Baker Follows Path to Germany
Gary Baker learned at a young age that sometimes we don’t get what we hope for, but in the end, what we do get is better for us in the long run.
Gary graduated from high school in 1965. Early in 1966, he received a draft notice. However, he was working for his uncle Albert Baker, who applied for a deferment so Gary could help him put his crops in.
In June 1966, Gary left for basic training. He, like so many other new draftees from our area, found himself at Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri. It was really hot.
They waited in a reception center for their assignments. They all slept in a big open room, but it was so hot that they all had wet cots the next morning.
“As a farm kid, this was a new experience for me,” he recalls. One particularly bad memory was of another soldier who tried to commit suicide by cutting his wrists in the bathroom.
The next day, they lined Gary and all the new inductees up and gave them their immunizations. “The order was, do not let the guy in front of you fall on the ground,” Gary recalls. “If someone got weak-kneed, you had to keep him up.”
The first day of his basic training was on July 4, 1966. It was hard, but not so bad for Gary. “For me it was pretty easy because I had grown up on a farm and was in good shape.” That was not true for his bunkmate, who was overweight and not used to working.
Gary didn’t heed that advice – he raised his hand when they asked for someone to drive and he ended up driving a jeep while everyone else was running their butts off.
During those first eight weeks of training, the privates were tested to see where their experience and talents were. Gary wanted to work as a mechanic and did not want to end up in the infantry.
It was around that time that he was approached by an officer who told him that if he signed on for another year, he would get to choose which school he went to for his advanced training.
Gary signed up for another year. “The minute I did it, I regretted it,” he said. “Basically the army conned me into an extra year.” He thinks he would have ended up at the same AIT training regardless of whether he signed up for another year. But now he can see that it all worked out for the best.
He came home for Labor Day and saw Thelma. Then it was off to Ft. Belvoir, Virginia for heavy equipment mechanics training.
He actually ended up enjoying the training and the work there a lot. He met another soldier named Ken Steele who became a good friend. Ken was always at the top of the class and Gary was not far behind. They were told that the top five students would be able to stay at Ft. Belvoir and teach.
But when training was over, they got different orders. Ken was going to Vietnam and Gary to Germany. However, Ken had started dating a girl from Washington, D.C. Turned out her mother worked at the Pentagon and she didn’t want her daughter’s boyfriend going to Vietnam, so Ken’s orders were changed. Ken offered to get Gary’s orders changed, too, but he had talked to his uncle who had also gone to Germany and he decided that he wouldn’t mind going there.
It was Valentine’s Day when Gary returned home for two weeks before he would need to leave for Germany. He proposed to Thelma, whom he had only known for less than a year and had only really dated for three months. She said yes.
All–to-soon Gary was off to Ft. Dix, New Jersey, where he would be until he deployed to Germany. Unfortunately, soon after he got there, all his stuff was stolen.
“Being a stubborn Hollander, I was not willing to let it lie,” he said. He started looking for his stuff. He found it in a garbage dumpster. They had sorted through all the stuff they didn’t want. Ironically, they didn’t take his army stuff.
He landed in Frankfurt, Germany, March 1, 1967. He was awestruck. He thought everything looked so old. He met an Italian American soldier and they decided to stick together. Neither could speak German at all. They had to navigate the trains to find Ulm, Germany, where their base was located.
When they got to the base, they did not really have a job for Gary, so he floated around and didn’t do much of anything. Then they asked if he could type, which he could. That turned into a year and a half office job. Gary worked for a warrant officer that he really got along well with.
That Christmas, Gary put in for leave to go home. He and Thelma were to be married over the holiday. But something happened and all the soldiers’ leaves were cancelled. The warrant officer went to work and found a way for Gary to get home anyway.
Gary and Thelma were married on Dec. 29, 1967. Four days later, they left for Germany where they lived with Gary’s sergeant and his wife for a few weeks. Then they moved to apartment was on the 4th floor where the maids quarters used to be. I was in army housing so the rent came out of Gary’s pay, which left him with $237 a month take-home pay.
Around this time, Gary got a new warrant officer and he was getting tired of working at a desk.
The army was looking for guys to go to a school for working on trucks. Gary volunteered. He spent three weeks in Murnal, Germany, down by the Swiss border learning about how to troubleshoot engines. He learned a lot, but not just about trucks.
While he was there, he met Jerry White. “He was a very Christian man who was always outspoken about talking to people about Jesus,” Gary said. “He had a profound affect on me. “
Thelma and Gary attended church in Ulm. It was a small Protestant church and they met other Christians who became friends. That was nice for Thelma who didn’t know anyone other than Gary when she moved there. She met neighbors who were kind.
Soon, she was quite busy with a newborn. Their daughter Tammy was born December 12, 1968, in Augsburg, Germany. She would have dual citizenship until she turned 18 years old. How many people do you know that get married, go on honeymoon, and come home with a baby.
Tammy was just six weeks old – just old enough to fly – when Gary obtained an early dismissal from the army. He was supposed to serve until June, but his dad was scheduled for surgery and needed help on the farm. The new warrant officer worked to make that happen for Gary.
“You’re not army material anyway,” he joked.
Thelma had to travel home with Tammy and Gary was flown home by the army a few weeks later. He didn’t tell his family he was back in the United States until he was in Chicago, ready to fly out to Sioux Falls.
He called his dad and told him and his dad informed him they would not be coming to Sioux Falls to get him because they were in the middle of a big snowstorm. This was 1969 when we got a lot of snow.
