by Ben White
I was in [West] Germany as a matter of choice. It was either go to Germany, or tell the Army I didn’t want any part of their organization. I wasn’t in school, I wasn’t working, and I wasn’t independently wealthy, but still, I wasn’t going into the service for any more than two years. The Career Counselor in Louisville told me my test scores could get me any job in the Army, but if I only wanted a two-year enlisted, all she could give me was infantry. I stood up and was ready to leave her office, but she told me she could send me to Europe. I sat back down.
It was the Reagan years, and as president, he was all set on outspending the Soviets and sending their empire into oblivion. He was Republican-Capitalist enough to know his approach would 1) keep the military industrial complex well-funded, 2) be profitable to shareholders, 3) strengthen the power of the dollar around the world, and 4) give the sons of farmers and sons of steelworkers a military option for when the auctioneer left the farm and the last of the steel mills was boarded up. I wasn’t the son of a farmer, but the farms being auctioned off around my hometown were leaving an extremely detrimental effect on all the local economic opportunities, so I took President Reagan up on his promise to fund my last two years of college with his Veteran’s Educational Assistance Program (VEAP).
As it turned out, all I had to do was spend 13 weeks at the Fort Benning Georgia Infantry School (for Wayward Boys) then spend the rest of my enlistment in Europe. How else was I going to get to Germany? I signed the paperwork, and entered the Delayed Entry Program (DEP) on the 3rd of February, 1983 and had until April 6th to prepare myself for changes I had no idea how to prepare for.
I had been a college baseball player at a four-year school then at a two-year school. Despite not getting any offers to play ball after graduating from the two-year school, my dream of playing centerfield for the Cincinnati Reds was hanging on, so I decided to use the Army as two years’ worth of Spring Training to get in shape and transfer to a four-year school when I got out. That was the biggest reason I didn’t want to serve for more than two years. The Army could have those two years, but I was going to use the organization for all they offered – a salary, a physical work-out, a European tour, and college money. After I told my at-the-time girlfriend that I had a daughter and was getting married to my daughter’s mother (absolute lies), I was prepared to go (another lie).
I was a kid from rural Kentucky and landed in West Germany all hyped up on Fort Benning mortar man propaganda and ready to protect Western Europe from the godless Soviets for the sake of Freedom, Democracy, 1964 Chevrolets, and Apple Pies. The first Saturday in country was my 22nd birthday, and I celebrated by going to the Post Exchange in Nuremberg. The best part of that day was leaving the base and having lunch at a German café. My introduction to Weiner schnitzel and pommes frites was a great birthday gift wrapped in the realization I wanted to spend the least amount of time as possible on any military base.
The senior enlisted non-commissioned officers were all Vietnam veterans who spent their youth in the Army patrolling jungles looking for Viet Cong and anti-personnel mines. My platoon-mates and I spent our time listening to their stories before we patrolled the record shops of Germany looking for the latest releases of punk-rock music. My closest friend was from Chicago and had “gone native” wearing skin-tight, leopard-spot pants and dating a German girl to entertain him. Being from Monticello, Kentucky, I was ages behind his cool-punk-rocker persona, and I knew I wasn’t going to transform into his image. That said, I was willing to make the German experience work for me as much as he was making it work for him.
It was never lost on me that I joined the Army’s DEP on the anniversary of “the day the music died”—when, in 1959, a plane crash killed Richie, Buddy and the Big Bopper. Those artists had made their way to golden oldie stations, while in 1983, the radio stations in South-Central Kentucky played John Cougar Mellencamp, The Police, The Eagles, Eric Clapton, and Bob Seger. I personally was a big Bob Dylan fan, but he had gotten religious on me. The Rolling Stones had already ridden a Beast of Burden in to be my emotional rescue, so the music in Germany was an eye-opener and another flaming piece of the plane that had killed the rock-n-roll music that died in 1959.
I had been in-country for about 6 weeks when the company went to the field for a large operation called the Return of Forces to Germany (in Army acronymic language: REFORGER), in which all the forces that had been in Germany during World War II came back to participate in a large-scale training exercise (fundamentally meant to impress the Soviet diplomats who, we were told, were watching). My company was assigned as damage control.
That meant we got to ride around in the back of pickup trucks and take pictures of any damage caused by the 56-ton tanks that were rolling through the ancient cities and across not-so-ancient farmers’ field. We had rakes and shovels with us to smooth the track ruts out, but we didn’t use them. We just took Polaroid pictures and sent then into higher authority, so a check could be cut to mitigate damages.
What that time in the field meant to me was an opportunity to no longer be the new guy in the platoon. Spending twenty-four hours a day with a group of soldiers will do that. So when we got back, I was invited to go to a town for the weekend with a small group of those soldiers. The town itself was small with a guest house, a couple of restaurants, and a dance club. The soldiers had kind of claimed it as their own and made sure that anyone invited there would keep it as a secret.
The secret I learned there was that I was more of a tourist than I was a soldier. During the work week, I was camouflaged (literally and figuratively) as a soldier, but on the weekends I would take the train down away from the Army expectations and become a tourist. In my own way, I was “going native” and was hungry for the German experience to feed me every morsel of culture and understanding.
Listening to and dancing to the music in the club was a great introduction to the German and European cultures. Much of the music was from England, but there was also the music of German bands playing in the clubs as well. To this day, I would much rather listen to Nena sing “99 Luftballoons” in German than hear her English version. I didn’t understand a word beyond the “99” part or the “air balloons” part, but that was alright with me. It was part of my acclimation and assimilation into the experience.
There was also the heavy metal influence in Germany. The Scorpions were out of Hanover, and had an album Love at First Sting that had many soldier’s and German teenager’s favorite songs on it. Of course, the American soldiers had no idea that this was the ninth album for the Scorpions (they had been a band since 1965). It was just music that appealed to the rock-n-roll mindset of the ‘80s,but on that album there was a song, “Rock You Like a Hurricane” that helped my cultural competence make a deeper connection to the young Germans I was interacting with.
It came in the form of a question from a young man who was adventurous enough to play baseball in the German-American League. That was a league primarily with American players who were in the military, but the rules required there to be at least two Germans in the line-up at all times. I played in the same league, and he was a teammate of mine on the Ansbach Angels. We had some great discussions in English (he was bilingual), some not-so-great discussions in German (I was monolingual), and some interactive discussions in German-and-English (I was willing to learn!).
During one of our conversations, after “Rock You Like a Hurricane” had played close enough for us to hear it, he asked me, “What does it mean to ‘Rock You’?”
That’s a question that never comes up between Americans. We know what it means. It means what it means—rock you. The group Queen sang it and made it understood in the psyche of America—“We will, we will, ROCK YOU!” The knowledge of that phrase is embedded in American culture. Richie rocked us with “La Bamba.” Buddy rocked us with “Peggy Sue.” The Big Bopper even rocked us with “Chantilly Lace.” We knew and we know what it means.
But how do you explain it?
Mothers rock their babies in cradles, but that doesn’t capture it—that wasn’t a good example.
I thought about the use of rocks thrown to get someone off your property. That was not a good kind of “rock you,” and too close to “stone you.” That wasn’t a good example.
In the Army, rock-n-roll had another meaning. When you put an M-16 rifle on the fully automatic setting—that was “rock-n-roll.” That wasn’t a good example.
How do you explain “rock you” to a European speaking English as a second language? I didn’t know if there was a German equivalent or not. My guess was probably not, and there sure wasn’t an equivalent I knew how to say.
I ended up explaining it to him as being moved or motivated, but I have never been satisfied with that definition. It is deeper than that. Being rocked is much more than just being moved. Sad movies may move you, and it is more than motivation or being motivated. Vietnam Veterans can motivate you without rocking you. I am sure my definition fell far short of explaining it to my friend.
I understood what it meant, but could not explain it. When I heard the Scorpions, it rocked me. When I heard Nena sing, it rocked me. When I danced with a German girl, I was rocked. When I rode the European trains, I was rocked. I was a tourist on active duty ready to gather up every experience I could, and when I look back through 35+ years, I am still emotionally connected to those two years, but even saying emotionally connected isn’t enough.
It was a special, rewarding time, and times like those (even though they are individually defined) will rock us in ways that last a lifetime. The music died in 1959, I joined the DEP on the anniversary in 1983, but then went to Germany to find out the music didn’t totally die—it just changed chords.
Rock-n-Roll rocks us, and we know what it means, but language has its limits. The two years in Germany rocked me, but I can only relate stories leading up to the experience, tell about what went on during the experience, and remember the experiences that fell in place after the fact. I respect the opportunities to join the Army and go to Germany as they changed me forever, so maybe what “rock you” means is to be changed in ways that are everlasting.
That’s what I wish I had told my German friend.
As Ben White was earning his MFA from the University of Tampa, he thought he was a poet, and even had a handful of rejections to support the belief. But since then he has found out he is not a poet at all. He is a witness. What he writes is testimony.