 9th, and have been diverse since we left it.

We are not homogeneous in our political outlook.  We live in almost every part of the country.  We are not economically on a par with each other.  Some of us married and had children, some did not.  

Yet, we are here, together, and we’ve been together often since that first 1966 gathering in Kingsport, TN as Steve Mercer was leaving for Viet Nam.  Nan and I missed a few after that first one, but picked it up again in the 1980’s.  Some of you have joined the gatherings more recently.

Many of us had similar experiences.  We were young and foolish.  We were learning the Army and our jobs.  Many of us were newly married, and trying to figure that out, too, some with babies and young children.  Those similar experiences also helped to bond us.

There is magic in here somewhere……….in all of us.  I feel it.  I feel it every time we get together.  It’s not always the same, but it’s always there.  

Trite, perhaps, but I am proud to be counted among this band of brothers.

 

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