Chapter 23

SPANGDAHLEM AIR BASE, Germany 480th Fighter Squadron, The Warhawks

Lanh decided that time moves at the inverse of what you need it to move. She noticed this phenomenon several times. The past two weeks seemed to take two years to crawl by, but the time she set aside for goodbyes and getting ready to leave her family for the first time in her life flashed past like lightning. Waiting for her connection at La Guardia airport in New York city was the longest three hours she ever experienced. The only longer time she ever spent in her life was the Lufthansa flight from NYC to Frankfurt. But what a flight! She was seated halfway back in coach, but it felt like first class. The seats were large and comfortable, drinks were free, well, at least her soft drinks were free. The meal was an interesting hamburger steak with egg noodles and the flight attendants handed out steaming hot scented towels, which really helped wake her up after being lulled to sleep by soothing classical music and overpriced wine.

Finally, she was able to get off the plane with the help of a nice red-faced gentleman that spoke no English or Vietnamese. He helped her get her bag out of the overhead compartment. Soon she was in Germany, looking at her first stamp on her passport. She decided she was now a “stamp collector” and vowed to fill her passport with as many stamps as she could. She was trying to read the wording on the stamp when she heard the call “Chi yêu!”

“Em yeu?” she cried, then she saw a hand waving at her through the press of the crowd, and there he was! The sweet kiss of reuniting, it didn’t make up for the months of separation, the five-minute-long shortwave radio calls in the middle of Saturday and Sunday night, the handwritten letters mailed daily, the aching hours of loneliness, but it helped.

As they waited for her luggage, she chattered happily away about Tam and Rosa’s babies, about the cows and Marissa, about how awesome it was plowing the snow off the driveway with the John Deere tractor ... but Don kept saying “Baby ... honey ... wait ... stop...” The words kept flowing out of her and he finally stopped her with a kiss.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. She wanted to talk to him so badly and he stopped her. It hurt.

“Chi yeu, I love you, but I don’t speak Vietnamese ... yet.”

“I know ... so?”

“Baby, you’re speaking Vietnamese. I know that when you get excited it happens, but I don’t understand it yet.”

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize...” Lanh was shattered. She didn’t notice that in her excitement, she was speaking in Vietnamese. She always thought her problem was her English diction would fall apart when she’s excited. She didn’t realize she switched to Vietnamese.

Don held her hands tight. “It’s ok, I understand that when you get excited it happens. Vietnamese sounds pretty to me; I just wish I could understand it.”

“I sorry...” she really felt bad that she had such little control over her language. “Me ... I ... should ... no ... talk...”

“No, honey, come here,” he pulled Lanh close to him and hugged her as tight as he could. “I have a friend who thinks she’s crazy, she told me that she went into psychology to figure out what is going on in her head.”

Lanh glared up at him. She knew he was talking about her sister, Tam. “You say me crazy GI?” She was taunting him now.

“No, but listen, I also have a friend who couldn’t balance a checkbook, she’s now an accountant, I have a friend who wanted to figure out how to get out of a speeding ticket, he’s now a lawyer. You’re a Nguyen, your whole family solves your personal problems with education, and there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, it’s noble.”

“Ok, I know about Kim-ly and her check book and Huy and his tickets, what about Bao? He’s an accountant too,” asked Lanh as Don grabbed her suitcases off of the carousel.

“He told me that he took accounting to keep an eye on Kim-ly,” said Don, returning to Lanh with her luggage.

“And Trung?” she asked.

“He told me that he has a thing for blond farmers daughters, so he found himself a job that has the farmers inviting him on to their farms.” Lanh couldn’t help but laugh. It sounds like something Trung would say. He’s now a state agronomist for North Dakota in the Red River valley and is engaged to a blond farmer’s daughter.

“Good thing for him that there’s a lot of blond farmers in North Dakota,” said Lanh, her self-flagellation eased up.

“Look,” said Don, “lets figure this out together, you teach me Vietnamese so I’ll understand you, and you take a few Speech Pathology classes so you can understand you.”

“I already looked into that at Sheppard,” she finally admitted, as they led Lanh’s suitcases out of the area and out into parking. Lanh thought about Don’s proposal. “I’ll do it only if there’s sex involved...”

Don’s car was a tiny green Opel Rekord, a car that was smaller than anything that Don had driven stateside. It had a five-speed manual transmission with a column shift. A column shift is something Lanh is familiar with, but the GMC pickup they left parked in a corner of the tractor shed on Ralph and Lanh’s farm was a three speed. She couldn’t wait to try out this Opel. After a quick struggle to get the suitcases into the car, and a long, tender kiss and not a little bit of groping, they were on the road.

As they drove toward the western edge of Germany, the country revealed itself in the early dawn gloom, and Lanh wasn’t impressed. Through the misty rain, she could see that the rolling hills were covered with large sticks standing vertically and spaced about ten feet apart. The farmer in her wondered what was going on and she eventually asked what she was looking at.

“Those are sticks. Here’s where they grow them,” said Don. “They paint them different colors, put them in cans and sell them to crazy Americans and call them Tinker Toys.”

“Stop! What is it really?” said Lanh as she slugged him.

“Those are vineyards, this is called the Mosel region, and they make a lot of awesome wine here.”

“Wine?” Lanh asked cheerfully. This might not be a bad assignment after all. It was a long journey that passed through several tiny towns and villages, and Germany was still waking up. On a couple of occasions, they were held up by herds of farm animals walking through the center of the villages. Once Lanh got out to talk to the cows, but they didn’t understand English or Vietnamese. The farmer driving the herd chuckled at Lanh’s frustration. Somehow, with a lot of hand gestures and fumbling through his English-German dictionary, Don was able to communicate to the old German that they were “Bauer,” farmers. “Ah, sehr gute, “ said the German farmer, then he asked “all cows? Or do you have other animals.”

“One goat, eine ziege” chuckled Don, “And we grow hay... heu, feed corn... futtermais, potatoes... kartoffeln, and other vegetables... Gemüse, for her parent’s restaurant.”

“Ausgezeichnet!” said the farmer with a huge grin, then he called out as he hurried to catch up with his herd, “Excellent! Guten Tag!”

“He could speak English?” asked Lanh.

“Most Germans can,” explained Don, “but this is their country, their language. As long as you try to speak German they will help with English.”

“Mmmm,” she moaned happily as they hugged one last time before getting back into the car. “Let’s go home.”

Their home was an apartment on the second floor of a three-story tall apartment building in the tiny walled village of Dudeldorf, Germany. It was four miles from Spangdahlem Air Base, where Don was assigned, and they were close compared to some of the other guys in his unit.

“It’s the third place they offered,” panted Don as he hauled Lanh’s overstuffed suitcases up the stairs, “and it’s the nicest I’ve seen in our price range.”

For her part, Lanh was enchanted by the little town. When they drove through the ancient city gate, she felt like she was transported back in time to a medieval country. All the little churches, and farms, and vineyards, and tiny narrow streets, ancient buildings ... the oldest building in Minnesota was a sod hut that’s 150 years old. That would be a new construction here.

Don unlocked the door to apartment 21, there’s only 12 apartments in the building, four on each floor. Their apartment was on the second-floor, first apartment. Don pointed to 23, the apartment next to them. “This guy is Marty, he works third shift, he’ll be home soon, but he’s a day sleeper.” Lanh was about to step into the apartment, but Don stopped her. “Let’s do this right beautiful.”

She laughed as he scooped her up and carried her across the threshold, kissing the whole time. “Are you going to carry me across EVERY threshold?” When she opened her eyes and looked around, she saw the apartment was filled with boxes and a few sticks of furniture. “You can take me home now,” she announced.

“Our hold baggage just came yesterday, and I was on duty last night. What do you say we have a brief tour first, then we’ll run in terror, ok?” Don carried her around showing her the interesting features of their German apartment.