More Memories From Nürnberg

I think the statute of limitations has passed

I certainly had some interesting experiences in my 19 months as a soldier in Nürnberg from January 1975 until August 1976.  Some were very sobering like my last story, this time I want to tell you some humorous stories.  Well, maybe some of them weren't so funny at the time but they are now.  And I can solve an unsolved crime after all of these years that probably drove the Nürnberg police crazy at the time.  They like everything to be in order, it's a German thing. Like many other things during my time there, these incidents left an impression on me, and perhaps was the origin of my desire to collect stories about my sometimes crazy life.

One night I was sound asleep in my room in the barracks at the hospital.  I had to get up at 4:30 a.m. to be to work in the mess hall at 5 a.m.  I was rudely awakened by someone kicking my mattress and yelling my name loudly.  I slowly opened my eyes, and there was my friend Everett, yelling "Lada, wake up goddammit.  You gotta help me!"  Everett always called me Lada, it's an Army thing.  I looked at my watch and I told Everett that it better be important.  It was 12:30 a.m. and I had 4 more hours to sleep.  Everett responded "Goddammit Lada, just get up and get dressed, the taxi is waiting outside!"  Well, that was interesting.  It's 12:30 a.m., Everett needs my help desperately and there's a taxi waiting.  I was intrigued, so I slowly got out of bed, opened my wall locker and started to put some clothes on.  

Now at this point I need to explain some background to Everett's urgent mission.  Around a month earlier, Everett had bought an old, used VW Beetle.  It was a pale blue color and it wasn't a bad little car.  In the 1970s, those little VWs were everywhere in Germany.  Back then cars had these little windows on either door called vent windows or wing windows.  They were right where the door frame met the front windshield of the car, little triangular windows separated from the bigger side window, and there was a little latch on the bottom of the little window.  You would press a little button in the latch, pull the latch up and you could push the window open to let some air into the car without rolling the side window down.  So when Everett first showed me his 'new' car, he told me not to ever lock the vent window because the door locks were broken and you couldn't unlock them with the key.  When you got out of the car, you pushed the door lock button down and shut the door and the car would be locked.  But Everett needed to leave the vent window unlatched, so he could reach through it to open the car door.  It was a law in Germany that you had to lock your car doors when the car was parked.  

One day, Everett and I were out and about in his car.  We got back to his apartment, he parked the car, and I closed and latched the vent window, pressed the lock button down and shut the passenger door.  Everett noticed this after he got out of his side and had locked his door.  For some reason known only to Everett, he always latched his vent window and left the passenger side one unlatched.  Everett looked at me and said "Goddammit Lada, did you latch the vent window?"  I looked in the window and sheepishly told Everett that indeed I had.  It was just a habit, as almost all cars had those little vent windows back then.  So Everett, now a little angry said "Goddammit Lada, now I'm locked out of my car.  I hope you know how to get it open!  You might have noticed that Everett often addressed me as "Goddammit Lada!"  Well, I had no idea how to break in to the car without damaging it.  Then suddenly I remembered seeing someone use a coat hanger to get a vent window open.  So calmly, as though I knew exactly what to do, I asked Everett if he could get me a coat hanger from his apartment.  He came back with the hanger.  I untwisted the hook part of the hanger, straightened the hangar out and fished the hook end through the rubber seal of the window.  I figured I could maneuver the 'U' shaped hook to press the button on the latch, and simultaneously pull the latch up when the little button was depressed.  Much to my and Everett's surprise, it worked exactly as I had planned, although I acted like I knew it would work.  Everett was a big husky guy, and he clapped me hard on the back, almost knocking me over (I was  tall but quite thin when I was young) and congratulated me on my quick work.  

Now, back in my room, at 12.30 a.m., Everett needed my help to break into his car.  I grabbed a coat hanger from my wall locker and we went out front where the taxi was waiting for us.  On the way to his car, Everett explained to me that the had gone to a gasthaus a few miles down the road, and somehow the vent windows both got latched and locked.  A few minutes later the taxi deposited us next to Everett's little blue Beetle, parked on the side of a city street.  In Germany, after 10:00 p.m. it is quiet hours, and usually by 11 p.m., most places are closed, most people are in bed sleeping, and the streets are deserted.  Here I was with a straightened out coat hangar, at 1:00 a.m. on a deserted street in Nürnberg trying to break into my friend's car.  And a very impatient Everett pacing next to me muttering that it was taking me too long to get the car open "Goddammit."  That wasn't making it any easier to do the job, I was already nervous that if the German polizei came by, we would have a lot of explaining to do.  

About that time I heard a car and I said a silent prayer asking that it wasn't the polizei.  It wasn't, it was a US Army Military Police car!  I was relieved, at least they were American, and perhaps they could help us.  The MP car stopped, 2 MPs got out and casually asked what we were doing.  Everett explained our predicament to them.  They looked a little skeptical and they asked for Everett's ID.  "Well" he said, "there's a little problem with that". "Don't tell me" said one of the MPs, "Your ID is in the car."  Everett replied "Exactly!"  So the MPs got on their radio in the car, and decided Everett was the owner, and said they couldn't help us get the car open.  I was hoping they would stay with us in case the polizei came by, but they told us good luck, and drove away.  That didn't make me any more relaxed as I was still fumbling with the coat hanger, and waiting to feel a rubber truncheon that the polizei used to come crashing on to my head.  I could still hear a muttered "goddammit" or 2 from Everett.  Finally, I got the hanger in the right place, and got the vent widow open.  We got in the car, I was relieved, Everett was happy and thanking me profusely. We drove to the hospital and he dropped me off so I could get about 2 hours of sleep before I had to get up for work.  I was tired but I figured it was a good story I could tell years later.

Oddly enough, the next story involved Everett as well, but I didn't know that until some time later.  It was a winter evening, there was a dusting of snow on the ground.  I went out the doors where the emergency room was in the hospital, heading for the little club we had in the adjoining building where the mess hall was.  There was a walkway connecting the 2 buildings.  As I was walking to the other building, some friends of mine stopped me.  They said they were looking for me and asked if I had been at my apartment. I told them no, I hadn't been there all day.  They excitedly told me I better get over there, the landlord and the polizei were there, somebody had tried to break into my little place.  Needless to say, I was a little shocked by this news and I immediately wondered why anyone would want to break into my little basement dwelling.  At this point, I should explain that after my good friend Jimmy had been sent back to the US (see the blog before this one if you haven't already read it).  I had taken over his place.  Cheap apartments near the hospital were hard to find and I jumped at the chance to move out of my room in the barracks and have a place right around the corner form the hospital.  Even the little 2 room place with a shared bathroom was much better than living in the barracks.

As I was hurrying out the front gate of the hospital and going to my apartment, my mind was racing. What would I find when I got there?  Why would somebody go in the building, down the stairs, through a door and then break into my living room/bedroom?  And what was there to steal?  I was a lowly private making $350.00 a month!  When I got to my building, there were no cars around, the front door of the building was closed and locked as usual.  I unlocked the front door, went in and with my heart beating a little quicker than normal, I went down the stairs, opened the door to the hall where my rooms were and went in.  Apparently the polizei and my landlord had left.  The first door was my little kitchen and I never locked it.  The next door was to my living room.  Except the door wasn't there!  Well, it was, but it the entire door, still locked and in the door frame was lying partly in the doorway, partly into my room, leaning at a 45 degree angle.  There was a schrank (wardrobe) a few feet inside on the  wall perpendicular to the hallway wall, and the locked door, frame and all was resting against the schrank.  My first thought was holy shit, who did I piss of enough to want to break my door down looking for me!  My second thought was, what if they are still around!  Needless to say, I was a little nervous about the situation.  So I went out in the hall and went around the cellar to make sure some crazy person wasn't hiding somewhere.    I went back to the hospital and called my landlord, no cell phones back then.  He asked me if I had any idea what had happened and I told him no, I sure didn't  He also informed me that some polizei detectives would come the next morning to question me and that he would send a person to repair my door as well.  Although I still had a room in the barracks, I didn't want to leave my apartment unattended with no door, so I went back to my apartment.  I stood the door and frame up against the wall next to the schrank.  Then I took a blanket and made a makeshift covering over the hole where the door was.  I didn't sleep well, I was hoping whoever had done that wouldn't be back!

The next morning I hurried up and hid my hash pipe elsewhere in the cellar, I had no  idea what the polizei would do, but I didn't need them to find my pipe.  I cleaned up the bits of broken dry wall and dust off of the floor.  About an hour later somebody was knocking on the wall on the other side of the blanket.   I looked out and there were 2 German detectives in suits.  They showed me their ID and I invited them in.  They asked my name, where I worked and they wanted to know my parent's names as well as my mother's maiden name.  I had no idea why they needed to know that.  They asked me if I had any idea who might have broken down my door, or why.  They asked me if anything was missing.  I answered negatively to the questions.  They told me that they found footprints in the back yard of the building leading to a gate to the sidewalk, and that they think the suspect had left that way rather than through the front door.  They said they had made plaster casts of the footprints as evidence of the crime.  Then they left.  Next came a handyman and in short order he restored the door and frame to their rightful place in the door opening, and the broken drywall was patched up.  I felt better that I had my door back, but I was still little nervous and curious as to what had happened.  Well, about a week later I found out.

I had gone to visit my friend Everett.  He lived about a mile from the hospital in an apartment behind a nice little gasthaus run by a Czech man.  I mentioned it in the blog before this one.  Everett knew the owner Ulrich well, and we would go there often to eat or have some beer, or both.  Everett and I were sitting at a table eating our dinner and talking.  Suddenly Everett got very serious.  He looked at me and said "Goddammit Lada, if I tell you something, will you swear you won't tell anyone?  I mean you can't tell anyone or I'll be in big trouble!"  That made me curious and I assured Everett that we were good friends and his secret would be safe with me.  He replied "Goddammit Lada, you swear you won't tell a soul?"  I told him I promised I wouldn't tell a soul.   Everett took a deep drink of his beer, swallowed it and said "I'm the one that broke your door down!"  Well that bit of news surprised me to say the least.  I looked at him and said "Goddammit Everett, why did you do that, and why didn't you tell me sooner!  I was a nervous wreck, wondering if somebody wanted to kill me, or worse!"  Everett said "I know, I know, sorry.  I 'll tell you what happened."  Everett proceeded to tell me that he had come to Ulrich's gasthaus to have some dinner and a beer.  Well one beer led to another and after a bit, he was a little drunk. So he decided to walk to my place and see if I wanted to join him in a few more beers at the gasthaus.  Remember, nobody had little phones in their pocket back then.  Everett said that he rang my bell at the front door and no one answered so he rang another tenants bell and somebody buzzed him in to the building.  Then he went down to the hall where my door was and he was banging on my door.  Everett said he might have been a little drunk, and he fell against the door and the "Goddam door fell out of the wall."  He said he might have panicked a little and ran down the hall, up the back steps, ran through the yard and jumped over the gate in the fence and ran to his place.   After Everett finished his story, all I could do was laugh.   I told you that Everett was a pretty big, solid guy and I could just picture him drunk, and the surprise when he fell on the door and into my little room.  I told Everett that I wish that he had told me sooner, but that it was pretty funny now and everything got fixed and I didn't have to pay for anything, so it was all good.  I also told him to be aware that the polizei in Nurnberg had a plaster cast of his shoe prints in the snow.  We both laughed about it and had a few more beers.

When I returned to Nürnberg 23 years later, I really wanted to go to the main polizei building in town and tell them I could resolve an unsolved crime from 23 years ago.  Knowing the German efficiency and need for order I imagined that in some vast evidence room there was a box on a dusty shelf with a plaster cast of Everett's size 13, black Army dress shoes.  For all I know it might still be there, it wouldn't surprise me.  Next time I go to Nürnberg I should ask.  Those plaster shoe prints would be a wonderful souvenir of one of the funnier (in retrospect), crazier things that happened to me in Germany, all of those years ago.  I don't think I'll get Everett in trouble, the statute of limitations probably expired a long time ago!

In my next blog I'll tell a tale of a memorable birthday.  It involves drug deal, a missing car, and ultimately a former soldier going to a prison in Germany.  In spite of how it sounds, it's  one of those stories that in retrospect is pretty funny.  And I learned some valuable lessons from it.  What's not to like about all of that!