The Bitburg routine

The Bitburg Air Base perimeter was behind the medic barracks, and the view from my room was of a field, a barn and a copse of woods. It was barren in the winter, but we watched it green up in the spring, flourish in the summer and grow desolate again in late fall. The major crop was soybeans. (Don Dale photo)

I settled in quickly at Bitburg. And every day brought something interesting: My work in the OR, the town itself, the history of the place, the people, the language and the food were all new to me.

The air base was a sprawling place, stretching from the town of Bitburg to the tiny hamlet of Mötsch. The hospital was right across the street from the barracks, right next to the main gate on the road to Mötsch. Behind the hospital were dozens of housing units -- all painted in pastel colors -- with apartments for NCOs and officers who had brought their families with them. In the middle of the housing complex were the schools for dependent children. The high school football team, the Bitburg Barons, drew big crowds for home games.

The flight line and base administrative offices were a 15-minute shuttle-bus ride into the middle of the base. Bitburg AB was home to the 36th Tactical Fighter Wing, and the primary fighter jets were McDonnell F-4 Phantoms. The sound of their takeoffs and landings was muted by our distance from the flight line, but the F-4s were a constant presence: They were why we were there. Those were the Cold War days, when the biggest fear was that Soviet troops would someday come roaring through the Fulda Gap. The 36th Tactical Hospital was prepared, ready on short notice to set up field units to provide almost every medical service -- including functioning ORs -- in the event of combat.

Aside from the occasional practice alert, the days were fairly routine. There wasn't much need for us medics to visit the main part of the base. The hospital had a chow hall, a PX branch and a movie theater. In the barracks we had a dayroom where we could play fussball, watch American Forces Television or just hang out.

In the OR, we worked from 6 a.m. until the day's last case was finished and we had returned the ORs to spotless condition, usually by about 2 or 3 p.m. Off-duty time was ours to do with as we wished. We rotated on-call duty: A three-person team -- a nurse and two corpsmen -- had to be no more than 15 minutes away. I was on call about once a week. Being woken up for surgery was rare -- maybe once a month.

I had to learn to do every job in the OR except actual surgery. One day I might do nothing but wash and autoclave bloody instruments. Another day I might fold, pack and sterilize sheets and towels. The fun days -- most days -- were spent in the OR itself. I learned how to be an integral part of the team around the table, whether we were repairing a compound-complex fracture, doing a tonsillectomy on a dependent kid, performing hysterectomies on dependent wives, or operating on troops with routine wounds, bad gall bladders, appendicitis, broken noses, or tumors.

This is not to say there was no drama. There were at least a few dramatic procedures each month. I'll write about some of them later, and the stories will probably make your toes curl. But working in our two-OR suite was a job like any other. We showed up, did our work, and went home.

We had two general surgeons, two orthopedic surgeons, an ENT surgeon, two OB-GYN surgeons, an eye surgeon, an anesthesiologist, a nurse-anesthetist, two OR nurses and eight or nine enlisted medics who ranged from Airmen 3rd Class (me, when I started) to Tech Sergeant.

OR work at Bitburg differed from work at a stateside military hospital. There were no surgical interns or residents in our 65-bed hospital. That meant the medics around the table had far more opportunity to get their hands bloody and far more opportunity to learn. It was not at all unusual for us to first-assist on most procedures -- cutting, sewing, suturing, excising, retracting, clamping and suctioning, all under the watchful eye of a surgeon.

(Circumcisions were the exception. Friday was circ day, and no surgeon wants to spend the morning cutting off GI foreskins, so they left circs to the medics. When we'd finish, a surgeon would leave his coffee and Stars and Stripes newspaper behind in the lounge and inspect our work. I got to be quite good at it, although it's a skill that's been pretty much useless to me since.)

In those first weeks, I started taking German classes at the base library, exploring the town of Bitburg itself, and hiking the countryside. World War II had been over for only 20 years. West Germany was still recovering. The Deutsche Mark was worth a quarter. (When it was replaced by the Euro in the 1990s, the DM was worth more than a dollar). One Deutsche Mark would buy a beer. Four would buy a light meal at a gasthaus. Fifteen would buy an excellent dinner at a restaurant.

In the woods and fields around the base, World War II German bunkers could still be found, some with live ammunition buried in the rubble. Farmers still plowed up bombs that had been dropped by American planes.

And no German I ever met would talk about the war. If a GI raised the subject, the inevitable response would be "Nein, nein, I was too young" or "Nein, nein, I don't remember." We knew, however, that if they were much older than we were, they must have had clear memories of Hitler's Germany.

The town of Bitburg depended heavily then on the air base for its economy. Had it not been for our presence, the town might have had three or four thousand inhabitants. As it was, the town's population was about 10,000. (The base population was far higher.) There were eight Italian restaurants in town, and they all delivered pizza to the barracks.

The only German national who ever spoke about the war to me was a pizza-delivery man. My mom had given me a subscription to the Richmond Times-Dispatch Sunday edition. When the pizza guy brought us our food one night, he saw my copy of the paper on my desk. "I was there!" he exclaimed. He bubbled over as he explained that he had been captured by the Americans during the war and shipped to the States. He had been imprisoned for the duration just outside Richmond. He knew my home town and said he had fond memories of eating well and being treated well.

There were reminders of earlier wars in the countryside near Bitburg. During my hikes in that first winter, I stumbled across towers and fortresses from the days when feudalism prevailed. Most had long since crumbled into ruin.

I knew that there were many more adventures ahead, but Christmas arrived nine days after I reached Bitburg. The hospital chow hall -- the best I ever saw in the service -- had a steamship round of beef, turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans, cranberry sauce and all the expected trimmings. But I was an ocean away from home, didn't know many people yet, and had never been away for the holidays before. In some ways, the day was as bleak for me as the picture above.

But I was settling in fast, learning to speak German, exploring my new environment and enjoying surgery even more than I had expected. Christmas 1966 was my first of three in Germany. I missed Richmond and my family and friends, but not too much. After stuffing myself in the chow hall, I went for a Christmas Day hike.

You can see live images of downtown Bitburg today at http://www.webcam.bitburg.net/.