What made you decide to join the U.S. Army after immigrating, and did you enjoy it?

During 1959 and 1960 thousands of Cubans came into exile, at first each person was allowed to take abroad $500, amount later reduced to $5. Dade County had then a population of about 125,000 with light manufacturing factories in Hialeah, tourist trade in Miami Beach and downtown and little else by way of employment available. Recent arrivals had therefore necessarily to find employment ASAP at any price and under any conditions. There was no federal assistance then, as was the case later.

Most of the exiles were middle class or richer, professional, entrepreneurs or skilled in the trades, began working in menial jobs but strong work ethics and necessity enabled them to advance quickly, in detriment of the native labor market. It is no wonder then that resentment ensued.

Add to that that most Cubans residing in Dade County since before the revolution were mostly pro-Castro and saw the newcomers as "gusanos" and far from trying to help, tried to block their progress.

My mother began working right away sawing at the same factory where my Aunt Margot already worked. My father went to find work at furniture factories and the first day they hired him at the factory where he worked ever since, albeit paid only about half his worth, was treated well by the Jewish owner and his foreman, so he was happy; they put him in a separate room to make the patterns they would later use for production, so he could smoke cigars while he worked at his own pace.

I went to work right away too, delivering catering from Chez Milhet to the Little Havana section, Manolo was my boss, as he managed the Spanish branch of the catering service. Later on, at his idea, I began buying Cuban bread from Murguia Bakery early in the morning and developed a route also in Little Havana. It was not very successful, so since my classmate Roberto Pérez was Night Manager at the Everglades Hotel, I began training with him, learning to operate the cumbersome mechanical accounting machine, using which during the night room rate and other charges were posted and printed into each individual room's sheet.

I was getting nowhere fast. I applied for a scholarship to the University of Miami, but was naive, did not know about the admittance process, used to the University of Havana where anyone with a High School diploma was admitted, I was turned down. I am convinced that, had I known then what I know now, or had had someone to guide me, I would have gotten the scholarship, as I passed the entrance exam with flying colors, I was well ahead of a freshman level, albeit lacking perhaps in some basic subjects not related to engineering.

That was the situation when the fiasco of 17 April 1961 at Bay of Pigs occurred. A little later, during June of the same year, came the Berlin Crisis, when East Berlin built its wall. To compound my problems, Charlie Wade got gotten my father-in-law Alfredo, who had graduated in Pharmacy here in the US, a position at the Pharmacy of Norfolk General Hospital, so that Miriam and her family had moved to Virginia.

The draft was going strong after the Berlin Crisis, they were stepping up the inductions, I talked to an Army recruiter who assured me I could be trained for and placed in the Corps of Engineers, which sounded good to me, if I volunteered then, not so if I waited to be drafted; I consulted Manolo, talked to Miriam and asked her to marry me, wrote a letter to Alfredo asking for her hand, told my parents and enlisted. Many years later I found out I was discriminated at the recruiting office, where my level of education should have been listed as 13 years, as I already had finished my first year of Electrical Engineering at the University of Havana, but was listed as a ninth grader instead. It must have been surprising to others afterwards when I qualified during the initial battery of test for OCS or Officer Candidate School.

I was sent to Fort Benning, Georgia for induction, to Fort Jackson South Carolina for Basic Training, where a sergeant asked me, "You don't want to go to OCS, do you?" to what I foolishly agreed.

Then I had leave after finishing Basic Training, went to Virginia, my parents came and we got married in a very small ceremony with Father Hammond at Holy Angels Church, a very nice priest.

At the end of my leave I reported to the Engineering School of Fort Belvoir, near Alexandria in Northern Virginia, where I told my First Sergeant I had gotten married and showed him the marriage certificate; although I should have asked for permission before marrying, he did not say anything and every week end I was there, from October to the end of January, he gave me a three-day pass that enabled me to take the Greyhound bus -and hitchhike in Christmas when I could not get a seat- to go to Portsmouth on Friday afternoons and return on Sunday afternoons.

The course was excellent and the battery of tests works, because everyone in the course was sharp and science inclined. It taught how to perform Third Echelon maintenance on all the equipment of an underground Nike Hercules Missile Base excluding the missile itself; learned to overhaul 4-cylinder gasoline engines, repair air-conditioning units and cargo elevators that raised the missile to the surface while opening the silo doors. It was before electronics, so we had to study schematics and troubleshoot huge control panel boards, where they would short cut two terminals with a little, almost invisible copper wire to test us.

As the end of the course approached, there was a big mystery, they would not tell us where we would be assigned upon completion, so one night a few of us sneaked into the company office and peaked. We found out the five of us, Roger Schumacher, Paris Laws, Dan Danford, John Wilson and I were to go to Support Point 753, Seventh Army Signal Corps, Bad Kreuznach, Germany, which with the exception of the country, left us as ignorant as before.

Our course qualified us for MOS or Military Occupational Specialty 352, a job in the Corps of Engineer that handled the Nike missiles, but somehow, we were assigned as MOS 351, entirely different, having to do with Third Echelon maintenance of telephone and telegraph equipment, a job of the Signal Corps; we did not find this out until we arrived at our destination in Germany.

I had a big suitcase with civilian cloth in addition to the duffel bag with uniforms, we had been issued regular uniforms, but no winter gear with the exception of the Class A overcoat; we had fatigues, field jackets without lining, no long jones, but did have leather gloves with wool inserts. They barely gave us time to telephone, leave alone a day or two to say goodbye, rushed us to Fort Dix New Jersey for a day or two and then transported us to New York Harbor to board an MSTS or Military Sea Transportation Service ship bound for Bremerhaven.

We boarded the ship, were taken to very crowded quarters, with four bunks hanging vertically on both sides of two metal post, so that I had a soldier on the bunk to my right and very close, one on top, another below without enough room to turn to my side, the bunk on top was so close. No worries though, a few of us were assigned the duty of keeping the rear deck clean, where we froze all day, except for breaks for the meals, shower and latrine, so that by the time we were allowed to go to the bunk to sleep, the warm cozy temperature and tiredness allowed me to sleep all night every night.

The trip lasted ten days, at the end of January we hit bad weather soon after leaving the harbor, although we did not encounter a bad storm as we did on the way back on January 1965.

We watched for soldiers that wanted to throw up, guided them to the rail so they would do so overboard, while holding them so they wouldnt fall; looking aft we saw huge shark fins following the ship, for they throwed the food remains and garbage aft after each meal, which acted as chum, so sharks must have known that. Field jackets without lining were not enough for the cold, found out that it snows in the middle of the Atlantic, froze my bones all day, so the crowded bunk in a warm room was a relief. The trip lasted ten days, we finally arrived at Bremerhaven.

Pfc Prokop, the SP-753 clerk, was waiting for us with a sign, so we gathered around him, who took us to a ¾ ton truck from our unit and took us and our baggage to our barracks.

When we reported the next day, we found out that our MOS 352 was confused with MOS 351, we were in the Signal Corps instead of the Engineer Corps. SP-753 was under the command of CWO4 Johnston, a very kind older man, who was as baffled as us. As it turned out, Paris Laws knew about radio repair, there was a shop to repair and overhaul 4-cylinder gasoline engines that were carried in a small trailer pulled by deuce-and-a-half or ten-wheel trucks. Roger Shumaker and I were assigned to it as mechanics.

John Slagle, a Staff Sergeant from Indiana, was the first friend who drove me out in his Karmann Ghia to see the town and its surroundings. I remember I welded shut a hole he had in his muffler. Slagle later, in 1964, was eager to go to Vietnam, but his was married with four kids and there were sending only single guys then, so he volunteered to become a Warrant Officer helicopter pilot; he did go to Viet Nam, was shot down, convalesced for a year and requested to go to Viet Nam again, where he was shut down a second time.

We did well, after a while I got tired of being greasy all the time and requested transfer to the parts supply department, we were promoted fast, Paris Laws, Roger Schumacher and I made E-5 or Specialist Fifth Class-equivalent to buck sergeant in the infantry- first, in under two years, possible as the Army was expanding then.

When CWO4 Johnston rotated back to CONUS, he was replaced by CWO Ulrich who in turn was replaced by First Lieutenant Robert Vento, an Italian from New Jersey, very nice and friendly, typical Italian, black hair, big nose.

While in the parts department, the Army was transitioning to IBM punch cards, so I was sent TDY to Murnau, a small Bavarian town close to the Austrian border, where the Army had a NATO school. The course was excellent, I learned all about Zero Punch, Eleventh Punch and Twelve Punch. While there, it was October FEST and the first Sunday I drove to the nearby town and, while driving slowly through a small plaza, Germans wearing the typical short leather pants and funny hats knocked on my car windows; at first I was alarmed, but soon saw the were holding beer steins, so I parked, got out and joined them in the beer drinking.

Another weekend while I was leaving the post in my 1956 Buick Special, saw three or four soldiers in a funny uniform walking and speaking Spanish, so I stopped, lowered my window and talked to them. There were officers from the Army of Spain, there for a different course than mine, so I invited them to hop in and join me, took them to town, showed them around, had a beer. The following weekend they avoided me, after a couple of times this happened, I confronted them, asked them why they were avoiding me; they replied that their commanding officer had prohibited them to join me, since they were officers and walking, while I, a mere sergeant, drove the big, luxurious automobile. Typical inferiority complex of Spaniards during Franco?s government, who were left out of the Marshall Plan, the intensely disliked Americans, albeit not my buddies, who were only lieutenants.

Also, while at Murnau, our Support Point 753 had a party to which they sent me an invitation; I replied that I could not attend since I was over 200 miles away and normal pass regulations prohibited one from going farther than a 50-mile radius from the base; Lieutenant Vento told me not to worry about, to drive back for the weekend and if I had any trouble, he would cover me by issuing an order. It was that kind of unit.

After becoming an E-5 I was eligible for government quarters and was issued a very nice apartment on the third floor of an apartment building built by the French, who had occupied that area first. The bathroom was split, with toilet and sink in one room and a huge bathtub in another. We moved there in 1963.

Late in 1963 the Seventh Army Support Point 753 was moved away from Rose Barracks in Bad Kreuznach, no longer a part of the Eighth Signal Battalion of the Eighth Infantry Division of Seventh Army. Since I had a family and government quarters, as well as not long to go in my enlistment, they did not transfer me, left me alone. I went to the post only to get my mail from the post office, otherwise did nothing.

It happened then that SFC Gibbons, the Battalion Supply Sergeant of the Eighth Signal Battalion rotated back to CONUS and his replacement had not arrived. The Eighth Signal Battalion Officer was my friend First Lieutenant Norman Ramírez, ROTC from the University of Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, intelligent, but not very military-like. The Eighth Signal Battalion Commander was Major Harris, soft spoken and easy going, a survivor of the Forced March of Bataan.

Lieutenant Ramírez went to see Major Harris and told him he knew where there was a man that could help him in S4, so Major Harris sent for me and softly asked me to go to S4 and help Lieutenant Ramirez, to which of course, I answered, yes, Sir!

It was a job for an E-7, not an E-5 like me, but worse, it required a Secret security clearance, because the Operation Order every time we went to the field was always classified Secret. Major Harris told me not to worry about it, he would take responsibility. He liked me he wanted me to stay on active duty, offered to recommend me to Officer Candidate School.

So it was that I, not yet 22, with my Cuban accent, had command of eleven men, some of which like E-4 Page had been in the Army eleven years. They rebelled at first, which forced me to get tough or fail; meanwhile I was reading every manual available; luckily the Army has explicit manuals for everything, so I soon learned my job and did my own four-finger typing. We had a small warehouse and I soon learned that I could requisition any amount of training material, including 45 caliber pistol rounds, smoke grenades, batteries, etc. All I needed to do was fill out the requisition and have it signed by Lieutenant Ramírez. Soon I became popular handing out those items to other GIs, which was overlooked; you could not sell them or give them to Germans, but nobody cared if they went to other GIs.

I was also responsible for our basic load of ammunition held at the ammo Dump and our basic load of gasoline held at the POL Dump and in two gas trucks part of our fleet. I requisition the food for the battalion mess hall and got along fine with the mess sergeant.

I soon learned that sergeants helped each other or were blacklisted. For example, Supply or S-4 Sergeants of the different batallions of the division, when a CMMI or Command Maintenance Inspection of a battalion was announced, always helped each other out. The older trucks, the ones that may have a little rust, were temporarily replaced by newer trucks of a different battalion that was not been inspected, al we had to do was replace the bumper markings, for which I had a stencil machine, then change them back after the inspection, they never checked serial numbers, only bumper markings.

Although my enlistment ended in July, I found out that if I extended six months to complete the three-year overseas tour, the government would pay for my dependents travel and moving my household goods. It was a no-brainer, so I did.

Military service was a great experience, during basic training I felt better than at any other time of my life, I was able to assimilate into American Life, learned to understand the spoken word and to speak the language, travelled over much of Western Europe at an early age, enjoyed the camaraderie and teamwork, learned to lead men, it was a good job for me, the only thing I disliked was the moving around from one place to another, never establishing roots. I often wondered afterwards if I should have stayed on active duty, gone to OCS to become and officer and serve twenty or thirty years, probably retire as a colonel, but who knows, I would have served at least two tours in Viet Nam, where Second Lieutenants had a short lifespan.


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