Steve Milke: German by Birth, American by Surprise
Steve Milke and I met at the June 28th meeting of veterans and arranged to meet at the McDonald’s in downtown Nürnberg a few days later. From his responses to my questionnaire, I noted that he had been born in Germany. He was six years old when his parents emigrated to the United States. He recalls that they went from Nürnberg to Bremerhaven, New York, and then to Columbus, Ohio.
When he received a draft notice in 1968, he told the draft board that he was a German citizen. It was only then that he learned that he had been an American citizen since 1956. A colonel explained to him that when his mother got her citizenship papers, her children automatically became U.S. citizens.
Steve spent a year as an infantryman in Vietnam and was wounded three times. He was in a hospital in Japan four months.
“When I got home from Vietnam in 1970,” he said, “I saw that a lot of Americans were against the Vietnam war and against a lot of the American G.I.s, ‘cause they were there...it's even a big thing today, with Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan...they go over there for a year, two years to fight, come home, and what happens? They either have an alcohol problem or drug problem big time. Where can I go to get help? Nowhere. And that was the thing with a lot of those Vietnam veterans: Where can I go to get help? Mom and dad couldn't help you; neither the military nor the government could, or would help you.”
He married an American girl in June of 1970, a move he described as “a mistake.” As the result of a casual encounter at a party before she met Steve, his wife had a daughter, whom Steve adopted. They had a son together. Steve worked at Western Electric in Ohio but was laid off after six months. He worked for a while at a little gas station “but got a little too stupid with some of the people in there.” He then reenlisted in the Army and was stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia. His wife joined him about two months later and lived in their apartment for the next four years. However, Steve’s military duties kept him away most of the time. They divorced in 1977, and Steve has since lost all contact with his ex-wife and her family. He has tried to locate his kids, but without their addresses or married names, he has been unsuccessful.
When Steve was shipped to Germany in 1983 as an Army Reservist, he agreed to stay to care for his Aunt Hanna and Uncle John while he was performing his military service at William O'Darby, Johnson Barracks, and other locations in the Nürnberg area. In 1999 they signed their house over to Steve with the provision that they would be allowed to live in the house for the remainder of their lives. His uncle died in 1999, and in 2013 his aunt went into a nursing home.
“A lot of the retirement homes are pretty nice,” said Steve, “but most of 'em, I wouldn't give you two cents for.” He explained that the German social insurance system includes provisions for retirement home care. “She gets her room, three meals a day, medication—the whole ball of wax,” Steve said. “There's a beautician that comes in, does her hair, somebody cuts her nails, just stuff like this.”
He served four months in Kaiserslautern, at a graveyard for retired tanks, military vehicles and household appliances. Some items, like Jeeps and washing machines, that were in pretty good shape were sold to the highest bidder at bargain prices. The rest was recycled.
Steve related a revealing anecdote about his German civilian co-workers: “They were [in the break area] talking in German. One guy—he was kind of a shit bag—he didn't like the Americans. I'm listening to him run off at the mouth. About the third or fourth day, I told him, in German, ‘If you don't like Americans, then what the hell are you doing here working for the them?’ The supervisor, asked, ‘You understood what we said?’ I said, ‘Yep, you heard what I said, didn't you?’ After that, he didn't cuss the Americans or anything like that. I told him, ‘Wherever you go, there are good people and bad people. Just in this room, I see three people I wouldn't want to have as friends. From all the reservists that are here right now, I wouldn't give you a five-pound bag with ten pounds of shit in it.’ He laughed and said that was a good phrase.”
Steve was also stationed in Stuttgart for a year with the SOCE-Special Operations Command Europe—Special Forces Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines, all in one group. “When I left there,” said Steve, “those guys gave me all kinds of stuff to take home, saying, ‘Take this, ‘cause we're going to throw it away.’ It was same in Kaiserslautern.”
Steve was also in a scout patrol, in a three-man track with a machine gun from an aircraft. “We used to cut trees down with it,” he said.
“One day this other guy and I decided to go riding around. We wound up in East Germany—no signs, no nothing. We’re sitting there jaw jacking, and a farmer come up and saw the license plate. He said in German, ‘You guys turn around real quick and leave. You are in the DDR. If the East German military come here, they're going to arrest you. You might be here for the next five years. You would go to a prison camp here.’ We turned around and took off. We just made it, maybe 25 to 50 feet inside the border, and here come the East German border patrol. One of the East German border guards gave us the finger, so we gave him one back.
Steve completed his military service in Grafenwöhr, in the supply room of a training facility.
“Since I've been here in Germany, it has been really nice. Like I tell people, both the United States and Germany have good things and bad things.” He encouraged his military colleagues to “Go out there, learn just enough German to get by on; drink some beer. They’ve got a lot of good restaurants here.”
Because of Steve’s knowledge of the culture and ability to speak German, he was sometimes called upon to act as an unofficial liaison between the Army and German civilian authorities. He cited one occasion when his fluency in German allowed him to go beyond the call of duty. A man from his unit had raped a German woman. The unit was ordered to stand in formation as the victim, accompanied by a German police officer and the unit’s First Sergeant, walked past each man until she was able to identify the culprit. A couple of MPs, who “looked like gorillas,” according to Steve, put the suspect in handcuffs and took him to the police station. The MPs requested Steve to accompany them to act as translator. Steve was required to commute between Johnson Barracks in Fürth to Mannheim every day during the soldier’s trial. At one point, the German judge asked Steve how, as an American, he was so fluent in German. Steve explained that he had been born in Germany and spoke German growing up.
His knowledge of the language and culture resulted in other opportunities for Steve. For example, a company commander once offered Steve a two-week “paid vacation” at Grafenwöhr, showing G.I.s where to eat, drink, and have a good time off base without getting into trouble. The same company commander asked Steve to purchase camera equipment for him amounting to $18,000.
Steve showed me something that looked a little like a driver's license. He said that it is issued by the immigration office—the Auslandsamt.
“I get this for life,” he said. “Once every ten years, when I get a new passport, I have to go and get one of these. When I got the first one, it was like $26. Now it costs about $58. You have to go in once every two years, and they put a stamp in your passport for two years.”
Steve was in the Army Reserves from 1977 to 2001. After that, he worked in a factory making windows like the ones in my hotel room, that could tilt inward for ventilation or open like a door, depending on the position of the handle. I asked about the mysterious strap on the window. “Yeah. It's in your hotel room, right?” he answered. “When you get there, pull it, and let go, and there's a shutter that comes down. They have them on almost every building here, especially in homes, condominiums, and apartments.”
In 2005 the window company went bankrupt, and Steve went to work for a temp agency. His assignments took him to a Siemens plant that published magazines, a recycling operation at a shipyard, and a company that cleans offices. One of the perks of working in the recycling plant and cleaning offices was being able to salvage discarded treasures, which he could sell for extra cash. Perfume samples, fine wine, and pewter mugs, for instance, brought a pretty penny at the marketplace.
Steve praised the public transportation system in Germany, pointing out that train service between major cities is often faster than driving the Autobahn because there are no traffic jams. He buys a reduced-rate monthly Mobi card for retirees that allows him unlimited transportation on the city bus and subway system from 9:00 a.m. until 1:00 a.m.
Steve lives in a town of about 8,000 outside of Nürnberg. It has a bakery, a couple of doctors, and a dentist, but no gas station. The bus stop to town is a 15-minute walk or five minutes by bicycle.
Taking in the activity and crowds in the multi-story McDonald’s where Steve and I were talking over coffee, I commented on the appearance of American fast food restaurants in Nürnberg since I was stationed there in the 1960s.
“The first McDonald's that I know of here in Bavaria opened in 1974,” Steve said. “People went nuts over them. Since 1982, they have had McDonald's all over Nürnberg, as well as Burger King, Dominos, Pizza Hut, KFC, and Starbucks, as well as Dunkin’ Donuts.”
Steve noted that peanut butter is not as popular in Germany as it in the States. “Bratwurst, you get the small ones,” he said, “about like my little finger. You eat them with potato salad, coleslaw, bread, and a beer. They’re good.”
“When I was stationed here,” I said, “it was four Marks to a dollar. You could get a schnitzel with potatoes and a beer for a dollar.”
“In the late 1990s they went from D-Marks to Euros, which was a mistake,” said Steve.
“You're not happy with the change?” I asked.
“No, a lot of the Germans weren't happy with the change, because the Germans had to pay two D-Marks for every Euro they got. A lot of Germans were unhappy with that. They don't like the EU because they say it's a waste of time. Why pay these clowns to sit in Brussels and sit on their duffs not doing anything?”
Steve continued, unprompted, on the topic of politics. “Then you got a lot of people come over from the East Bloc countries. Break-ins, auto thefts, this, that, one thing or another. This is right after they opened the borders. The crime rate is big, but they catch a lot of them. They put them in jail for three or four years, five years, and then they send them back. People come here from Africa, Somalia. A lot of them are rapists, terrorist over here. When they catch them, a couple years in jail, and then they send them back. These guys come back after six months, a year, with forged paperwork and everything, doing the same thing all over again.”
Steve stated that there has been a big cutback in police forces over the years, He dismissed Chancellor Merkel as “a liberal from East Germany,” and criticized the cost of moving the capital from Bonn to Berlin, along with huge expenditures to rebuild former East Germany after reunification.
“Here in the West,” he continued, “you could drive through some of these streets, and they look like shit. Why? because cities like Nürnberg, Munich, and that can't get the money to repair it. It's all going to East Germany. A lot of the Germans are really unhappy about this.”
Steve’s perspective on the status of Americans living in Germany is that Americans are tolerated but accorded second-class status. They pay their share of taxes but receive fewer benefits than emigrants from Europe or Africa. “I've heard it for years over here, from a lot of the Germans,” he said, “'You’re an American; why don't you go home?’ And I saw it at William O Darby Kaserne, where they sprayed on the walls, ‘Ami go home.’”
Many German civilians working for the U.S. military lost their jobs when Army bases were closed after the Cold War. If they were fortunate enough to get a job on the German economy, according to Steve, they would have to work until the age of 65 or 70 to collect a pension.
Steve retired in 2006. One of Steve’s American friends, Herbert Hall, helped Steve to apply for Veterans benefits and Social Security and arrange for direct deposit. Steve told me that his payments from the American government go through the German Treasury and are converted to Euros at the current exchange rate. Steve gets a bank statement each month showing the dollar amount and the amount deposited in Euros. Steve does not have to pay German income tax on his American pension. American income taxes are low.
Steve explained that German sales tax is high, however. He gave an example of candy that costs three Euros may actually include more than one Euro sales tax, or a five-Euro McDonald’s order may include 1.75 Euros sales tax. Unlike in the U.S., where sales tax is added to the list price, sales tax is hidden in the list price in Germany.
“Property taxes depend on how big a house and yard you got,” said Steve. “They're real high. People own an apartment; they don't pay no taxes. Condominiums, you don't pay no taxes. But for property owners, they pay taxes. It's charged by how much square yards you have. If you have, like I do, 1,000 square yards, you pay something, plus on the location where it's at. You pay 200 something to 500 something Euros a year.”
The cost of gasoline in Germany is approximately twice the cost at the pump in the U.S., according to Steve. Most of that is due to higher taxes.
Steve discussed the complications of shipping and retrofitting American vehicles for use in Germany: different tools, different safety standards, and transportation costs. “In Germany you’ll pay between $25,000 and $28,000 just for a normal Harley-Davidson,” Steve stated. In contrast, he estimated the cost of a German-made BMW to be about 14,000 Euros in Germany.
I noted that a lot had changed in Nürnberg since my days as a G.I. The city now has an extensive subway system, and the main streets downtown have become pedestrian zones with many high-end shops. I had the impression that everyone was rich.
“Seems to be, but that's not the case,” said Steve. “A lot of the people here, they got their jobs to go to, and they have mortgages on their house. Out there where I live, you buy a house for say, 250, 260 thousand Euros, and you're 23, 23 years old, buying your first house on credit, you're paying for the next 35, 45 years on that house. You're paying interest on the interest.”
Steve recalled that when he arrived in Nürnberg in the 1970s, there were only three TV stations, mostly classical music. In the 1990s, satellite dishes began to appear. The government collects a tax on each radio or television in a household. He declared that, in the United States, if such a tax were imposed, people would be up in arms— literally.
That turned the conversation to the subject of gun laws in Germany. “Yeah, you can buy a hand pistol, but you have to register with the police, and they have to know what it's for. But a rifle, you can get any kind of rifle you want, and all the ammunition you want.” He, himself, owns a rifle, a 22, and a 12gauge shotgun. He told a story about shooting feral dogs in the woods outside an Army base near his home. As a combat veteran in Vietnam, he had no qualms about shooting the dogs in self-defense.
Steve told another interesting story about how, as a German-American G.I., stationed in Germany, he helped other soldiers to experience German culture. He invited his own First Sergeant to this aunt’s home, where Steve stayed for a few days every two weeks. The First Sergeant enjoyed a hearty German meal and subsequently introduced his wife to Steve. In a “small world” coincidence, it turned out that the First Sergeant’s wife had been Steve’s neighbor back in Georgia. Needless to say, the duration of Steve’s assignment under that First Sergeant was trouble free.
Since his divorce in 1977, Steve has had several relationships, with American, as well as German, women. In his experience, German women of today are too materialistic; they are only interested in what luxuries a man can provide. He noted that in Germany, as in the States, property is generally divided between the former spouses. In addition, the non-custodial parent is obligated to pay child support until the child reaches majority.
Steve’s impression of German kids is favorable, for the most part. He said that they are taught in school how to greet older people. Teachers tend to be “liberal,” according to Steve, who decried the reelection of “liberal” Chancellor Merkel, even though “nobody wants her,” in his opinion. “Maybe a lot of Germans are too lazy to go and vote,” he mused.
Another of Steve’s irritants is the smoking ban in stores, hotels, and restaurants, instituted in Germany a few years ago. He related an incident in which he and another American were smoking cigarettes outside a German store in downtown Nürnberg recently. “This Italian guy started running off...’You goddamned smokers! You're polluting the air...blah, blah, blah.’ I said, ‘We're outside. It's legal for me to smoke out here. If you don't like it, kiss my ass.’”
“Do you have run-ins with people very often?” I asked.
“Sometimes you gotta have that run-in,” Steve said, “because a lot of people think, oh, he's not going to say nothing, just ignore him. When you stand up for your rights…That's like my one neighbor...I have to wash out his head once in a while for him. When I'm done with him, I take that towel, put it between his ears, and dry out his brain a little bit. That neighbor woman ...same thing. wash her hair. Haven't seen her in quite a long time. But that's okay. I could deal with not having neighbors come out and mess with me.”
“You have given me a lot of insight into your life in Germany, Steve. Thank you very much.
