Get A Grip

That is the beer stein that I intended to use to quaff massive quantities of Löwenbräu while waiting for the events I was able to get tickets for at the 1972 Munich Olympics. I gave the tickets to people who could go, while I was involved in other things as a result of the terrorist attack.

The Stars & Stripes had a short piece on one of the other annoyances I dealt with at the time: Baader-Meinhof Gang attacked U.S. troops, bases in 1970s-1980s. They didn’t mention the interesting car chases on the Autobahn, with BMG in stolen BMWs firing automatic weapons at the green Porsches of the Polezi, who returned the favor. It was invigorating in a 850 Fiat Spyder when they blew by you well in excess of 100mph.

Yes, BMG was a definite hemorrhoid, but they weren’t alone. If you went to London for Christmas shopping the IRA could try to kill you. In Spain it was the ETA. Every nation in Europe had somebody with a grudge who thought blowing you up would prove their point.

There were groups on the left, groups on the right, groups that wanted their own state, groups that wanted yours. They would highjack or blow up planes, trains, buses, cruise ships … basically any mode of transportation.

I didn’t enjoy being rousted out of bed several times a month so the EOD guys and the dogs could search for bombs. We started keeping beer in a cooler, so we could kill the time while our living quarters were searched.

It was the way it was and you lived it. You went on about your business and avoided any recent craters. The bad guys were pursued by the appropriate police agencies and quite often arrested, tried, and convicted. No sane politician suggested that everyone in Europe surrender their rights to prevent terrorist attacks. Security was tightened around transportation facilities, but it didn’t get out of hand.

People didn’t panic. The older people had survived World War II. They knew what a serious threat looked like, and they weren’t ready to surrender the rights many of them had only recently recovered because of the actions of a few individuals.

For me, this stuff was background noise. I was dealing with reality. I was stationed at the focal point of the Fulda Gap. I knew for a cold, hard fact, that if things went wrong I would, at best, be on an aircraft out of there, but more probably die as a result of the Soviet armor rolling over Frankfurt, or the fallout from the tactical nuclear weapons that would be launched to stop them. Despite that, no one suggested that the government should be reading my mail.