My First Weekend Pass:

I have a weekend pass. I am stationed at Baumholder, Germany, a member of company C in the 66th tank battalion. A friend and I decide to take a train to Frankfurt, Germany. We spent all day Saturday wandering around the city and most of the evening visiting various local bars and nightclubs.

Later in the evening we ended up in a small town located about thirty miles south of Frankfurt. We found the only bar in the town, and seeing that it was pretty late, remained there until it closed. The people were friendly, and we had way too many beers to travel far, so we rented a room in a very small hotel next to the bar. If I remember correctly, I slept on a couch and morning came way too soon.

Morning came and we went downstairs where they served breakfast. It was a small place with, at most, seven or eight tables. We were still in our uniforms which were in a shambles, we hadn’t shaved, our hair wasn’t combed, and we just looked terrible. We ordered coffee and while we were deciding what to order, a young family entered the diner. A husband, wife and two young children and all were dressed in their Sunday best clothes. We said guten morgen to them and they all said the guten morgen to us. They sat at a table away from ours and glanced at us a few times. We felt out of place, and as the waiter was walking towards our table. The young man walked toward us and asked us, in German ,to come and sit at his table with his family.

At first we said no because we looked so unkept, but he would not take no for an answer. So we went to their table and sat with the family. After ordering we talked a while waiting for our breakfast. They talked in broken English and we spoke in terrible broken German. It was a lot of fun. They treated us as family. Then as the breakfast was served the family folded their hands and said “danke schon”, and they said a prayer of thanks. When the prayer was over they wished us a Happy Easter, to our surprise, it was Easter Sunday.

After breakfast, the husband paid for the breakfast, and they all again wished us a Happy Easter and said, “auf wiedersehen” ,and they left. My buddy and I ordered more coffee and talked for awhile about how nice the family was to include us in their Easter morning celebration. Finally we traveled back to Frankfurt to catch our train back to Baumholder.

That was my first, and only, weekend pass I had while I was stationed in Germany. I did have a week leave. Like a vacation. I visited family friends in Hamburg, Germany. I stayed in a hotel in town and visited friends on Saturday evening and again Sunday for about an hour. Also, a month before I returned to the states, I took another four day leave to visit friends in Innsbruck, Germany, near Switzerland.

I returned State side on Dec. 21, 1956 to Fort Sheridan, and was discharged a few days later. And I’ll always remember the couple that invited us to have Easter breakfast with their family.