By Jill Fennema –

Lloyd Wassink was drafted in the United States Army in 1961. He was 21 years old when he received his draft notice in the mail. He reported to Pipestone and took a bus to Sioux Falls where he received and passed his physical.

A few weeks later he took an airplane to Ft. Carson, Colorado, where he would have his basic training. The barracks, the equipment, and the weapons that were used for their basic training were leftovers from World War II.

It was late October and the heat for the barracks was a coal-fired furnace. The new recruits were supposed to keep that fire stoked. The barracks were dirty and dilapidated and cold. That first night, Lloyd remembers they got a cold wiener to eat at 2 a.m. when they arrived.

The next day they got their boots and clothing. Lloyd recalls that it would often happen that the soldiers would be told they needed to have this or that, but they were never given any opportunity to get to the PX to get it.

“I’m not complaining,” Lloyd said. “I’m just telling you how it was.”

“They were in a hurry to get us trained and off to the next thing,” Lloyd recalled. It was winter in the mountains of Colorado, but the snow that fell would melt and make mud. “We were always walking or crawling in the mud,” Lloyd said.

The men were trained with old WWII weapons. From bazookas, to flame throwers, everything was WWII equipment. Lloyd remembers that every day was different and each day had its own weapons.

Every day, after breakfast and calisthenics, they would train. Some days they marched and some days they fired an M1. Some days they practiced hand grenades or firing at old tanks with bazookas. Some days they practiced with machine guns.

They also had to crawl under wire through the mud, while four water-cooled machine guns fired overhead and shells would explode around them.

Lloyd remembers that hand grenades were heavier than he thought they would be and the old pistols they used had so much kick you had to hold them with two hands.

Another thing that really sticks with him, especially in light of some of the present-day controversy over vaccinations, was the fact that the soldiers were vaccinated for different things on a weekly basis. The last one was a shot of penicillin in the rear end. Some soldiers discovered they were allergic to penicillin and had to be whisked off to the infirmary.

After basic training, he came home for a few days on furlough and then returned to Camp Carson for his advanced infantry training. Bivouac was brutal in the mountains during winter with a pup tent and lousy sleeping bags. They would sleep for four hours and then conduct night fighting training the rest of the night.

Why were Lloyd and others drafted in 1961? Because the Soviet Union had begun building the Berlin Wall.

After WWII, Germany and its capital, Berlin, were divided into four regions, each controlled by Allied Powers of the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union (USSR). Berlin, which lay entirely inside the Soviet controlled eastern portion of Germany, was divided into four quadrants, too.

Until 1961, people regularly passed from East Germany to West Germany – too regularly for the communist authorities. By 1961, about 1,000 people a day were leaving communist controlled East Germany, fleeing to West Germany. To stop the migration of workers from “The Worker’s Paradise,” Nikita Khrushchev gave his Soviet general permission to begin erecting a barrier on the border.

Creation of the Berlin Wall began overnight on August 12-13, 1961. The original barrier consisted of coiled barbed wire and concrete blocks. Within the city of Berlin, the wall was 27 miles long, including a 160-foot “death strip.”

The wall included watchtowers, land mines, dog runs, and machine guns activated by trip wires. East German officials called the wall the “Antifaschistischer Schutzwall,” telling citizens that the USSR erected the barrier to keep fascists out. But few were fooled by the Soviets’ motivation.

There was a shortage of men in the United States military when construction on the wall started, so many were drafted and the National Guard was also called up. Lloyd recalls that there was a shortage of sergeants, so there were Spec 4’s (those just a step up from Private First Class) who were doing the work of sergeants but didn’t have official promotions to that level.

Lloyd policing an area in the compound. Picking up cigarette butts from the cig he didn’t smoke.

Lloyd (right) with his friend Bill Davies from Detroit. Only 19 had enlisted. The first few years they talked over the phone, but they eventually stopped.

Lloyd’s unit in Berlin was called the Berlin Bears. They patrolled the western side of the Berlin Wall.

Lloyd dressed for a day out. Had to look neat and clean and wear good clothes.