Once the Air Force dismissed me, I ran out of options. I wasn’t interested in a regular enlistment in the Air Force and the four-year (five?) obligation it entailed. I wanted to get back to graduate school as quickly as possible. I never really considered the Navy at all. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think they were more exclusive than the Air Force. I hadn’t gotten a chance to bond with Admiral Moorer that afternoon, so I had no one to pull strings for me at Naval Operations.

Although I took my chances by waiting for the draft to come get me, my Army days turned out lucky, though they didn’t start off that way. I began my service on October 3, 1968 and went through Basic at Ft. Benning. Halfway into the course, I was chosen to train with the M-16. “Don’t mean a thing,” the drill sergeants told us. “They just choose a random group out of each company for that stuff. It don’t mean you’re headed for ‘Nam. Don’t worry about it. ” A couple of weeks later I had orders for Advanced Infantry Training at Ft. McClellan. Hmmm. I guess that don’t mean anything either, huh?

Just a couple of days before everyone was due to be shipped out to their new training stations, I was told that I was a hold-over, that I wouldn’t be heading for McClellan right away. I’ll never know for sure, but I think my status as a naturalized citizen made it harder to get a security clearance for me (or made it necessary to get one for me in the first place). Anyway, no trip on the AIT Express for Private Klauss. On the day that most of the company was going through the graduation ceremony, I was pulling KP. I probably swiped a couple of pieces of graduation cake that day to make up for missing the military rites of passage.

In limbo for a few days, we hold-overs lounged around our almost deserted training barracks, cramming in as much sleep as possible, but soon enough the Army snatched us up again into the Big Green Machine.  We were shuttled over to our new temporary home, the hold-over barracks of the Army Training Center HQ. There every morning after breakfast we climbed into trucks and were hauled around to perform various character-building activities around the post.

One morning we stopped at the HQ buildings complex. A sergeant walked out and asked: “Does anybody here know how to type?” I threw up my hand. I don’t think I hopped up and down in the truck, though, hollering “Take me, take me.”  That would have been exceedingly un-military.

I took a typing course my last quarter at Auburn, thinking: you never know what might come in handy. I made a C.  At Ft. Benning, our intelligence and job skills were assessed on the second day of our short stay at the Reception Center at Harmony Church. On the first day, we all started looking alike: shorn of our hair and abandoning our civilian clothes for the brotherhood of new uniforms. We all started acting alike, too: herded around by the screaming drill sergeants, we were one hopeless slimy green layer of something lower than whale do-do. We were being broken down before our lengthy re-constitution as soldiers. I was so sleep-deprived and numb by the time of the typing test that it’s a wonder I could crank out 25 words/minute.

The theme song during this interlude of estrangement from civilian life was Johnny Taylor’s “Who’s Makin’ Love” (to your old lady while you’re out makin’ love?)  Anybody else remember that funky tune? I remember it playing out back of the mess hall as we trudged around the Reception Center. In our case it was doubly-derisory: none of us was makin’ love, that’s for sure, but who knew what was happening back at the homefront? In the weeks to come we would often sing about that snake, Jody, as we marched in cadence.

So there I was in the truck, raising my hand, VOLUNTEERING for God’s sake—a potentially dumb move in anyone’s army. But, hey, I was a champeen typist, the newly-strack master of any Underwood or Royal. “You da man,” the others murmured admiringly.

“Jump down, Private, and follow me,” the sergeant said. We walked to the Public Information Office, and he introduced me to the Public Information Officer, a first lieutenant. “This guy’s here to sweep and clean up, sir.”

Even then I found it damn funny that they wanted someone who with typing skills for their janitor, but I kept the joke to myself. Maybe the last guy that swept up for them had a nervous breakdown and ended up getting a medical discharge because he wasn’t a qualified typist. I got to work with my broom, visions of Beetle Bailey in my head. It sure beat the hell out of doing KP somewhere.

After awhile, the PIO and I started talking. He asked me where I was from and where I’d gone to school. “Huntsville, Alabama, sir. I’ve got a degree in English from Auburn University, and I can type, sir.”

“Really? Well, that’s interesting and maybe good timing. Here’s the situation, Private. One of my reporters is shipping out to ‘Nam soon. Would you be interested in taking over his job? With your credentials, I’m assuming you can write an understandable sentence. Is that right?”

“No problem, sir” Thank God he wasn’t a ‘Bama grad, ready to unload a dozen cow college jokes.

“Okay, one of the things we do is send out news stories on the soldiers who train here to their hometown newspapers. Stuff like ‘Private Johnny Jones, the son of Merle and Ethel Jones, has completed Basic Training at Ft. Benning and will be reporting to Ft. Leonard Wood for further training as a Chaplain’s Assistant.’ Think you can handle that sort of thing?”

You can understand that I was stunned by the possible change of fortune. Here I was fresh off the turnip truck, so to speak, a man with a very uncertain future, and someone was dangling quite a prize in front of me. Actually, I wasn’t totally sure I could do the job. I had no journalistic training or experience, but I also realized that I wasn’t trying out for The New York Times. With some OJT and a determination to do my best, I knew I could give Johnny Jones and his family their moment in the spotlight.

“Yes, I would like that job, sir. You can do that for me?”

“Well, I can give it a try. You’re a hold-over, right? Give me your full name and service number and we’ll see.”

For the rest of the day I cleaned up in high spirits, already planning my career in military journalism. As I left that afternoon, the lieutenant told me he had already started making inquiries, and that I would be hearing from him.

I don’t think I went back to sweeping up at the PIO in the next couple of days, but all this took place just a few days before Christmas, and I had a chance to take leave. Before I left for H’ville, I got in touch with the lieutenant, but he had no news for me.

I went home, had a fine leave, and had hopes for an interesting future. I probably wasn’t going to get to fire the M-60, but I could live with that. Maybe I’d even get to write my own little newspaper notice for the Huntsville Times: “Private Rainer Klauss has completed Basic Training at Ft. Benning and is now a highly-regarded journalist with the Public Information Office at Ft. Benning, Georgia.”

Well, things didn’t work out that way. When I got back to the post, I was asked to report to the ATC Personnel Dept. There I found out I wasn’t going to be a cub reporter after all; that job had fallen through. However, Personnel had noticed the phenomenal typing speed posted on my record, and they offered me a job there. I thought it over for about two seconds, and then said: “I’m your man, Sergeant.”

The next day I reported to the Personnel Dept., and I was assigned to be the understudy of a guy who was very short (military slang for someone who’s about to get out) and was handling the records of the senior sergeants (E7-9) of the Training Center, 40-some career soldiers.  (A couple of those records were of sergeants that had bossed me around at my old training company.)  I picked up the job OJT. While I was still learning how to do things the Army way, I somehow started the retirement process for one of the E-8s (it wasn’t his intent to retire). The CWO3 who ran the shop took most of the heat for me when the sergeant came in to see what kind of doofus had screwed with his records.

The second bit of luck occurred a few months later. In those days, the Army offered an “early-out” option. If you finished a tour in ‘Nam and only had four months or less left before your service was over, you could get out early.

I found that an attractive proposition and had one of my fellow personnel specialists type up the voluntary service in Vietnam papers for me. All I had to do was take them to the company commander and get his signature. Soon I would be on my way overseas.

Well, with the papers in my hand I gave the matter some more thought and decided there was too much uncertainty in the proposition after all. Yeah, I chickened-out. I decided to just take my chances, and I ripped the papers up.

I came down on orders for Germany about two months later. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, and he had an early present for his relative so far from the North Pole. I left Ft. Dix on New Year’s Eve and landed in Frankfurt on January 1, 1970. I remember how I chafed in my confinement through the early stages of in-country processing in Frankfurt and Worms. “Hey, that’s my homeland out there. Let me out of here!”

I ended up in Panzer Kaserne in Kaiserslautern, part of USF SupDist Rheinland-Pfalz. I’m not sure what our particular mission was. There was a Gasthaus (tavern) right outside our gate, the trolley to downtown K-town stopped across the street, and Massimo’s Pizza delivered to the barracks. Half a mile down the road there was another Kaserne (Kleber) with a good snackbar and library. Across town at Vogelweh there was a huge PX complex with snackbars, a bookstore, and all sorts of other amenities. Can you say paradise?

I became an Administrative Specialist (71L).  The duty was easy. We never had to work on the weekends, and there was no irritating make-work like guarding the motor-pool at Benning. On Friday evenings I would often hop on a train and visit my relatives in Munich and Nuremburg.

Sp5 Klauss officially ended his active service as he waited to board a ferry to cross the English Channel. (OK, so the Company Clerk gave me a bit of a headstart.) As the sun came up that morning I was on a train speeding to London.

Now wait one damn minute here! You mean to tell me that this guy gets to swill beer and wine, gorge on Schnitzel, and romance Frauleins (with his charming Southern-accented German) for a year on what’s essentially a paid vacation, and then he gets a European sight-seeing trip on top of that, too? Yep!  That’s what happened. I saw London, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Florence, Venice, and Vienna on a Eurail Pass, and I didn’t get back to Huntsville until late November, 1970. Did I mention that Admiral Moorer gave me a conspiratorial wink the afternoon of the graduation? Just kidding, but you have to admit that I was one lucky SOB.