Events of August 20 – 23, 1968

D. E. Larsen, DVM

August 20th was an unusually warm day for Northern West Germany. Our operations building and the attached maintenance shop had our small air conditioners running full blast. They were only needed on rare occasions here. Still, some of the equipment was temperature-sensitive, and on these rare hot days we needed some air conditioning. I had just assumed the position of NCOIC (Non-Commissioned Officer In Charge) of the maintenance section at Wobeck, a small Army Security Agency outpost for monitoring the East German and Russian Armies. Wobeck, situated on the East German border, was considered the best “ears” in Europe. Wobeck was located in an isolated clearing in the ancient Elm forest on a hill outside Schöningen, West Germany.

The day had been an uneventful Tuesday. Everyone on the day shift was dreading leaving for the day because there was no air conditioning in Schöningen. As we were getting ready to leave, Jim said he thought we should go to Braunschweig for dinner and some beer. I didn’t require any arm twisting. Braunschweig was the nearest large town to us. Maybe 25 miles south and west. We visited reasonably often.

Our first stop was a large Chinese restaurant in the center of town. Not only a good restaurant but one with air conditioning. After dinner, we took a brief stroll down the nearby Strass. The Strass, a gated street lined with old apartment-like buildings on each side, where girls of the trade could peddle their virtues in a controlled environment, behind display windows, in all states of dress and undress. It was pure old fashioned prostitution and didn’t interest me a great deal. But window shopping was fun and killed some time.

Then we visited a popular little bar down the street. The bartenders were a set of twin girls from Norway.  These two girls were lots of fun and sought after by more than a couple of GIs. Both girls were blond with short hair and very petite. They probably would have to stretch with their heels off the floor to be called five feet. Paola was thin and spoke the best English. Pina was just a little plump.

Pina spotted as we were picking a table. She brought us a couple of beers.  We watched the crowd thin out as we drank the stout German beer. It wasn’t long before I saw Pina throw her apron into the hamper behind the bar, Paola followed. They were quite the matched pair, short, blond with pixie style haircuts, they were wearing matching light green dresses. Their aprons had obscured just how short their dresses were.

We sat and talked for a time. Pina was trying to tell me something.

“Pina is trying to tell you that we are planning to go home to Norway for 2 weeks over Christmas.”, Paola said. “She thinks it would be an excellent trip for you. You could meet our family and see your home country.”

“I’ll have to see if I can work that out,” I replied.

On the drive back to Schöningen, Jim made a lot of small talk.  As usual, I was mostly quiet. Finally, out of the blue, Jim says, “That trip thing is sort of scary.”

“Damn scary to me,” I replied.

It was getting close to 3:00 AM when I finally crawled into bed. I looked at the clock and told myself 7:30. The entire time in the Army, I never used an alarm clock. I could say to myself what time to wake up, and I would bound out of bed within a minute or two of that time. I had learned that I could pull a 24-hour shift with 5 hours of sleep. Tonight should be 4 and a half hours, tomorrow should be an easy day, I will be fine.

Bam, Bam, Bam! Somebody is at the door, I thought. I looked at the clock It was 4:30.

  “What?” I yelled.

“This is Marsden, we need you on-site, stat!  All hell is breaking loose,” he said.

Marsden was my right hand in the shop. He had asked to work at night just last week. Marsden was very involved with a local girl and was trying to match her schedule a little better. He didn’t get along with people well and thought he could work better at night. Marsden had thinning red hair and an average build. His uniform was always just a little sloppy, just his way of letting everyone know he would do his job, but he would not play Army games. From Ohio, we often argued over how he considered Ohio as being the “West.”

I got up, pulled on a pair of pants, and opened the door.  

“Things are really going crazy at the site, Russia has just invaded Czechoslovakia,” Marsden said in a hushed voice. He seemed short of breath. “It looks like we will be sending about half the site down to the Czech border. We have about 3 weeks of work to do in the next few hours, and everyone is yelling at me over the phone. I need you to handle things.”

“I’ll be ready in a couple of minutes,” I said as I started pulling on my combat boots.

“I will get Jim up and meet you up at the site,” Marsden said as he started to leave. 

“Let him sleep,” I said. Someone is going to need to be awake tonight.”

I was not the only one headed to the site early. There was a small caravan of cars headed into The Elm at a few minutes before 5:00 AM. There was an extra MP at the guard shack, and they had my badge ready when I finally got up to the gate. I had trouble finding a parking spot, it seemed like everybody was on site.

 When I stepped through the door, the whole place was in chaos. The First Sergeant walked passed in a rapid stride. He tapped me on my chest and said, “In my office now! I have your list!” He said. “Or book,” he added with a smile.

And a book it was, Marsden was correct, 3 weeks work, and we had only hours. This was going to be fun. The top of the list was the MLQ-24. This was a mobile radar intercept and electronic intelligence unit. The only problem was it has been on blocks and connected to our antenna tower antennas for at least 5 years. Now we had to reconnect the mobile antennas, and make sure the cabin was watertight when the holes were patched from the tower antenna cables. I doubt that the motor pool has kept up with the maintenance schedule on the truck. And the tires have not touched the ground in years.

Ron, our motor pool guy, came through the shop door about then. A tall thin kid from Arkansas with dark hair and dark eyes. You couldn’t see his complexion because he was always covered with grease, oil, and a light coating of dust. 

“We need the MLQ-24 truck on the ground and ready to run the Czech border by the end of the day”, I stated flatly. “Do you think the tires are okay?”

“They changed the tires last year. The rest of it should be in pretty good shape. You get it unhooked, and I will have it ready to go before dark.” 

We had guys working on the tower cables and on the installation of replacement stations in operations. That equipment had not been used in a couple of years.  Most of the crew were coming through the door.

“We have some busy hours ahead of us, Jim is sleeping in this morning so he can be the sharp one at the end of the stretch. He is not going to miss out on any of the workloads,” I explained. “As of right now, nobody leaves the site until this tick sheet is complete. We are sending a lot of this site to the Czech border, and 3 guys from this shop go with it. Maybe for 3 weeks, maybe for the rest of your tour.”

We had a good group of guys, and we completed the task within the allotted time. When our convoy drove out of the gate, most of us started melting. I had been on-site for many hours on less than 2 hours sleep. Marsden had worked the night before the this stretch. Jim fared well and handled most of the administration details at the end when my eyes would hardly focus.

As our contribution for the 3 guys from the shop, I was able to get the home base to accept Geib, assigned temporarily to Wobeck, Blackwell, the motor pool guy whose time was nearly up, and a new guy, who had not arrived yet.

That left most of the crew relieved that their lives were not going to be disrupted. All I could think about was sleep, my concerns over the Christmas trip were a distant memory at this point.

Wobeck antennas, late 1960’s 

Wobeck site, 1980’s. 

KP, Basic Training, Fall 1965

D. E. Larsen, DVM

I was up and through the showers and lacing my boots when the Fire Guard came into the bay to wake up the KP crew. We had to be in the kitchen by 5:00 AM. I was in the kitchen waiting for the cooks and the rest of the KP crew a good 15 minutes early.

Most of the guys hated the shift that ran until 7:00 PM. I had decided that nobody was going to work harder than me while I was in the Army, and this was just another day. And just like a day at work, time passes faster if you are working rather than sitting around watching the clock.

The assistant cook was the first to arrive, and he was surprised to see me already there. We started getting set up to cook breakfast. It was interesting to be mixing pancakes for 200 guys, and the scrambled eggs were also mixed from powder.

By the time the cook came through the door, we had the bacon ready to go into the oven. The oven was hot, and the griddle was fired up. Just about all he had to do was to start cooking.

“Are you the whole crew today?” the Mess Sergeant asked me. His voice was gruff, and his frown wrinkled his entire forehead. He wore a little white sock-like cap to cover his bald head.

“I was up early, Sergeant,” I said. “The others should be along any time now.”

When the others did arrive, the Mess Sergeant barked out instructions with practiced repetition. The milk dispenser needed to be filled, and the juice set out. Coffee needed to be made. He was assigning chores as fast as he could, and the assistant cook was trying to give instructions fast enough to keep up. It was a system that was used to make guys useful, even though many of them had never been in a kitchen.

“Who wants to mix the pancake batter?” the cook asked.

“Larsen had that mixed before you got here,” the assistant said. “And the eggs are mixed, and the bacon is ready for the oven.”

The cook looked at me and scowls. “Have you been a cook?” 

“No, Sergeant, I was just here early and needed to keep busy,” I said.

Breakfast went off with no problems. We were each assigned to serving positions or other chores like keeping the milk dispenser full or moving dishes from the collection area to the dishwasher.

When breakfast was over, we started cleaning up and then getting ready for lunch and making desserts for tomorrow’s dinner. The cook was pretty good at keeping everyone busy and ruled with a loud voice and a frown.

“Larsen, you wash the vegetable steamer,” the cook says as he points the sizable stainless steel steamer that was anchored to the floor. This was a large tank, maybe 100 gallons.

I jumped right to it. Having made cheese in Myrtle Point for 4 summers, if there was something I knew, it was how to scrub stainless steel. I didn’t wait for any instructions.

I dumped a good couple of handfuls of powdered detergent into the steamer and started filling it with water. With a large scrub brush, I mixed the soap with the water and turned on a little steam to warm the water. About that time, I felt the presence of the cook, more than seeing him. He was standing at my left shoulder.

“What the hell have you done?” he boomed into my ear. “Did you put soap into my steamer?” He continued before I could answer. “Nobody puts soap in my steamer.”

I looked at him, and then I looked back at the steamer, everybody in the kitchen was watching now. 

“How long have you used this without washing it?” I asked. I knew I probably had made a grave error by talking back to this guy. Still, I probably had him over the barrel because it was supposed to be washed.

The cook looked at me, red-faced, eyes narrowed, and breathing hard. Then he looked at the steamer.

“If they taste soap in their peas tonight, I will have your ass, Larsen,” he bellowed.

“I have washed more stainless steel than you will ever see in your life,” I said. 

He stood and looked at me for what seemed like minutes. I was expecting to catch his full wrath. Finally, he took a deep breath and relaxed his facial expression. “We will let them decide,” he said, pointing out to the dining hall. Then he turned away and got back to other tasks.

I scrubbed and scrubbed on that steamer. Swirling the brush around, I was hanging half over the rim into the tank. By the time I was done, sweat was dripping off my eyebrows and my nose. I drained the tank and rinsed it several times. During this whole process, I could see both the cook and the assistant cook watching me. Plus, the other guys on KP.

When I was done, the cook came over and looked at the steamer. It glistened compared to its old self. He nodded in approval.

“Now, if you’re so good at scrubbing, you can scrub all the garbage cans,” the cook said.

I am sure he thought this was a punishment. It sort of reminded me of the rabbit story when Brier Rabbit begs not to be thrown into the brier patch. Every fall, I would scrub hundreds of milk cans, cleaning them for winter storage. A few garbage cans were nothing.

I was outside, enjoying working in the sunshine. I had water flying and cans spinning as I washed the cans and set them out to dry in the sun. I noticed the cook watching from time to time. I think he was a little upset that I was enjoying myself.

Then one of the other guys in the platoon, who was cleaning the storeroom, came out with a bunch of empty bags and cardboard. He handed them down to me to put in the dumpster. I took the load and tossed them in the dumpster.

“I have one more load,” he said. “You can take a break for a minute while I grab it.”

I grabbed the bags, and this time they were cumbersome and heavy.

He smiled, “Payback for the ass-chewing,” he said. “Put the heavy one in one of those clean garbage cans, and we will pick it up tonight.”

I looked at the heavy bag. It contained a whole bunch of bananas, stem and all, enough for the entire platoon.

Dinner went without a hitch. Nobody complained about soap in the peas. We cleaned up and were thanked by the cook. 

“You guys have been a good bunch,” the cook said. “I think you will do well in this man’s Army.”

It was nice to get back to the barracks and get through the shower. I was in clean clothes when the guy who had stolen the bananas came by motioned toward the door. 

It was close to dark, and the two of us exited the rear door and ran across the back yard. We grabbed the bag of bananas from the garbage can, turned, and ran back across the yard with the bag carried between us.

We felt like we just put one over on the cook. We had bananas for the whole platoon.  We burst through the back door and almost ran over Sergeant Lopez. 

Sergeant Lopez was the DI for the 4th platoon. He had lost his wife to the meningitis epidemic currently at Fort Ord, and he lived in the company barracks. His room was right by the back door.

Here we are, standing at attention against the wall with a bag of stolen bananas between us. We both think we are dead.

Sergeant Lopez says, “Ah, what have we here?” He peeks into the bag.

We knew we were dead now.

Lopez smiles, looks down the hall, and shakes his head. “I didn’t see a thing,” he says as he turns and heads for his room.

The whole platoon had 2 or 3 bananas each. The trip back to the dumpster with the peelings was just as scary.

Our opinion of Sergeant Lopez changed that night.

Choose Your Surgeon with Care

D. E. Larsen, DVM

Marilyn carefully placed Dorie on the exam table. Dorie, a pretty, tabby and white female kitten, stood, unmoving, on the exam table. Her stance was rigid, not what I would expect to see in an 8-week old kitten. 

“She was fine yesterday when I brought her home,” Marilyn said. “I noticed she was a little reluctant to move last night, and she was a little painful when I handled her. But this morning, she will hardly move, and she cries out at the slightest touch.”

“Where did she come from?” I asked.

“I adopted her from a humane society over on the coast,” Marilyn said. “They insisted that they spay her before they would let her out the door. I pleaded with them to allow me to bring her to you, but they would not let her go.”

“She is pretty young for a spay,” I said. “But it is becoming a thing with the humane groups. They struggle with people not getting the surgery done.”

“I understand that,” Marilyn said. “But she is so tiny, waiting a few weeks would have been better. I tried to get them to call you as a reference, but they were adamant, they would not let her out the door without the surgery.”

I picked Dorie up as carefully as I could. She cried out with a soft cry. The incision looked fine. It was a very short incision, which means the surgery was done with a spay hook. Most veterinarians use a spay hook during a spay. It is a blunt hook instrument to retrieve the uterus during a spay. I virtually never used one, I always used a finger, something I learned from Dr. Ferguson, a surgical resident at CSU when I was there. It required a slightly longer incision, but that was of little consequence. Incisions heal from side to side, not end to end. I always felt more comfortable with a feeling finger retrieving the uterus, rather than a blind steel hook.

I tried to palpate her abdomen, very carefully. It was painful for her. Then I felt a swelling on the right side of the abdomen, near her back, about the size of a large grape. It was excruciating when I touched the swelling.

“She has something going on in the area where her right ovary was located,” I said. “I think I should open her up and see what is there.”

Marilyn agreed to an exploratory. I was unsure of what could be wrong. This was a pretty small kitten, I hoped I could solve the problem.

In surgery, I found a significant accumulation of fluid along the back. It was retroperitoneal, or behind the lining of the abdomen. I aspirated the fluid and explored the area carefully. The fluid had to be urine, but why was it there following a surgery. I investigated again, looking around the kidney carefully, and the ureter in the area. I could find nothing more.

We recovered Dorie, and she was like a kitten with the fluid gone. The area was not painful, but I would need to check her in the morning.

“I need to take her home for the night,” Marilyn said. “It has nothing to do with this clinic, it is just that she has been through so much in her young life, she needs some cuddling. I will have her back here the first thing in the morning.”

I did not have a restful night. I was going over Dorie’s surgery in my mind most of the night. If the fluid was urine, the surgeon who did the spay had to of ligated the ureter, that small tube that runs between the kidney and the bladder. If that was the case, the swelling would be there again in the morning.

I had never heard of a veterinary surgeon making that error. I am not even sure it is listed as a possible complication to that surgery. I did have a niece who suffered that very injury during a hysterectomy some years ago.

In the morning, Dorie was painful again. And the swelling had returned. 

“This swelling is back,” I said to Marilyn. “I have been up all night thinking about this problem. They had to of ligated her ureter, the tube between the kidney and the bladder. I can send you to Eugene for an ultrasound and some x-rays with a dye that will pass in the urine. We can confirm the problem.”

“Listen, Doc, I am a bleeding heart, and I love this little girl, but there are limits to what I can spend,” Marilyn said. “Is there anything else we can do?”

“We can remove her right kidney,” I said. “If I am correct, that will solve the problem.”

“If that is what it takes, let’s at least give her a chance to live,” Marilyn said.

So little Dorie went back to the surgery table. It was not a complicated surgery to remove the kidney. I also removed the ovarian pedicle where the ovary had been ligated. In doing so, I found the ureter in the mass. That confirmed my suspicion and allowed me to ligate the ureter so there would be no back leakage from the bladder.

Dorie recovered well, and despite having suffered through 3 surgeries in the last week, she was back to being a kitten. I saved the tissues in formalin, just in case I need to have a lab confirm my findings.

“I want to make sure that the veterinarian who did this to her, never does it to another kitten,” Marilyn said in a firm voice. “Can we do that?”

“We can get it investigated,” I said. “I am concerned that the humane society might have some charlatan doing their surgeries. I will send them a letter of inquiry and send a copy of that letter, and my surgery records, to the state examining board.”

“Thank you,” Marilyn said. “Do I need to do anything special for her?”

“I am sending you home with some antibiotics just to be safe, other than that, just make sure she is acting like a kitten,” I said. “She should be able to live a full life with one kidney. It might become an issue at the end of her life, but that should be a long time.”

I composed a letter to the humane society and forwarded a copy to the examining board. I had no idea what would happen from that letter.  In my letter, I explained Dorie’s problem. I expressed a need to determine if this was a surgical error or if there was a need for additional training for the surgeon.

It was a few days, and I got a call from the veterinarian who did the surgery. He was in his mid-seventies and working part-time doing surgery for the humane society. He had no problem saying it was his mistake. He was uncomfortable with doing surgery on these little kittens. 

“That will be the last surgery I do on these little kittens,” he said. “I don’t agree with the practice anyway, so this is going to be a good excuse for me not doing any more spays and neuters on the young kittens.”

At about the same time, the investigator from the examining board called to gather my opinion and to get information that went beyond my surgery records. He was most concerned about the age of the surgeon.

After the examining board completed their investigation, they determined there was no need for remedial action against the veterinarian. It was considered a surgical error. The veterinarian was not going to do any more early spay and neuters. The practice of early spays and neuters was not addressed and probably is still an unsettled topic.

“Marilyn, I talked with the veterinarian. He is not going to do any more early spays or neuters,” I said. “The examining board completed their investigation, and they are leaving it as a surgical error. They are not recommending any remedial action.”

“That is a little less than I was hoping for,” Marilyn said. “But at least they investigated it. Are you satisfied with their findings?”

“I think so, I think the veterinarian expressed enough remorse to me that he is not going to do any more young cats.”

Photo Credit: Photo by Pixabay from Pexels