Robt. E. McDonald, U.S. Army

My Military History by Robert E. McDonald

In August 1954 my friends and neighbors decided that the U. S. Army needed me more than Phillips Petroleum at Amarillo did.

I arrived promptly at Fort Bliss, Texas to begin eight weeks of basic training. The most memorable event at that location was crawling over the sharpest rocks in Texas for fifty yards while 50 caliber machine gun bullets flew three feet above my head.

After Fort Bliss, I was sent to my second eight weeks of basic training at Camp Gordon, Georgia. I was enrolled in the Southeastern Signal School taking the Signal Message Clerk course. Upon graduation early in 1955, I was sent to Camp Kilmer, NJ to await embarkation from Brooklyn Navy Yard on a troop ship. The Atlantic Ocean kept me seasick for ten days until we arrived at Bremerhaven, Germany. Ultimately I was assigned to the Headquarters Battery of the 4th Infantry Division Artillery in Frankfurt, Germany. Our unit controlled five gun battalions at various cities near Frankfurt. While working in the message center, it was mandatory that I have a "Secret" clearance. After the Communications Officer found out that I was a typist, he transferred me from the message center to the duty of being his clerk-typist. At this point I was required to take a turn at guard duty, which at first required outside walking in a temperature of 17 degrees below zero. My most significant duty for that period consisted of typing communications from tape recordings by the communications sections in the field for fire direction control, spending six weeks in the field at a site 17 miles from the Czech border.

In September 1955, after returning from the above field maneuvers, my Battery had a notice from 7th Army Headquarters that it must furnish a clerk-typist cleared for "Secret" to serve temporary duty (TDY) at the 7th Army Headquarters Transportation Division Stuttgart, Germany. The Communication Officer did not want to let me transfer, but no one else fit the bill. The job in Stuttgart consisted of typing all the handwritten Operations Orders prepared by three officers for a project called “Exercise Road Bound III.” The exercise would be a “live” practice of all the required operations to evacuate all of the required operations to evacuate all of the military dependents and civilian personnel out of Germany if the Soviets were to attack. When the exercise began, the other clerk-typist and myself were required to go along and observe from the exercise Command Post. This duty was one of the most important and rewarding of my Army career. The Officers that we typed for at the 7th Army sent a request to my home base to raise my rank, which they did posthaste.

After returning to Frankfurt about Christmas time in 1955, the duty was routine office work along with the required monthly alerts, which sent the whole unit into the woods nearby.

All the time of my service, my Wife, Joan, whom I married while at the beginning of my senior year at Hardin Simmons in September of 1953, did not get to accompany me. Some soldiers in my outfit in Germany brought their wives over and lived in the German economy, but that took more money than our small resources would allow. Joan stayed with her Parents in Abilene, Texas and saved her allotments so we could have a good start at homemaking in Austin, Texas where I pursued a graduate accounting degree from the University of Texas.

I spent a good deal of my leisure time in Germany writing letters to my bride back home. Ninety-five percent of the GI's in my unit (married and single) spent most of their time pursuing frauleins at the local bars and clubs in Frankfurt. I vowed to the Lord that I would be faithful to Joan throughout all of this difficult separation. I figured that if I broke this vow, then the Russians would attack the U.S. Army in Germany before I left for home or that my troop ship would sink on the way home. I was ridiculed by some of my fellow soldiers and all of the Sergeants of my section. At each morning formation when we lined up for dispatch to various jobs, my section Sergeant would say "Fall out _____ _____ , using an obscene name to label me as person who practiced abstinence. I went to my office and the others marched off to their workstations. In today's Army, I could have easily had him court martialed. I returned to Joan safely and he became the most disliked (by all the men) Sergeant in the whole unit.

I spent most of the other time at the GI movies and touring Germany, Italy, France, England, and Holland.

Riding on the ship to the States, I had to pull KP, which did not mix very well with seasickness, but it was worth it to finally see Joan when she met me at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. She was the most beautiful sight that I had seen since I left her in December 1954.