Herb Hall: Leader of Men
Herbert Hall was one of four men who started the Sunday morning McDonald’s group of veterans back in 1993. I got in touch with Herb through Ron Rundell, a Californian who has organized several reunions of 2nd Armored Cavalry veterans from the mid-1960s era. Ron and his wife travel to Nürnberg once a year or so to visit her parents. On one of those trips, he met Herbert Hall. Aware of my plans to seek out former G.I. living in Germany, Ron informed me of Herb’s weekly get-togethers at McDonald’s.
Herb and I communicated via email before I left for Germany, and he spread the word of my project to the others in his group. We met May 28th at the cemetery where the group had planted American flags on the graves of their deceased comrades and again on Friday, June 2nd in a downtown Nürnberg café.
The biggest question, Herb, is why did you decide to stay in Germany?
Very simple: the medical benefits. My wife would lose them if we went to the States. When I retired, I worked for a German company. I'm fully, medically insured by the Germans at a very reasonable rate. So, the answer is, strictly for the unbeatable benefits. I would be paying a fortune in the States, and the wife would have nothing. I've had many friends with German wives who went back to the States. After six months or a few years, they came back to Germany because the wife has her medical benefits. They didn't last over there. They thought they'd give it a try, but it didn't work. My German wife liked it here. I like it here because of my medical. I wouldn't go to the States.
A lot of Americans got out of the military and took civilian jobs with the American government. They didn't have one working day on the Germany economy. They have to run to Landstuhl for any big operations. Tricare or Tricare Plus I think pays 75% if you get a $20,000 bill, you've got to pay $5,000. On a $4,000 bill, you've got to pay a thousand. That's not for me. I said if I'm going to stay in Germany, I'm going to work for a German company and get my full benefits. I get retirement from the U.S. government and from the German system, along with my German medical card. Four or five of us, out of the group of veterans you met on Sunday, are way ahead of the others, who didn't retire from the military or work for a German company. It's not easy for a lot of them.
How did you meet your wife?
Timmy, a friend from Merrell barracks, and I were at a pub, and three or four Germans invited us to join them. One guy, named Crazy Eddie, spoke perfect English. Being new in Germany, we hadn’t learned much German yet, so we sat with Eddie. Then we walked with them to a place called the Kleine Kneipe. A week later, Timmy and I went back to Kleine Kneipe. A woman walked in and heard Timmy and me speaking English. Well, she spoke English, so we struck up a conversation. That was Karin.
Your wife's name was Karin.
Yes, that's how we met. Later her daughter and her sister came. They had planned to meet there to have a small Pils beer. They all spoke English.
That was west of the old city?
Yeah, on Bucherstraße. When you come up to the castle, by the Albrecht Dürer Haus, there's the archway...you can leave the city, and 200 meters down the main road, that's Bucherstraße on the right, was the Kleine Kneipe, just outside the old city.
It was not a GI hang out?
Nope, not at all.
So, you guys talked, and where did it go from there?
We agreed to meet again, and we exchanged phone numbers and so on…
So, you and Karin started going together, and when the subject of marriage came up, how did you deal with your different backgrounds?
She realized that as my wife she would be a military dependent, and a year later we were married.
Did your family attend the wedding?
My mother was here—only my mother.
Have other family members come over to visit?
My mother has been to Germany three times. My two children from my first marriage have been here, and my two sisters have also been here for a visit. I have a very friendly relationship with my first wife and everybody in the States. There was never a problem.
So, Karin was your second wife.
Yes. She died four and a half years ago, on 23 December, right at Christmas, 2012. She had pancreatic cancer, and she died quickly.
How long had you been married?
At that time 33 years.
Children together?
No, no children together, but a stepdaughter.
Karin had a daughter?
Right, and I had my two kids from the first marriage, but no children together.
Do your two kids and her daughter get along together?
They have all met.
They had a good time together, I suppose?
Yeah, there's no problem.
Were you accepted readily by your wife's family?
Yes, no problem.
Any rude behavior from Germans because you're American?
Nope.
Are you concerned about crime on a daily basis?
No. Germany is very safe, and Nürnberg is one of the safest mid-sized cities. A woman can walk the streets at night, 2:00 in the morning, we don't read about women getting raped or this or that in the paper, it's not on the TV. It's quite a safe city.
Yeah, a bunch of drunks in a guesthouse could have a fight, but that doesn't count. I don't see that very often either. The Germans will police their own. If there's trouble, they'll intervene, pretty much.
Did you and Karin spend much time in the States?
Well, I was in the Army; in 1980 we went to Fort Hood for three years. But from 1977 until I retired in 1994, the rest of the time was in Germany except for 18 months in the Netherlands.
There was a U.S. Army base in the Netherlands?
Oh yes; we had U.S. Allied Forces Central Europe, and they had prepositioned combat equipment: tanks, trucks, jeeps, Humvees, whatever—all in climate-controlled buildings. Troops could come over here, draw the equipment, and go on a maneuver for three weeks or fight the Russians—whatever. Everything was there, ready to go. That's where I worked. There were only eighteen Americans there, but over 200 Dutch workers.
So, there was a lot of maintenance of the equipment...
Absolutely.
In the Second Armored Cavalry, patrolling the Iron Curtain, we used to joke that if the Soviets came over, we would be a speed bump, slowing them down for the big boys in the rear, but it sounds like there was a plan.
We had many of these sites, not just the one in the Netherlands.
It was just a matter of getting the guys over...
We had them in Germany, and the Netherlands.
What do you remember about Merrell barracks? I know it was five stories above ground, and they told us it was five stories below ground. I've never been to anything lower than the sub-basement.
I was never down in any of the basements there. I heard that there was a tunnel over to the Dutzendteich and a tunnel toward the castle, and this and that and so on. I don't know.
When I was here in 2011, I asked a curator at the Documentation Center. He claimed not to know anything about tunnels.
I think there was a tunnel at one time going to the Dutzendteich. You know the long strip used as a parking lot, at the Dutzendteich?
Yes. The “Große Straße.” The Second A/C used it as an airstrip during the Cold War. I pulled guard duty out there sometimes.
On each side there was a stone wall this high, right and left. In the daytime, the strip was filled with water. When the Americans and the British would fly over during the day, they would think that long strip of water was one of the lakes in the park. At night the Germans would pump the water out, land their aircraft, resupply the soldiers’ food, ammunition, this and that, and at five in the morning when it was still dark, they would pump the water back in.
... and this is all water from the Dutzenteich?
Wherever the water came from, yeah. The Germans were very clever.
I heard that the Germans were able to hold off the American capture of the SS Kaserne a week or two because these tunnels allowed for reinforcements and materials to come back in. Now that could have been just a GI story. I don't know.
One thing is true—the Merrell Barracks rats. I've seen it at night, the big rats.
Big rats?
Walking along the edge of the buildings. There's no place to run. It wasn't the plague, just once in a while—maybe twice in three years I saw the big rats at night.
How long were you in the service total?
I had 24 years, with Air Force and Army together.
Oh, you were in the Air Force too...
During Vietnam. Then I had a break-in service. I get paid for 24 years. I had 22 years active and 24 for pay.
Did you go from the Army to the Air Force to the Army?
No from the Air Force to the Army.
Why?
Well, like I said, I was married twice, and I owned a company later in Connecticut selling office machines. I said what am I doing all this for? I'm going to go back in the military. In Danbury, Connecticut, they had a shopping mall with recruiters from all four branches, so I went to the Air Force. They said they did not take prior service.
That's strange...
So, I said okay; I don't like ships, so I'll try the Army. The Marines also don't take prior service. That's why we had hundreds of Marines in the Army later on. There are a lot of prior service people from other branches in the Navy, but mostly they come into the Army, especially the Marines. So, I said okay. They said come back on Monday, and I had to take the AFQT—Armed Forces qualification test. Once in a great while I would drink too much, and it happened to be that weekend. I came in there at 10:00 o’clock to take the test with a head this big that I might have once in two years. Almost every company I was in, I had the highest GT score, 141, and that's with a big head. Ha-ha.
How long were you in the service the first time?
1977 to 1980.
Okay.
And then I went to Ft. Hood, Texas for three years, came back to Germany, and I was in the 3rd Infantry Division, Larson Barracks, Kitzingen, up on the hill. From Larson they sent me to the Netherlands, to the Combat Equipment Group Europe, and from there I went to another combat Equipment Group site in Pirmasens. Of course, my sister-in-law and everybody still lived in Nürnberg, so we came back up here, and I went and saw the major. I said I need a position, paragraph, and line number. I want to transfer back to Germany. I came back to Germany and never left. I kept extending and extending and retired.
What year did you come back?
1987 I think, ‘87 'til I retired in 94. When I came in the army, I was in electronics and armaments. They sent me to school at Aberdeen Proving Grounds. Then I came to Germany, I was at Merrell barracks. What happened was I got priority orders in 1980, sending me to XM 1 school, class number one—that's the M1 tank, at Aberdeen. Class number one, we were the best people, Army wide that they could find. I was one of them.
You were an electronics guy.
Electronics, optical, laser range finders, thermal receiving units—everything electronic in the tank—all the control boxes, whatever. I could work on all that stuff.
Everything they said not to do, we did. We would see a water tower a mile away. Everybody bet a dollar. We'd fire the laser, and the closest one won the pot. We did stuff like that. At Aberdeen some idiot pulled his car up behind the M1, and the paint actually peeled off from the heat of the exhaust. We had the old rations in the cans. You set them on the back of the grill for a minute, and you had hot food. That's how hot the exhaust was.
That MOS was a 52 Delta—generator mechanic. In 1980 they converted all 52 Deltas who were Sp5s to hard stripes. In Pinder Barracks in Zirndorf, there were five 52Ds who were Sp/5s, so they had a little ceremony and gave them hard stripes.
What did you end up?
E7. I got my degree and did everything, but there was no way in hell I could make E8 at that time. Frozen fields.
You got your degree while you were in the Army?
Yeah.
University of Maryland?
Yeah.
How long did that take?
Six, seven years.
You had to take it on your own time?
Yeah, evening classes.
Oh, they actually had classes. It wasn't all correspondence.
None of it was correspondence. In high school I had physics, chemistry, biology, algebra 1, algebra 2—all the what you call college prep courses, but I was a horrible student, so I graduated and went in the Air Force. My son was valedictorian; the whole family have been excellent students. All of them—my sister's kids, my kids—they're all brilliant children.
But you probably had other things on your mind in high school...
I just didn't apply myself.
Were you an athlete?
Yeah, I was a pitcher, and I could hit pretty good. I could hit a long ball. I ran some track, some baseball…yeah, we played basketball, but I was not on any teams. My son ran track—high hurdles.
What was your major?
Liberal arts.
What do your kids do?
My son works for Commvault. It's an information storage company, a very wealthy company. He's got good job security. My daughter doesn't have to work. She's a multi-millionaire.
How did that happen?
Her husband was a captain on the police force, and she had a part-time job as a waitress. They bought a big house when prices were climbing, before the real estate bust. They bought a second house and a third. They rented one house for $2,500 a month and the other one for $2,800 a month. Their tenants were transferees from California to the East Coast, their rent paid by their employers.
So, tell me a little about your job when you retired from the Army.
Another good story. When soldiers were getting set to retire from the military, they could go to an employment office for German companies looking to hire people. A lot of G.I.s were diesel mechanics or had other skills. The Germans would train them and take care of the paperwork for the Meister [equivalent to a journeyman]. I got out of the Army on Thursday and started work on Monday. Five Americans worked for this company as truck drivers. We had class 2 driver's licenses—18 tons. We could drive anything. It was what they call Geflügel und Wurst—chicken, turkey, bologna, salami—and we delivered to the big stores: Real, Palast, and every big store. I know all of Bavaria—every big town. We delivered all over, from Munich to Hof, to Würzburg to Augsburg. We had all the trucks out every day—long-ass days, but a hell of a lot of money. They had what's called Speisengeld, money for lunch, and that was 10 Marks a day, tax free. So, on top of my pay, I got, in a 20-day working month, 200 extra Marks tax free. When we converted to the Euro, we got half that—100 Euros a month extra. Plus, the pay was unbelievable. The boss had an extra good year, so he decided to treat the company to a free trip on him. The company hired a plane and flew all 40 of us from Nürnberg to Paris. We stayed at the four-star Grand Hotel, a few blocks from the glass pyramid. Every single drink was free. Plus, we got our Christmas money and our vacation money. I do the same for my cleaning woman. At the end of June, she gets extra money and in December for Christmas. She's a single woman with two kids from Cameroon. She comes every two weeks and cleans.
How did they handle the conversion to the Euro in 2002?
It was automatic; they said you have a thousand marks in the bank, you now have 500 Euros. This was in the bank book. You didn't have to physically go to the bank.
What about the cash you had on hand?
You could bring it there, and they would give you Euros for the marks.
What was the exchange rate?
Half. 1000 Marks became 500 Euros.
Were people happy with that?
They didn't complain a lot, but what happened was, when you had Marks, you could get a Schnitzel and potato salad for eight Marks. Two years later you could get a Schnitzel and potato salad for eight Euros.
Inflation.
No one complained too much.
The cost of living went up, but did your pay go up too?
Oh yeah, I always got pay raises when I was working.
But because of the Euro?
No, nothing special because of that. It's about nine Euros today for Schnitzel and potato salad. The thing is, you could go to France, the Netherlands, all over, and you don't have to worry about exchanging your money. England stayed with their pound, but most other countries use the Euro. Sweden, Switzerland, and a few other countries did not take the Euro. Austria yes, Czech Republic no, but I think they will eventually.
Did it make a difference in how easy it was to travel to France or any of these other countries?
No, but you didn't have to change the money.
You didn't need a passport...
No, nothing else changed.
Speaking about huge changes, what about the reunification of Germany?
Yes, my wife came from a town called Ludwigsstadt. It was on the border with East Germany. In fact, it was like a peninsula; it was surrounded on three sides by East Germany. And when the wall came down, and the border was opened from Ludwigsstadt to Probstzella, in East Germany, I was the first American to cross the border into East Germany from Ludwigsstadt. It took me half an hour. They didn't know what to do with me. They still had East German border guards and they still patrolled, but the border was open. Finally, some big boss came, and I paid him 40 Marks, and they let me in.
That was the system huh? It wasn't too long after that, 1990, that the country was reunited...
Yeah, the Einheitstag, Unification Day is always October 3rd. I was there when the wall came down. That was something.
Was everyone out in the streets celebrating?
What happened was the East Germans came by tens of thousands across the border. There were traffic jams like you wouldn't believe. They had their little Trabant, that burned oil in the gas; there were clouds of smoke all over the place. When you had one of these things going up the road, it was like looking through a fog. You would go to a rest area on the highways, a Parkplatz, and they were jam-packed with these Trabis. Unbelievable! People from the East could go to the Finanzamt here in Nürnberg and get 50 Marks, and then they could drive to the Munich Finanzamt and get another 50 Marks. Later we had many East Germans who now live in West Germany, but many of them went back. They didn't all stay.
They wanted to see what life was like in the West. When I went over there, the streets were full of potholes. Every house had cardboard or plywood on the windows. They had nothing. Six months later, every other house had a satellite dish already, so they could receive all the TV programs, stuff they never had before. Now they could make their home improvements and order stuff.
The old joke in the East was about the guy who's going to retire in 20 years, so he goes to the car dealer, and says he wants to order his new car. The car dealer says yeah, you can order it, but we can't deliver until the 3rd of August 20 years from now. The guy says to the dealer, well, are you going to deliver it in the morning or the afternoon? And the dealer says why? He says I have a doctor appointment in the morning.
Was the influx of people from the East a big problem over here?
Never, but it did cost West Germany a lot of money to give them everything. A friend of mine came from East Germany via Hungary. His mother still lives in Chemnitz, in the eastern part of Germany. She worked in an office with two other women. Every day one woman was in the office, and the other two were out shopping, going to a bathhouse or whatever, just not working. But they had jobs, so they got their full retirement. What angered a lot of West Germans like my wife was that this woman who did nothing got the same retirement money as someone who worked hard.
So, reunification was no big problem, other than a huge financial cost for West Germany?
Exactly.
Some people probably grumbled about that.
Yeah, but they were not out rioting or protesting. They had to accept it. There was nothing else they could do.
They must have been very happy that their country was reunited.
Yeah, my wife had relatives in East Germany.
How is it over there now?
Almost the same as it is here—big shopping malls, everything new. They built a big shopping mall near Chemnitz—big, brand new department stores like Macy's, C&A Brenninkmeijer, and Karstadts. At first, there might have been only five people in the store. Nobody had any money. But they had the shopping center.
But now they're getting some jobs?
Oh sure, now they have everything, but not in the beginning.
What about the immigration situation now, with people fleeing Syria and all that?
Germans are not happy. She took in 1.3 million refugees with no controls.
She being Angela Merkel.
Yeah, and at least 3% have to be terrorists. In the United States, once we have a better system of controlling who we take in, then they're welcome. But they have to be vetted first. That’s the difference, and I agree with that. I would say Merkel could take a million Mexicans if she wants. That's a joke ha-ha.
That would be a long way to swim though. Any other major changes since you've been here?
No, I pay a car tax every year on my car. It goes by how many cc's the engine size is. Diesel tax is higher than gasoline tax, like three times higher. Every three months I pay 55 Euros television tax.
I’ve heard about that. Is it true that for every appliance, every TV or radio...
They don't know. They don't search your house. You only have one.
You just tell them one.
Yeah.
You must have some lively debates about politics among veterans at the Sunday morning McDonalds get-togethers.
No, the Germans have a liberal press, but at McDonalds we don't talk politics or religion, like we did years ago, fights, arguments...I said okay, that's it: no more politics, no more this, no more that. A guy who joined our group would say, "the nigger this, the nigger that..." I told him, we don't speak that way here, and he stopped. We watch our language, and we don't talk politics. When they start, I say no politics!
How did you get the group started?
I went to the American laundromat. I was in there doing my laundry and there were three other Americans, Eddie, Vernon, and Roger, and me. We talked about how everything was closing down in 1994, and decided to meet. So, we started meeting. The group has grown, as you saw last Sunday. Several of them have passed away.
Are they all buried at Westfriedhof?
All around. Some went back to the States for burial, one or two maybe, but most of them are in this area. And you know last Sunday we put flags for Memorial Day on the veterans' graves, and we do it again on Veterans' Day—twice a year.
How often do you get back to the States now, since Karin is gone?
Every year now. Every year I go to the States, and every year I go to the Red Sea in Egypt. The coral reefs. You can walk to the coral reefs. We all have underwater cameras. We take the reefs, the colorful fish, It's a pleasure.
Why Egypt?
Because the coral reefs are there. It's beautiful—fantastic hotel, good food, inexpensive, a direct flight from Nürnberg to Hurghada, and then a 35-minute bus ride to the bay where we go to snorkel.
Speaking of the States, where’s home?
Okay, I was born in Brooklyn, but I grew up in Ho-Ho-Kus NJ. That's my home town. Many famous actor, Milton Berle, I don't care who it was; name somebody from the old days, and they all came from Brooklyn—80%. A lot of Jews, a lot of this a lot of that. They all came from Brooklyn.
And that was Herb Hall, the gentleman whose leadership keeps a group of former G.I.s connected to their own roots and to one another.
