Subj: Wade T/Campy 050417: ASA
Date: 4/18/2005 2:12:01 AM Eastern Standard Time
From: campydog@verizon.net
To: wetemp@aol.com
Excuse the intrusion; I think we were together for a brief time during a flight from Westover AFB to Lages, Azores thence on to Frankfurt (via replacement Navy DC-6B equivelant aircraft) . You mentioned F. Camphausen; that's me, commonly known as "Campy". The flight via MATS DC-6B was exciting - the #2 engine caught fire over the Atlantic, at night when most of us were sleeping. A couple of guys who saw the sheet of flames called the stewardess over and she asked them to be quiet and not awaken and alarm the other passengers, and that the pilots were aware and working on putting out the engine fire. They succeeded. During our couple days wandering around the interesting volcanic yet farmed island, we were summoned to board a bus which took us back to the airfield just to allow us to examine the melted engine. I took some slides of the damage. The engine was not quickly repaired, after 2-3 days we were all put aboard a different, Navy operated DC-6B for the continuation to Rhein Main.
You recalled many details in Heilbronn which I was well on the way to forgetting - about the jettisoned bomb loads which damaged Heilbronn and killed so many people. I do remember wandering around with my camera and taking pictures of ruined buildings on the largely deserted streets of Heilbronn. That was Gutleut Kaserne in Frankfurt (the u was missing). You recorded organizational designations whick I had not made record of, and had almost forgotten. My training at TSESS had been MOS 1710 high speed radio operation and we therefore separated when you and a group went to Bamberg. I went to Straubing (no radio repairs) instead.
Later, I spent a year in Bamberg, married a German lady (now friendly-divorced/remarried), and extended my enlistment for three months to assure my wife would have all her papers secured for traveling with me back home. I was forgotten about. The orderly room clerk (Cpl Jepson) knew I was awaiting orders but after I was taken off duty to go home, Sgt Echolls assumed I had left already. We traveled around Europe during this time (also lived at the "Vierjahreszeiten" inn in Bamberg), only checking in with the clerk from time to time to see if my orders had arrived. Finally, during a noon time when I carried a sack of laudry in to be turned in, Sgt Echolls drove by and saw me, got red in the face, and on that day at 1300 hrs I was back as mail clerk. Soon afterward my orders arrived and my wife and I returned to the U.S. via the MS Buckner, then a troop ship (later in Vietnam where I spent time in 1968-69 as a civilian analyst for Adm Zumwalt. I dealt with the personnel of the same ship which by then had become a river afloat Patrol Boat (PBR) base. We didn't fly home because I was returning with our car and it was carried on the same ship to Brooklyn Navy Yard after catching the tail end of Hurricane Carol, ending the career of the cruise ship Andrea Doria at that time, where we debarked, separated, paid gas mileage, and thence took off for CA.
My career, after graduating as a physisist U.C. (and by not responding to the William Manley invitation) continued with the NSA for awhile and then I moved into Naval Intelligence. I had several S&T intel assignments in Germany and Chechoslovakia (without visa), working for the other grey suits, but as i dumbed out of the field work in 1969 I chose to be excluded from the senior executive service and instead be turkey-farmed to Naval R&D locationa in CA - Corona and China Lake. I went through the exploitation, operations research analysis, systems analysis, radar and HE laser propogation and CM systems analysis development, and finally airborne CM/CCM test and evaluation cycles until retiring from NWC in August 1968. My wife and I have lived in Bishop, CA since a year before retiring.
In retrospect, my 302 Comm Recon Bn became something else, the 544 I believe, maybe even 571 or something like that (I'd have to refer to my Form 312 to be certain). My recuiting sergeant was an Air Force recruiter in Glendale, CA who as I live and breathe told the truth. What he offered, I received, and I have a huge appreciation for this. I went to Germany (was offered also Alaska or Asmara) and learned a zillion things about my family's former country, and generally had a ball while there. It was Dan Akroyd and Roger Giacometti who went with me to Straubing I sort of remember Gordon but I can't place him. My basic was with the Tenth Inf Div at Ft Riley, KS. At TESS my friend , whith whom you may have been in contact, was and still is Paul Holland, who flunked out when he threw mill out the window, and he became a chaplain's assistant for the duration of his enlistment.
Enough for now. Lots of fun reminiscing. I'm strictly retired, working harder than ever as a trail worker and mountain cook for trail projects, particulary on the PCT.
It was good reading of your experinces, if you have time, write back with more about your subsequent activities. I was alerted to your Page by Ted Beyer, a friend who googled on something that pertains.
I contribure digital images to my Web gallery in Germany which you may wish to wander through at your leisure:
http://www.fotocommunity.de/pc/account/myprofile/424619 and click to some page like 4 or 5 to even see one taken of me.
Campy
Project Leader, Pacific Crest Trail Association
Bishop, CA
Home of the High Sierra Trail Gorillas
http://www.reailprojects.com click onPCT
Email received April 18, 2005
Hi Wade,
Thinking you may be a bit pressed for time I'll only rush an acknowledgment of your email. I was taken off of work mainly 'cause I was a short time, and then the scrutiny of my bride began in earnest, even long after we returned to California. I took a job as a junior professional for Convair General Dynamics and my wife would tell me of a car with a person sitting in it out front for a couple days. When I remarried in 1980, my wife then also told me of a car with a guy sitting for a couple days, how inept! I still held a clearance but no longer the same kind as before. Our dates of marriage and other events seem to be uncannily similar, 'cept I retired at age 55 in 1988. Ted who I mentioned, worked in Bremerhaven samo samo 'cept he was a linguist in Polish.
Your memory is perhaps no different than mine, just that we need to jog it a bit. I never in a million years would have remembered the mane of the orderly room clerk and sergeant had you not gotten me to start thinking again. Was hoping you might even remember those guys.
I was perpetrator but not a leader in the "strike" after the new Bn Cmdr cut out the midnight breakfast serving after the trick change. Ha-ha. It seems so strange, me an upright civil servant, participating in a strike. It was all over very quickly, as you may recell.
Have a great time in Denmark. I remember bits and places of that beautiful country when my wife No. 1 and I returned to Europe during a summer after I got sorta settled, in 1962 no doubt - we returned to see her mom every 3 or 4 years. Always received a new VW at the factory or somewhere convienent and made a long drive, then returned home with the used VW! I'll never ever forget Copenhagen as we visited there perhaps three times, I smoked a pipe then and always returned to the same downtown pipe shop to pick out a new Danish pipe.
We have some friends who live in New Ringold, perhaps near you. Famous long distance trail hiker Cindy Ross and her family. We havn't yet had the pleasure of visiting here there.
See ya, and thanks for your nice reply.
Campy.
New page Feb 19, 2009