Norbert Isaak: “Learn the rules and regulations of the country, and you'll get along just fine”
Norbert Isaak is one of the gentlemen I met at the May 28th get-together of veterans at McDonald’s. Judging by his unapologetically American accouterments, long hair, and full beard, I anticipated a fascinating interview. I was not disappointed. From the street, his residence appeared to be an ordinary apartment building in Fürth. Entering his ground-floor apartment through a courtyard, however, is like walking into a cowboy bar in Texas. A sign announced: “Ludwigstraße Social Club, where the neighborhood’s finest hang out. We serve cold beer—did you bring any?” A Western desert mural covered one wall, and the rest of the room was a museum of Americana, from the rifles on the wall, to the swords and saddles, to the longhorn steer skull above the bar, to “The Duke,” John Wayne, keeping watch. I began by asking Norbert how transplanted Americans have adapted to their lives in Germany.
“Learn the rules and regulations of the country, and you'll get along just fine,” Norbert said. “We've got guys over here who have stayed 40 years and can't speak a lick of German—because they don't want to…They let their German wives do everything.”
Early Life
Norbert was born in 1946, in chaotic post-war Germany. His mother’s husband, a German soldier who had been captured while fighting on the Eastern Front, was being held by the Russians as a prisoner of war. With no information forthcoming from the Russians, Norbert’s mother could not know if her husband was dead or alive. For her own survival, she took up with a man who could support her and her daughter, Norbert’s older sister.
“I’m a bastard,” Norbert said. “When the Russians released my father in 1949 or ‘50, he discovered two kids at home. He was supposed to have only one.”
Norbert’s family immigrated to the U.S. in the early 1950s. I asked him why.
“Russian prisoners of war were treated like shit by the German people when they came home because they let themselves get captured and didn't die. We packed up our bags. There was a chicken farmer in Texas that paid for our boat ride to the States. My father worked for him for a year. After the year was over, and he got his green card, [the chicken farmer] said, “You're all paid up, and now you can go wherever you want to go.” So, we moved to New Jersey because my parents had a lot of German friends there. That's where I grew up.”
After Norbert’s family went to the States, his younger sister was born. “We all have the same mother, but we have two different fathers,” he explained.
“When we were growing up, the five of us together, there was no love in the house. It was five people living under the same roof. I always received the bad end of the deal because I wasn't his. He showed it when we were growing up, that he resented it, and the only thing he did when we got to the States was to give me his last name.”
“What did your dad do in New Jersey?” I asked.
“He worked at Sea Brook Farms. It's a company like Green Giant. My mom worked there too. His job was printing the paper that went on the cans. He got the labels and fixed the cans up to put the labels on the cans. Yeah, Sea Brook Farms was a big, big thing, but something happened, and they went out of business.”
There was dark side to Norbert’s childhood. “Many things happened between my father, my younger sister, and me when I was growing up. My father was an old-style German. When something went wrong, he beat your ass, you know? In them days the rules were not so strict about child abuse yet.”
“So that's probably why the military seemed like a good option for you…”
“It was more or less an excuse to get out of the house. I can tell you exactly when it was: August of 1965. My older sister was married, and my younger sister was 12 years old. I had just finished high school in June and was working for Green Giant as a janitor. My mom worked there, but she was over here at the time, visiting her six sisters and one brother. I came home from work; it was a Friday night, and I told my sister I was going to go visit my girlfriend. While I was in the shower, she called my dad. He was working the night shift. When I got out of the shower, he was standing there. He didn't ask no questions, he beat my ass top to bottom. He took the car keys, took the license plates off the car, and said, ‘Stay home!’
“The next day I went down there and said, ‘I do.’ I had enough of that shit. I was 19, and I left. I didn't bother to tell anybody. I went down Saturday and said, ‘I do.’ I went to work Monday and said, ‘I quit. Have my paycheck ready to pick up Friday.’ Instead of going to work, I went to my girlfriend's house every day, as if I had been going to work. The next Saturday I got on that bus, and I was gone—to Fort Dix. Nobody except my girlfriend knew where I was. It took my sister almost two and a half months to find me. You know you can find anyone when their social security number is registered.”
Marriage and Children
After a three-year hitch in Germany, Norbert married Kathy, that young lady from New Jersey whom he met after graduation from high school. “After my first tour of Germany,” Norbert said, “we got married because I thought I was on my way to Vietnam. I never went to Vietnam; I ended up at Fort Hood. She came down to Fort Hood, and we had our first daughter down there. The other two were born over here.”
“And the two daughters from your marriage that were born over here are American?” I asked.
“Yeah…When you have kids overseas of American parents, they are considered Americans born abroad. My kids have American passports and American birth certificates.”
Norbert’s marriage lasted 18 years. “The Army, like the Navy and Air Force, has a high rate of divorce,” he said, “It's like being a cop or a fireman; not all women are cut out to be wives of people who are away all the time… I think that's part of the reason why mine fell apart.”
Norbert’s relationship with his daughters remained strong, even though they live thousands of miles away, in New Jersey. “Their mom and I were divorced,” he said, “but they called me up and said, ‘I'm getting married. Would you give me away?’ My ex-wife was against it, but my daughter said, ‘That's my father. That's not my father over there (indicating her stepfather).’”
“That was back in New Jersey?” I asked.
“Yeah. I gave them all away—all but one. I have three daughters that belong to me. My stepdaughter is from my girlfriend.”
A New Love
After his divorce, Norbert had a 25-year relationship with a German lady, Angelica. They never married, but Norbert and Angelica lived together and operated the “Ludwigstraße Social Club” together until Angelica passed away in October of 2014.
“You opened the bar because it was easier to open a business than it was to get a job with a company?” I asked.
“To get a job with the Germans, yeah. It was very hard for me as a mechanic. Nobody wanted to hire me because I didn't graduate out of mechanic school here in Germany. She said, ‘Let's do this.’ I didn’t have nothing else to do, so we did it over 20 years. It worked out good. Didn't get rich, but it was something to do.”
Angelica’s daughter, whom Norbert called his stepdaughter, was eleven when Norbert and Angelica began their relationship and turned 40 in 2017. She has a son whom Norbert calls his grandson. “We still see each other today,” Norbert told me, “and I also see my step grandson. I call him my grandson. I raised him, and I raised her, so she's part of my family, even though we're not in any form or shape related.”
“So, you have remained close to your step daughter,” I noted.
“Oh yeah; we saw each other yesterday for coffee. I watched my step grandson from birth until he turned twenty-one. I watched him grow up and go to school. In fact, I had him in my arms before anyone else did, even before his mother did.”
“Do your daughters get along with your stepdaughter?” I asked.
“My own daughters, since the first day they met my stepdaughter, they get along fine. They call each other sisters. There's no arguments, and nobody's jealous of this one or that one. In the last 30 years I've been over here more with my stepdaughter than with my own daughters, because they're all in the States. But they all get along together. My own daughters are 47, 45, and 41 years old, and my stepdaughter is getting ready to turn forty. They all get along; that was important to me.”
“You didn't feel the need to go back to your family in the United States?” I asked.
“I stayed over here because I had a German girlfriend at the time… [My daughters] were all over 21, and they had their own lives. They were either married or had kids. They didn’t need their father to interfere in their lives.”
“When you were together with Angelica all those years,” I asked, “what kinds of things did you do for fun—vacations and stuff?”
“We didn't do many vacations together because the business kept us from going on vacation. When I went back to the States for a couple weeks once, she ran the business. After we closed, she got sick, and we couldn't go anywhere after that.”
Healthcare
“So,” I said, “you had a business. Were you able to pay into the social system from your earnings?”
“No. I paid taxes, that's all. I could have gone into health insurance, but I would have had to pay for it myself.”
“So, the medical care you get is from the Army?”
“I get it from the Army. I could go downtown and send the bill to Tricare (equivalent to Medicare), and then Tricare will pay the bill, but they would only pay two-thirds of the bill.”
“Oh, so where do you have to go?”
“Kaiserslautern. That's the only hospital left. That will always be there, as long as we're fighting a war somewhere. It's right next to Ramstein Air Force Base.”
“Do you have to wait a while to get an appointment?” I asked.
“No, I have never waited more than a week or two…The doctors got time now ‘cuz there aren't many soldiers here…I've had four prostate operations. The original prostate operation didn't cost me a penny. It's my right as a retiree to use it, so why not?”
Relations with Birth Family
Norbert has not maintained a close relationship with his two sisters. After his father died, years ago, his mother specified in her will that each of her three children would receive an equal share of the inheritance. When their mother passed away, Norbert’s younger sister felt that he should not receive anything because he was not the father’s biological son. However, Norbert’s older sister insisted that he receive his share.
“Since then,” said Norbert, “we talk once in a blue moon. I called them up the other day; I wanted some information about a cousin of mine who lived in Stuttgart. Other than that, we don't talk, and we haven’t see each other since then. There's no love there.”
Norbert’s older sister lives in New Jersey, but his younger sister married a German man whom she met when she was in Germany as an exchange student. She lives in Munich and has dual citizenship.”
Military Career
Norbert served 28 years in the U.S. Army, most of that time in Germany, and retired as a Master Sergeant.
“After the first Gulf War in the ‘90s,” he said, “we came back, and with all the experience at the top, because we had so many years, they sent us little pink slips and said, ‘Would you please kindly retire by October 1st of this year?’ What could I do? You either get your retirement paperwork or you wait until October 1st, and you'll be on the street anyway. You might as well put in your retirement papers. That's what happened to many of us.”
Norbert explained the differences between the Regular Army, a federal force, and the National Guard and Reserve troops, who “belong to the states.”
Norbert made the following startling statement: “The Regular Federal Army has never won a war. Never in our history has it won a war. It's always been the Reserves and the National Guard that come in.” He went on to discuss some of the reasons for cutbacks in the Regular Army: the end of the Cold War, budget cuts, and technological advances.
“It used to take 21 guys in maintenance to keep a company going, but there's only 12 now. The equipment got more sophisticated, and now you got a section that has only eight mechanics in it, with the Sergeant and Lieutenant. The more sophisticated the equipment the fewer people you need to operate it.”
“Yeah,” I said, “and jobs are getting so technical, even in the service. You’ve got somebody pushing the button somewhere to operate a missile on the other side of the world.”
“When we first got the A1 Abrams (tank), Norbert continued, we got a machine, we got a computer, we got a test set that that has seven boxes to it. Each test set cost almost a million dollars. You hooked it up to the tank, run the program, and oh, this sensor is bad. You went out there and changed the sensor, ran the test again If it came out okay, you disconnected it and said goodbye.”
“I would imagine,” I said, “that if you're a combat guy, you're probably advanced in your training—all airborne, ranger, all that stuff now.”
“Sure,” said Norbert, “The infantry, they don't walk up there anymore; they ride up there. They get in an APC (armored personnel carrier), ride up to the front, get out, shoot, boom, boom, boom, and get back in that thing and ride back to the rear. And the armor and the tanks stands behind them and shoots. And it's getting more sophisticated. Now you got your drones; you don't even have to send the pilot out there anymore. You just have this guy sitting 50 miles back in the rear guiding that drone, pushing the button, and shooting exactly where he wants to go.”
“Maybe we'll get to the point where we can do all this with games, with no people involved,” I said, “Let the politicians settle their arguments that way.”
“Well, politicians are what causes wars. Politicians can't get along with one another; arguments start, after that fist fights start, and after that war starts.”
“But the politicians aren't the ones fighting,” I said.
Norbert recalled the scorn heaped upon soldiers during the Vietnam War. “But the same people who were cussing at us, demonstrating against the war, bitching at us and calling us baby killers were actually the ones sending us to war. They sent their congressmen and senators and their representatives to Congress. Their senator and their representative were representing them to do government work. So, who in reality sent us to Vietnam? The guy who nominated and elected this senator who said, ‘Go to war.’ No soldier goes voluntarily to a war. Any soldier who wants to go to war needs to be locked up in an asylum because he's nuts anyway. I didn't want to go to war. I went to war because Congress said I had to go to war.”
VFW Commander
Norbert is a member of both the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars. He is commander of the VFW post. I asked him to tell me a little about his VFW post.
“Well, we started out here in Zirndorf, then we moved to Stein. As the Army got smaller and closed down, we combined with the post out in Illesheim, and then we moved the post out to [the Army base] in Illesheim. You can join the American Legion as an ex-serviceman but you can't join the VFW unless you've been in some type of foreign war. I think it's pretty stupid, but that's the rule. Just like to belong to the VFW, you have to be an American citizen. We've got a lot of non-American vets now, since we were fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, and they can't join the VFW.”
“I'm surprised at that,” I said.
“So are we. We are trying to get that changed up at National headquarters, but they're stubborn and won't change it. We could become almost twice as big as the VFW is now. We could get four or five thousand more members. These are people like Mexicans or Germans. They can't join the VFW, but they did join the US Military. They can join the American Legion.”
“How many guys are under you in the VFW?”
“Right now, we have about 450 members.”
“How long have you been Commander?”
“I've been Commander almost four years now. We got a new guy coming in. He wanted to be the commander, so everybody voted him in as commander for this coming year.”
“Are a lot of the guys in your VFW and Legion Posts Vietnam vets?”
“Not very many. We got some that went to Vietnam. Of the guys you saw [at McDonald’s] on Sunday, I'd say three quarters of them were in the Army during Vietnam, but we all belong to different posts.”
“Do you have bingo?” I asked.
“No. We have to be very careful over here. We don't deal off post because off post the Germans want their money. That's why none of us have bars like they do back home, where you associate and drink.”
Norbert’s post raises funds through poppy drives and rummage sales to carry out charitable work, such as a recent fishing tournament for the kids. “The American Legion bought the hamburgers and hotdogs, and we supplied the sodas and water.”
“If the (American) Boy Scouts need help,” Norbert said, “we will donate money. They come to us, tell us what they're going to do, and why they need the money All we do is give them the money, and they give us a receipt.” The VFW is not allowed to support the German Boy Scouts or other German organizations.
“We've got one post over here that's got 1,200 members, and we've got another post with over 2,000 members. We've got a lot of women now joining the VFW. They've been to Afghanistan or Iraq.”
Norbert is District 3 Commander as well as Post Commander this year.
“Does the VFW take a stance, or do they even talk about American politics?”
“Sure do,” Norbert said, “Right now Trump is trying to take some benefits away from us, and our lobbyists are fighting.…”
“I've got a pretty good impression of how the Germans think about Trump. How is it among the vets in the VFW?”
“I can't speak for any of them. Every man's got an opinion.”
Unfortunately, we had to end our conversation on that note so I could make my afternoon appointment with Dwight Johnson at the other end of town. On the subway, I mulled over Norbert’s experiences—his birth in Germany and subsequent immigration to the U.S. as a young boy, his reasons for choosing a military career, his gratifying partnership with Angelica, his service to fellow veterans, and his thoughtful perspectives on life in Germany and the U.S.
