Casting Light on Shadows
(This is the first in a 19-part serialized edition of a forthcoming book based on the self-published e-book, Patriotic Expats: Former G.I.s Describe their Lives in Germany, by Robert D. Potter (Driftless Now contributing writer), available on Amazon. All published content of this book is copyrighted material by the author.)
There’s a shadow hanging over me,
Oh yesterday came suddenly.
“Yesterday” -John Lennon and Paul McCartney
It should be stated that this project was sponsored in part by a grant from Verlag Testimon, Nuremberg, Germany, because it "will fill a substantial gap in historical research and remind today's public of the roots of and reasons for the special relationship between America and Germany after 1945 embodied by these families."
A great shadow hangs over my life. It shrouds the years of my first marriage in sorrow and shame. From the day we met until her tragic death from cancer in1984, I wanted nothing more than to make Gerdi happy—to be a good husband and a shining example to our sons. I failed on both counts. My ignorance, naiveté, and a weakness of character are to blame. Now, at the age of 74, after a successful 30-year second marriage, I intend to cast some light on the shadows that haunt me still.
One great question looms: Would Gerdi have been happier had we lived in Germany, her home, rather than in the U.S.?
I met Gerdi on July 4, 1965, in Nürnberg, Germany. I was a young, G.I., inexperienced with women; Gerdi, four years older than I, was recovering from a breakup with her fiancé of seven years. I was smitten by this sophisticated, yet delightful young lady who introduced me to love. With only three months remaining on my military enlistment, I proposed marriage, assuring Gerdi (and believing myself) that I could give her a good life in America. She demurred, but I persisted. She finally agreed, and we made the necessary arrangements.
Gerdi’s initial impressions of this country were colored by socio-economic conditions in Chicago, where we lived. When she arrived at O’Hare Airport, two months after my discharge from the Army, we drove home on Lake Shore Drive, Chicago’s magnificent window onto Lake Michigan. The next day, however, we took the “L” downtown to get our marriage license. She was shocked by the South Side slums below the elevated train. When we returned to my tiny apartment, she flopped on the bed and cried, “Where have I come?”
So, the streets in America were not paved in gold, as Gerdi might have imagined, having viewed this country through the lens of Hollywood. The reality was that she had left her home, her friends—everything she had known—to live in a strange place with an untrained 21-year-old boy fueled solely by passion and testosterone.
Gerdi’s family had fled Nürnberg to avoid the horrific bombing of World War II. Trapped in Communist East Germany at the close of the war, they were able to return to the West only on the pretext of a family emergency, abandoning all their worldly possessions in the escape. As a child, Gerdi played in the rubble of bombed-out Nürnberg, applied herself to her studies and eventually, to her profession as a secretary for a large manufacturing firm.
When we met, Gerdi had broken her engagement to a German man when he made another woman pregnant. At 25, she expected more than the empty promises of a love-sick puppy.
Our marriage took place in the little Baptist church I had attended as a boy, a matter of little concern to my Catholic fiancee. She had not practiced the religion of her youth for years. At the reception afterward, in my mother’s apartment, Gerdi was insulted by the minister’s refusal to toast the bride with champaign.
As a condition of her visa, Gerdi was not allowed to work in the U.S. Her days were spent in isolation while I worked the odd hours of a retail sales clerk. The small, Jewish grocery stores in our neighborhood stocked unfamiliar items. “There are no white potatoes in America,” she complained. Ingredients were measured in ounces, whereas her recipes called for grams. I purchased a metric scale from a German store on the North Side. While I was at work, Gerdi improved her comprehension of spoken English by watching a small, black-and-white television we had received as a wedding gift.
Gerdi’s greatest happiness came in the form of our two sons, Michael and Richard, born five years apart. She was a devoted mother, despite her initial depression and sense of powerlessness in her new surroundings.
Perhaps because of her need to assert some power in the marriage, or perhaps because she was depressed, Gerdi withheld physical affection. The strain of such a relationship on a young man resulted in predictable consequences: frustration, resentment, and a breakdown of communication. We each yearned to reach out to the other, to break the tense silence, but we didn’t know how.
Yet our underlying love never abated; it expressed itself in my work—always part-time jobs to supplement my full-time earnings as an electronics technician. By working security, driving a cab, selling real estate, maybe I could make Gerdi happy with things. Gerdi’s loyalty to me made her love clear, even through the silence and dearth of physical affection.
Did the lack of open, honest communication, compounded by 17 years away from her home country, the betrayal by her German fiancé, and the struggle for survival in post-war Europe undermine her immune system, making it harder for her to fight the cancer?
Would our marriage have been better had I extended my tour of duty in Germany? Gerdi would have been able to continue working, permitting us to live a more comfortable lifestyle. She would have been among friends, in her own culture. True, an Army lifestyle would have meant transfers, perhaps a tour in Vietnam, possibly death on a rice patty. Would it have been possible, had I extended for a year or two in Nürnberg, to gain sufficient fluency in the German language to obtain civilian employment on the German economy? These possibilities never occurred to me at the time, but one wonders, in hindsight, how life might have turned out as an American living in Germany with Gerdi.
In 2017 I resolved to explore those questions lurking in the shadows of my psyche. I would travel to Germany to locate former G.I.s who had married German women and elected to live in Germany, rather than in the U.S. I would conduct extensive interviews with them to determine how they coped with the language, employment, and cultural barriers. I shared this plan with my writing students at Madison College, in Reedsburg, Wisconsin. They enthusiastically brainstormed dozens of questions, ranging from healthcare concerns to gun control in Germany. I collated those questions into a questionnaire of 83 items that would be the basis for my interviews.
Ron Rundell, a veteran of my old Army unit, the Second Armored Cavalry, travels to Germany often to visit his wife’s family. On one of his trips, he met a gentleman by the name of Herbert Hall, who had organized a weekly get-together for American veterans at a McDonald’s restaurant in Nürnberg. Ron put me in touch with Mr. Hall, who invited me to meet the group and explain my project. I also contacted a friend, Claudia Radczun-Polk, and a former soldier, David Starr, whom Mr. Jochem, a German friend, had met and referred to me, to schedule interviews.
Gerhard Jochem, provided a huge boost to this project by organizing a German-American meet-and-greet event at which Tom Spahr, another American veteran, and I would describe our experiences in Germany. Gerhard publicized the event, with a description of my research project, in the Nürnberg Nachrichten newspaper. The article generated many responses, including several people featured in these pages.
I planned a three-week trip for May-June of 2017. My wife, Barbara, supported me fully in this mission, as she understood my need to resolve this central issue of my life.
I planned to use public transportation, rather than a rental car, on this trip. My goal was to keep it simple: no worries about parking, accidents, or traffic tickets to complicate my mission, and a minimum of baggage—a spare pair of jeans, a few changes of underwear and tee shirts, and an iPhone 6, which would serve as camera, tape recorder, and other equipment required to record interviews. On Gerhard Jochem’s recommendation, I made reservations at Pfälzer Hof, a hotel garni, for the equivalent of $30 a day, breakfast included. Descriptions of those 2017 interviews follow.
Check back next week for Bob’s next installment of the series.
Patriotic Expats: Former G.I.s Describe their Lives in Germany is self-published, currently in the form of an e-book on Amazon. As I mentioned, I am re-editing it for print format, which will also be self-published with the same title. I call my self-publishing house "Ephesus Press," of Hillsboro, Wisconsin. The shortened versions of each interview will be mostly third-person description of the most interesting points each interviewee made. Some quotations will be thrown in, of course. These shorter, edited chapters, around 3,600 words each, would be what I would submit to Driftless Now. I would include a note with each article stating that, for scholars and other interested readers, a complete (edited) transcript of all interviews in Patriotic Expats: Former G.I.s Describe their Lives in Germany is available as a download for Kindle on Amazon.
