Dwight and Erika Johnson: “A Marriage Wouldn’t be Any Good if You Didn’t Fight or Argue About Something.”
I had met Dwight Johnson at the McDonald’s gathering of vets on Memorial Day weekend and again when he, Carl Caruso, and Tyrone Wiley came to a beer garden in downtown Nürnberg. That lively conversation was fun but not conducive to information gathering, so we arranged to meet a few days later at his place.
Dwight and Erika Johnson welcomed me to their lovely apartment in the Langwasser South neighborhood of Nürnberg. Over coffee, I asked Erika how she and Dwight met.
“Oh, we met in the NCO Club at Merrell Barracks,” she said. “The Germans came in the back. You had to show your German ID, and then they let you in. They had live bands.”
“Were you interested in meeting Americans?” I asked.
“Ja,” she said, “My girlfriend said, ‘Let’s go club the Americans.’ It was completely different from the Germans. First, the drinks you got there—whisky and Coke, slo gin fizz, and all that stuff. It was 1971, ‘72, Ja…Everybody was friendly.”
“Of course, because you were girls!” I said, smiling.
“Ja, they were very friendly, completely different from the Germans, you know?”
“In what way?” I asked.
“The Americans were…not so serious. ‘You like to have a drink?’ That was new for us. A German would say, ‘That cost me too much money,’ but the G.I.s didn't care. We didn't know about the culture and American life. It was completely different.”
“Dwight asked you to dance?”
“Ja ja, and we started dancing almost every weekend. We started going to the club, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.”
“You guys must have gone other places,” I said, “not just the NCO club.”
“You met Wiley, Tyrone Wylie,” she said, “We were together with him all the time. He had a German girlfriend too. We went other places, like Dutzendteich, Volksfest, and Neumarkt for disco.”
“…and all this time, Dwight was falling in love with you…”
“Ja, and then he asked if I want to marry him. He had bought the rings already.”
“What was your first reaction?”
“I said what? I had only known him eight weeks or so.”
“It was longer than that, wasn't it?” said Dwight.
“Maybe three months or so, but still a short time,” Erika said.
Dwight asked Erika to write to his mother, so she did. Then they submitted the Army paperwork. Erika had to go to the hospital for a checkup, including blood tests and a chest X-Ray. There were questions: where your grandparents lived, are they Communist, etc. That process took six months.
“You have to get permission from your company commander to do anything,” said Dwight.
When the papers came back from the Army, they had to go to the German Standesamt (registrar) for more paperwork and to make a date when they wanted to get married. Their intent to marry was posted on a public bulletin board, in case anyone had objections. They married in 1972, at the Nürnberg city hall, with Erika’s father and a friend of hers as witnesses.
“How did your folks react to your marrying an American?” I asked.
“Especially a Black person, huh?” she said, “You know how Germans are.”
“So that made it even more of an issue?” I asked.
“No,” Erika answered. “before him, I had already a boyfriend who was Black, so they were used to this already. But he had to go to Vietnam, and I never heard nothing. Maybe he died.”
Keys to a Successful Marriage
“You wedded 45 years ago,” I said. “To what do you owe the success of your marriage?”
“Argument, fighting,” Dwight said. I look at it this way; a marriage wouldn't be any good if you didn't fight or argue about something.”
“We don't fight...” Erika started to say.
“...we just argue. But once we go into the bedroom, it's off limits. That's our rule.”
I thought about the times when Gerdi seemed eager to fight, just to elicit some response from me, to know that I cared, but I had retreated, unable to deal with conflict.
“I think it's good that you guys argue,” I said.
“And the other rule is you don't be together every second of the day.” said Erika, “This is not good. It just goes on my nerves if you have a person all day around you.”
Dwight’s Military Service
Dwight is originally from Pittsburg. He joined the Army in January, 1967, took basic training at Ft. Jackson, South Carolina and advanced infantry training at Ft. Gordon, Georgia. Then he trained as a paratrooper at Ft. Benning, Georgia.
He was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky. After being deployed to quell the 1967 riots in Detroit, his unit was alerted to go to Vietnam.
Dwight recalled the words of General Westmoreland at the time: “He wanted the best. He told the president, ‘Give me the 101st, and I'll give you Vietnam in two years.’”
Dwight fought in Vietnam with the 101st for one year. He was wounded in action. I asked how it happened.
“Beatin' the bushes as an infantryman with the 101st Airborne. I was carrying my M60 machine gun. I got hit here, and it came out right here,” he said, holding up his arm.
“Break the bone?” I asked.
“I can't straighten this arm up. All this was damaged in here. The doctors messed up at Valley Forge, where they flew me into. They kept me in a cast too long.”
When the doctors discovered their mistake, they told Dwight to go out and play golf. He learned to golf, but it didn’t help. His range of motion in that arm is limited. When he returned home, he waited three months for orders to his next duty station.
“They forgot about me,” said Dwight.
After Dwight reminded the Army that he was waiting for orders, they sent him to Ft. Carson, Colorado. His first hitch was almost up, so he faced a decision: get out, or stay in?
“During that timeframe, there was a saying going around among Vietnam vets,” Dwight said, “I'm a hired killer, so what am I gonna do when I get out, be a hired killer?”
Dwight decided instead to reenlist. His test scores were high enough, so he applied for electronics. He attended electronics school at Ft. Gordon, Georgia, and learned to repair oscilloscopes and other instruments—a very different specialty from his former job as infantryman. Then, as a Specialist 4, he got orders to go back to Vietnam for the second time.
He was at the 794th Maintenance Company in Pleiku. During his second tour in Vietnam, he repaired instruments and pulled guard duty, rather than “beating the bushes,” as he had done with the 101st Airborne. After a year and four months over there, he went to Washington State, got new uniforms, and went on leave for a month. That’s when he got orders for Germany.
He was stationed at Merrell Barracks in Nürnberg when he learned that his younger brother was to be sent to Vietnam. He wrote and called his congressman, pleading for the Army to send him, rather than his brother. The orders never came down, so his brother did not have to go, and Dwight stayed in Nürnberg for four years. During that time, Dwight and Erika met, and they married in 1972.
Erika Meets Dwight’s Family—And the U.S.
Dwight’s parents came to Germany in 1974 to meet their daughter-in-law. “What did they think?” I asked.
“Ja, okay,” Erika said, “My mother was still in good shape at that time, and my father was living, so went to Kelheim, and I showed them some things. My father-in-law liked the German dark beer from Kloster Weltenburg. You just go by boat there.”
“And the monks brew it?” I asked.
“Ja, He liked it over there. He got tipsy, and then he ate his Wiener Schnitzel, you know?”
“He was in 7th heaven,” I said.
“Ja, He said I want to eat the Wiener Schnitzel, and then he had two glasses of dark beer, and then he was tipsy.”
So, Dwight, your folks said, “Erika, she's okay?”
“The whole family loved her.”
Not long after that, Dwight took Erika to his hometown, Pittsburg, for a visit. She was not impressed.
At his parents' house in Verona, a suburb, she had to sit in the house all day because it was so hot outside. Erika liked to sit outside, to be in the sun, to ride her bike and walk.
“There was no sidewalk,” she said. When you walk, someone will stop and asks if you need a ride.”
I asked Erika what she thought about marrying a soldier who would have to go wherever the Army sent him. “You never considered moving to the States?”
Her reply:
States is nice on vacation, but living there? I don't know—not for me. Everything is so far.
You need all the time a car to go somewhere. I like my bicycle. I like to walk. I like to go
to the swimming pool these days. When you want to go to a swimming pool over there, you
have to drive three hours. He was one time in Pittsburg to visit his parents, and I told his
sister I would like to go to the swimming pool. It was August, very hot. She said okay, and
the next day we went to swimming pool. She drove. It took one or two hours to go to the
swimming pool. And the swimming pool was a wave swimming pool. And I said…there
was no real grass, just imitation grass. They said, no drinking, no smoking, you could do
nothing on that grass. I said huh? I was still smoking. In Germany you take all your
sandwiches with you and you eat on your blanket. You couldn't do all this there. If you
want to eat something, you have to go to the real grass a little bit farther, you know, and eat
and drink. I said, typical America.
“You were not impressed,” I noted.
“I didn't like it.”
Erika has been to the U.S. three times on visits, but she refused to accompany Dwight when he was assigned Stateside.
“Ja,” she said, “I never went with him to the States when he had to go to the States. He went by himself, first to Texas, Ft. Hood two years, and then Georgia, Ft. Gordon two times, ne?”
A Soldier Goes Where he is Told to Go
“First, I went to Ft. Hood, Texas…I applied to get out of there, cause that place is crazy.”
“Too hot?”
“It wasn't hot, it was just the way they did things. There were two different armies at that time—still are. I said, I gotta get out of here. This is nuts, not for me.”
“What do you mean by two armies?” I asked.
“That's when the Army started changing, where the lower enlisted had more say-so than the NCOs.”
Since Dwight’s mother-in-law was not doing so well, he was able to get back to Germany. He stayed in Nürnberg another three or four years before he got orders to go to Ft. Gordon to become an instructor.
At Ft. Gordon, a battalion commander was in charge of the school, while a female Lt. Colonel was in charge of all the instructors. When she interviewed Dwight, she told him that she would take the word of a student over him. At that time, there was an issue with female trainees propositioning instructors to get a passing grade. In self-defense, instructors had to have the door open and a third person in the room when talking with a female trainee.
There was more. In addition to his duties as an instructor during the week, Dwight was expected to be a social director on weekends, driving students to the lake, the fairgrounds, or wherever some activity was taking place. The brigade’s rationale was that, because Dwight was not accompanied by his family, he had all the time in the world. He refused, on the grounds that it was bad policy to mix socially with students over whom he had authority. He thought about the possibility of a female student making a false charge against him, just because she was failing the course and considered hanging it up after 16 years in the Army.
Erika was opposed, even threatening divorce if he were to quit the Army. She told him that he would be stupid to give up a pension with only four years to go. He had gone to Vietnam twice “for those assholes.”
“So, I did it again, said Dwight, “I pulled that stunt again about my mother-in-law and got back over here to Merrell Barracks again.”
Meanwhile, Back in Germany…
Their son, André, had been born in 1977. He was already in school when Dwight had to go to the States. A further complication was that Erika’s mother was diagnosed with brain cancer and required Erika’s full-time care. Throughout the period of their marriage that Dwight was in the Army, Erika kept busy, raising their son, and working as a bookkeeper, until her mother was diagnosed with brain cancer. “I gave up my job to take care of her,” said Erika.
Erika’s father died of a heart attack, probably from the stress of seeing his wife in such a debilitated condition, according to Erika. When her mother passed away, at age 67, in 1980, Erika returned to her old job.
I studied a photograph of a small boy, their son, André. “Tell me about André,” I asked, “He must be all grown up now.”
“He turned 40 in January,” Dwight said, “He's German.”
“So, he's a German citizen,” I said, “He votes in German elections.” I asked Erika about André’s education.
He had a German education—Grundschule (elementary school), and then he went to Gymnasium (college-prep high school) for one year. He didn't like it there, so I took him out and enrolled him in the Realschule (vocational school). He completed the Realschule, and then he was supposed go to the Bundeswehr (German Army). He didn't want to go to the Bundeswehr though, so he volunteered in a hospital, Mother Maria, for thirteen months. After he did this, he worked for Conrad Electronics in Nürnberg.
“He’s a salesman?” I asked.
“He was a salesman, and then his boss offered him a job in Hong Kong. His boss gave him a ticket and said, ‘On the weekend, you fly to Hong Kong, and you tell me if you like it.’ He told me that when he stepped out of the plane, it was like he had been there before. He asked me what he should do, because he had a girlfriend, and their daughter was already nine months old. He asked if he should go to Hong Kong, and I said, ‘Go; you will never have the chance again.’”
“So, you have a granddaughter...”
“Ja, but they didn't want to get married, so he went to Hong Kong for six years. He worked there for a German company, and then he traveled all around Asia area: Cambodia, even Vietnam. He said Vietnam is real nice.”
“Much nicer than when Dwight was there,” I offered.
“Much nicer!” said Dwight.
Before that, André had worked a full-time job, attended night school for three years, and taught ballroom dancing in Nürnberg. Since returning from Hong Kong, he has worked in the office of a firm that sells automobile parts and does automotive repair. He makes good money and has a company car. “He has lots of friends,” Erika added.
“He has always considered himself a German?” I asked.
“Yes, but he does have a Social Security number,” Dwight said.
“Does he have dual citizenship?”
“No.”
Dwight’s Post-Military Career
Dwight retired from the Army in 1989, as a Sergeant First Class, with 22 years of service. He was just 42 years old, so he continued to work, but as a civilian.
“When I retired from the Army,” he said, “I would have had to wait three to six months before applying for a job with AAFES (Army and Air Force Exchange Service). Once you retire over here or even get a European discharge the military, you're on what they call tourist status. You don't belong to the military; you belong to the Germans.”
“During that time, you're supposed to live off your retirement?”
“Yeah, live off your retirement. I said nein, I didn’t want to sit around the house all day.”
He got his first job as an independent representative of various computer companies at the PX in Fürth. He sold devices such as Packer-Bell computers and Western Data hard drives. However, with the draw-down of U.S. forces from the Nürnberg area in the early 1990s, Dwight’s hours were cut, so he went to work for Wing, a German computer company in downtown Nurnberg.
“Personal computers were the big thing at that time,” He recalled. “You would have your computer built to your own specs, for your own purpose: gaming, desktop publishing—that sort of thing. I did all that, but I got tired of it. It wasn't paying too good either. The business started going down.”
“So, you left Wing and started working in Bamberg.”
“At AAFES.”
“How did that come about?”
“During that same time, I was working for Wing, I was also working in the PX on the weekends as an independent contractor. Then they got a new PX manager, and she pulled a lot of strings to get me hired under AAFES full time, so I quit working as an independent contractor, and I quit Wings. While I was working with them, however, they made a mistake and hired me as an American. They should have hired me as a German. They were paying my Social Security, and then when they found out they should have hired me as a German, they had to switch everything over and pay me as a German.”
“Which was better…”
“Which was much better, because you paid German Social Security, and then you had health insurance like a German over here.”
“So, he was insured when he got sick,” Erika said, “and now he gets a small German retirement.”
“Plus, you have German doctors,” I said.
“Ja.”
“So that's better than going to Kaiserslautern or wherever you would have to go?”
“Yeah,” Dwight said, “Because over here all retirees are second-class citizens, as far as the military is concerned. If I needed an eye appointment, it would take six months to get an eye exam. (Erika laughs) If I had a toothache, the only time they would see me was if it was an emergency.”
“You're both pretty healthy?”
“So far, ja,” Erika said.
“But the medical system over here is much better,” said Dwight, “because I have a friend, Dave Starr. I know he talked to you about his problem with the VA. When he came over here, (snaps his fingers) right away they operated.”
“Like [another friend] Ronny.” Said Erika, “He had cancer in his throat from the Gulf War. They didn't do shit for him in the States, but over here the German doctors took care of everything.”
“They do things right away,” said Dwight, “They don't play games.”
“So, you got into AAFES under the German system,” I asked, “and you retired from AAFES?”
“At age 65. That's German law.”
“Since this time, he's home,” added Erika.
“I get my Army retirement check, my German pension, and a little bit from AAFES.”
“It sounds like you're doing well. You have a beautiful home and a lovely wife.”
“All paid for. The only bills we have are the bills we make.”
Family Ties
“Do you still go back to the States yourself?” I asked.
“I don't go back as often as I should, but I'm going back this year in August because my mother's birthday is in August, and she turns 90 years old.”
“Do you make it every couple years?”
“Not that often,” he said. “My mother and sister were here in 2014.”
“That's nice,” I said, “your folks can come here and see Germany.”
“Ja, his sister comes and wants to see Paris.”
“They think it's around the corner,” Dwight explained.
“They don't know the distance,” said Erika, “my son drove them to Berlin…to see his daughter. That's my granddaughter (showing me a photograph of a young girl). She’s eleven years old now.”
“What is her name,” I asked.
“Mia,” said Erika, “She does cheerleading now. She's the best in sports from the whole school.”
“But she doesn’t live here?” I asked Erika.
“No, her mother is from the east of Germany. She lives with a new guy, and she's pregnant now from him. Before, they lived in Nürnberg, so we had her all the time here. But now she moved back to the east, where her mother's parents are living because the rent is cheaper there. Nürnberg is very expensive. There were other, private reasons; she had an affair with her boss. When André came back from Hong Kong, she thought he would go back to her. But he didn't. So, she moved to her parents' town. Since then we don't see her this often no more. And now she's pregnant, since she has that new boyfriend. I don't know if she ever comes back to Nürnberg. My son says she's all the time welcome here, you know, but she don't want to come. What can you do?”
“You miss her,” I said.
“Naturally. So, Dwight’s sister wanted to see her. They thought Berlin is around the corner. It's a four-hour drive.”
“In the States, that is just around the corner,” I said.
“But not here,” said Erika. She hung in the car like this (Erika gripped the edge of a chair) because the Germans drive faster than in the States... and we drove in Nürnberg, and we have the smaller streets, you know, and she was in the back...(huffing and puffing) and holding on...’Jesus Christ!’ she screamed.”
We laughed about the Germans’ mania for speed and the challenge of negotiating the narrow streets in medieval German towns.
“Some people come to Germany just to drive on the Autobahn,” Erika said, “and they rent a Porsche, you know.”
Politics
“What do you guys think about the politics in the U.S now?” I asked. A lengthy, interesting discussion ensued. Some of the highlights:
“Today they have that thing with Comey on TV,” Dwight said. “They say the whole U.S. is watching it like a football game.”
“Comey says Trump wanted this to ‘go away,’” I said, remembering a snippet of the proceedings from my hotel room television.
“Ja ja.”
“So, from what I've seen on TV,” I said, “and talking with people here, there are not too many Trump fans in Germany.”
“You got some of them, not too many,” said Dwight.
“Maybe before, said Erika, “but not now, when you see on TV what he is doing. Even Frau Merkel don't like him. The way he treated her when she was in the States and how he treated people at the G7 meeting.”
Dwight explained to Erika what would be involved in impeachment, which led to a general discussion of the differences between the American and German systems of government.
“Merkel—it was not good what she did,” said Erika, “taking too many immigrants.”
Dwight discussed the differences in opinion among the veterans who meet at McDonalds on Sunday morning. Those differences seem to reflect the larger divisions among Americans. Dwight noted that one gentleman, however, despite his opposing views, backed up his opinions with facts. “He does his homework,” Dwight admitted. “We’re not supposed to talk about politics at these meetings,”
But apparently, things come up: race, politics, Muslims, religion, Communists—anything is fair game for a bunch of retired guys. “Like I told you that Saturday when we met down at the beer garden,” Dwight said, I came over here fighting communism. But when I meet a Russian, I don't have nothing personal against him. It's all government. It's all political stuff.”
We wrapped up our discussion of prison colonies in Australia, the slave trade, the Holocaust, and the treatment of Native Americans agreeing that everybody has the same basic needs: food, shelter, family, etc. and that most of the problems in the world are caused by politicians.
My thoughts, as I traveled back to the old city on the U-Bahn were of Dwight and Erika and how they overcame the challenges and joys of marriage across racial, cultural, and geographic divisions: love, honesty, and open communication.
