Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

I remain confident of this:
    I will see the goodness of the Lord
    in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord;
    be strong and take heart
    and wait for the Lord.

• Psalm 27:13-14

Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, “Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.”

• Mark 9:35

To explain the verses, Psalm 27:14 is the verse my wife quoted most often, but when you add Psalm 27:13 and Mark 9:35, you get the essence of the woman I married.

At the end of the last episode, my wife began to hone her skills as a hostess, just to get to know the people who reported to me and reacquainting herself with old friends.  I was finishing my time as a platoon leader.  I would eventually spend a few months as the assistant adjutant for the battalion before getting a dream job, the Facility Engineer of the Karlsruhe Military Community, or for all intents and purposes a military job that accomplished the same thing, since for four months there was no civilian in that position and then more than a year after, I continued while the new civilian spent some of his time preparing a retirement home in Spain (just less paperwork for me to sign).

We also mentioned that she was pregnant with our second child.

Our Second child is born

When I was still with the engineering battalion, my wife had just learned she was pregnant.  The hail and farewell that month was at a restaurant just over the border into France.  On the menu was turtle soup.  My wife had never had turtle soup before, so she tried it.  At the monthly party that month, it was leaked that a half dozen officer’s wives were pregnant.  The usual jokes about something in the water ensued.  We could have had the same joke in our stairwell.  Of the eight married couples, six had pregnant wives.

That night my wife ran to the bathroom a couple of times.  When we woke up the next morning, she said I had to clean up the mess in the bathroom.  She had never eaten turtle soup before until last night and she had never had morning sickness until last night.  And somehow, her aim was very bad.  I mopped the floors, scrubbed the toilet, sink and tub, and for days, the bathroom smelled of garlic.  Even after scrubbing everything twice.

When I moved to a civilian style desk job, my favorite job ever, my wife was able to relax more.  There was a little officer etiquette and such, but for the most part, my job was at the head of a board room with six engineering directors reporting to me.  For my wife’s piece of mind, I was just going to the office to go to work.  The new furniture due to my efforts to solve a union issue made life more comfortable.

An added benefit, that had an ugly side effect that I did not mention to my wife, was that I was exempt from being called in the middle of the night for an alert.  You would think that all military would have to be informed if the Russians made a surprise attack, but my wartime mission, in my cushy desk job, was that I was to stay on the wrong side of the Rhein River and blow up anything that the Russians could use to make a bridge.  That is if the NATO forces retreated.  And I continued doing that until …  It was a suicide mission, but it did not happen and I made it home.  As the Facilities Engineer, I had contracts with most of the suppliers of things that the enemy could use.  Why not have me blow it up.  My wife knew of that mission, but it was never discussed.  She thought that if it stayed out of the conversation then it was nothing to worry about.

But I worried.  Within a month of starting my new job, I was throwing up blood.  After a variety of tests, I was told I had an ulcer that was healing, and I would have Gastro-esophageal reflux for the rest of my life.  Add disorder to that and you have what they call it now, GERD.  My time in Charlie Company being a platoon leader, executive officer, and full-time, permanent acting company commander had messed up my digestive system.  I was given cases of antacids.  I would run through a bottle in less than two full days.  And my diet drastically changed which meant my wife had my health to consider with every meal she prepared.

But with being pregnant comes late night bathroom visits.  One night, she heard a moped drive up and park behind our car.  A long-haired German man, practically a boy, ran into our stairwell.  It was about 2:00am.  He ran out with a cloth bag.  He put the bag in his saddle bag on the moped and he drove away.  Two weeks later, or there about, he did the same thing again.  She decided to tell me.  She told me the dates and what happened.  I went to the Criminal Investigative Division, and a sergeant became very interested in my wife’s story.  He said to let him know if it happened again.  Roughly two weeks later, the day before military payday, the same thing happened.  My wife had looked out the window due to thinking the German might hit our car and damage it.  On this occasion, my wife wanted a closer look at this German.  She walked down the stairs to the first-floor landing.  That is when it occurred to her that this guy might be armed.  She waddled back up the stairs as fast as she could.

This time, we both went to the CID office and the sergeant was now wearing an officer’s uniform.  He was a captain now.  He noted that again it was the day before payday.  He told us both that we should stay in our apartment and out of the way.

After the next pick up in our stairwell, I went back to the CID office.  The captain now wore an LTC oakleaf cluster on his collar.  He thanked me for the information.  They had been in the bushes, and they followed the German into France to the Maginot Line.  The young German was working with the Red Army Faction (RAF), a.k.a. the Baader-Meinhof Gang.  The Gang got away, but they had been flushed from their hiding place and over the next year, one by one, wanted posters were updated as the German police had killed one member or another, all because a pregnant woman had to go to the bathroom.  The military connection was that the RAF had been working with a lieutenant who lived across the street, his entire platoon was hooked on heroine, and they gave the RAF weaponry in exchange for drugs, and money was exchanged accordingly.  The lieutenant, his platoon sergeant, and the lieutenant’s wife were all found guilty within a day or two before we left Germany a little over a year later.  And my wife said that our boys had played with her children.

But then in the late Spring and decidedly pregnant, she bought an airline ticket and flew back to the USA for one of her sisters’ weddings.  She got to show off her baby bump and show off how our son had grown.  The doctor told her that if she were due in less than two months, he would have forbidden the trip.  And our son was born roughly one month later, about a month and a half early.

But leading up to that day, one of my wife’s brothers got married and his idea of a honeymoon was to visit his sister in Germany.  She drove them to various places while I was at work.  I could now walk to the office, a few blocks from the apartment.  And during that week, on the Wednesday, I was escorting a group of designers all over the area.  The office had no idea where I was exactly, but I would be in one of four places, easy to find if they made an effort to find me.  My wife and I had reservations at a castle near Baden-Baden that night, dinner for five.  It was supposed to be the highlight of the honeymoon, dinner at a castle.

The design firm had a lot of questions, and it was dark when I returned to the office.  One quick check of my desk and we still had time to rush to Baden-Baden.

As I passed by the administrative offices, a Frenchman, decidedly drunk, came into the hallway and threw his arms around me, kissing me, and he finally said, “Welcome home, Papa!”  One of the secretaries, I think it was a French lady married to a German, but then divorced, shouted that my wife called and said the baby was going to come soon, or something like that.  They had four phone numbers to call until they found me, but throwing a newborn baby party was all my employees could think of doing.  I glanced into the room and there were a half dozen bottles of champagne on the desk – empty.

Forget the desk, I drove home, having had the car since the big event was that night.  I ran up four flights of stairs and my new sister-in-law was mopping the kitchen floor, where my wife’s water had broken.  “She went to the dispensary!”  I ran downstairs and drove to the dispensary.  As I burst through the double doors, not bothering with the reception desk, the ambulance driver yelled, “Been waiting on you lieutenant, follow us, but if you get delayed, we’re on our way to the hospital in Heidelberg.”

I have written about this before, but the driver was already to the front of the kaserne by the time I turned the car around.  The traffic let the ambulance through, but not me.  It was rush hour and I arrived at the hospital forty-five minutes after my wife arrived.  A little repeat here, but the entire story is provided here, if you want a laugh-per-minute shocking tale of the birth of our second son.  Link HERE.  Odd, the linked post was posted five years ago today, totally not planned.

Needless to say, we never made it to the castle to eat.  The next day, the honeymooners visited my wife.  Two days later, I delivered my brother-in-law and his wife to the Frankfurt Airport, stopping by Heidelberg to visit my wife on the way home, and having the photo above taken.  The next day, I went back to bring the family home.  Another oddity was that our older son had only said two words his entire life up to this point, “the car”, repeated ad nauseum.  He loved Match Box cars.  But as we strapped both into car seats in the backseat, we heard something strange.  I looked at my wife and she looked at me.  We were both shocked.  Our older son was talking in full sentences with his little brother.  He could talk all along, but he chose not to talk to us.

I had made all the birth announcements over the phone, using the last of our German money at the time.  Okay, the largest expense was the night of our son’s birth when my wife announced she wanted a Big Mac from the McDonalds in downtown Heidelberg.  I was in fatigues, and I escaped getting arrested for a uniform violation.  They usually had an MP that camped out at the McDonalds just for that purpose.

But an odd thing happened without anyone knowing it.  With my new job and me being very happy with it, with the successes that I had including acquisition of 10 million dollars for a couple of construction projects, and with two children to take care of, my wife began to think of us as a family instead of her family being in Texas.  Maybe it was partially due to our older son hating being held, but our younger son loved it, and my wife could enjoy being the touchy feely Mommy she missed with our first son.

A year later, my parents came to Germany so that my Dad could see a few places where he had been during and after World War II.  They saw both of our boys at the same time, and the younger one was a toe-headed blonde with curls.

This may sound odd skipping a year, but other than trips to the Netherlands, Berchtesgaden, Munich, and Rothenburg ober de Tauber, we had settled into a comfortable life.  My job was hectic, but with a stairwell full of babies, the wives had tea parties, a lot.  Really, a lot of swapping off on babysitting.  We bought our Volvo and we then both had a car.

And for that last summer in Germany, my wife and I both had golf club memberships at the Canadian Air Force Base near Baden-Baden, but she had trouble getting babysitting.  We were both on a low carbohydrate diet.  She lost a little weight, but I lost a lot, nearly back to my high school weight.  When I returned home, my mother, who always had terrible things to say about fat people, said, “You look anorexic!”  I could never win.

Before we left Germany, my wife dropped off the boys at her cousins in southern Holland.  We carpooled to Ghent, Belgium and drove to Antwerp.  We could not find the Volvo shipping office, but we found the Volvo dealership.  My wife is great with languages, but lousy with directions.  The maintenance manager was an arrogant snob.  He saw two American travelers and he told his crew that he was going to have some fun.  He explained in German, thinking we might know a little German, that he could speak twelve languages fluently.  He was not very good in English (which my wife knew to be a lie) so what language do you want your instructions to the shipping office in.  My wife, red with fury said “Hollanse!”  The man was shocked.  He gave her directions, but I had little hope of finding the place.  I heard a left before the bridge in my limited language skill.  She got confused but after I asked what a left before the bridge meant, she said, “Turn right here!”  We had missed the shipping office, because it was a storefront under the bridge.  We took a taxi back to the bahnhof, and then a train to where our other car was parked in Ghent.

We shipped our other car through the military.  Since they already had a record of it, it was no trouble.

The trip to our next duty station

When we rotated back to the USA, we moved to the VOQ (visiting officer’s quarters) in Karlsruhe awaiting our flight home.  Our next door neighbors were my old platoon sergeant and his family. We swapped new duty stations, but he quickly retired, and we lost contact for a few years.  But my wife was tenacious when it came to finding old friends.

One of my sergeants from the Facility Engineer volunteered to drive us to the airport.  He had a VW van that was big enough for everyone.  He wanted to go by my old office to pick up some paperwork.  He said he had to drop it off at the Corps of Engineer headquarters for Europe in Frankfurt.  I had been there, so the excuse sounded reasonable, but 20-30 people wanted to wish me farewell.  After a lot of handshakes, the French girl, mentioned earlier, who had married and divorced a German, ran up to me and planted the most romantic kiss and roaming hands hug that I had ever had.  Roaming hands as they independently seemed to want to massage my back from the neck down.  I guess the French know better how to do that.  I had thought she was a beautiful girl, but I was married with a family.  She was a good secretary, and she was promoted while I was her boss’ boss, but not by my recommendation, although I signed the paperwork.  She kissed me so sensually in the front doorway of the office building, with my wife watching the whole time from a few feet away, probably smelling her perfume.  I got in the van, and she asked, “What was that about?!”  I shrugged and said, “I have no idea.”  The sergeant started to laugh as he drove us to Frankfurt am Main.  My wife never asked him.  He probably knew.

As we waited for our flight home, our younger son took his first steps.  Of course, the video camera and SLR camera (Single Lens Reflex that I bought in the PX for a great price) were both in our luggage.  Our carry-ons were our two sons and a diaper bag.

That year, Europe was an icebox.  The day we went to the airport was the first day when the temperature was above 60 degrees Fahrenheit that summer, and we were hot at 70 degrees.  We arrived at McGuire Air Force Base at midnight, and it was 100 degrees as we deplaned.  Returning to the USA was the only stamp I ever got on my passport, with multiple trips to France, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Austria, and Switzerland, my passport had never been stamped, but the Air Force Sergeant lustily stamped all four of our passports (that we got at the Stuttgart consulate after the second son was born) and welcomed us home.  No immigration cage, a sergeant at a table in a hanger next to the airplane.

We were taken to the Fort Dix VOQ and the alarm rang four hours later, giving us barely enough time to run to the bus that took us to Newark, NJ airport.  The Volvo was waiting at a shipyard in nearby Elizabeth, New Jersey.  After taking another taxi, we drove to the nearest gas station.  The USA was getting over the gasoline panic.  The gas station had special rules.  I had to tell the guy exactly how many gallons to put in the tank, and he had no idea what 50 liters meant.  I asked how much gas I could get for ten dollars.  He growled and accepted the cash.  I then drove down the turnpike and filled the tank at a self-serve station.  I didn’t need to know that 50 liters was about 13 gallons there.  I just filled the tank.  Hey, if the guy had not been a jerk, he could have filled the tank.

We drove to Mississippi and then to Texas.  Then we went back to Mississippi where my wife and sons hitched a ride back to Texas with my sister and I drove to Boston alone.  She took one more trip to the Texas Folklife Festival and after I had an apartment on base, she joined me in Watertown, Massachusetts, flying to Boston on the redeye flight.

Our apartment used to be the hayloft of the old stables for the Watertown Arsenal.  Barely 500 square feet, but four rooms, two bedrooms, a bath, and a kitchen / living room.  Our kitchen table was built into a half wall that connected the entry hall with the kitchen and living room, all one tiny space.  There was no room to change your mind, barely enough room for the beds and all the rest of our furniture was placed in our garage space, once the Major moved one of his vintage Mustangs.  The Major had a Mustang for every year Mustangs had been made and he used our garage to store one of them.

I was allowed to park next to our building, thus using the garage for storage.  After all, this young officer from Mississippi who barely saw a little snow in Germany was now in charge of snowplow operations at a research center in Watertown, Massachusetts.  There is a right way, a wrong way, and the military way.  I learned a lot of stuff following the military way of doing things.  I even shut down a PhD researcher for violating environmental protocols.  That eight months in the Boston area was fun.  Even for my wife who was invited to smoke grass, but she refused, swap husbands, but she refused, and both those requests were not repeated when our neighbors saw us go to church on Sunday.

We took the boys to Mississippi during a job hunting trip and they stayed with my parents so that we could convoy the two cars back to our new home.  We had fun.  My wife was wined and dined in New Orleans and Austin, Texas, but it was probably the worst mistake we ever made to leave the children behind.  The second worst mistake was taking the job in South Carolina.  I had been lied to about everything – the pay, the nature of the work, and a promotion to management within two years, since I had already worked as a middle manager in the military on the civilian side.  Maybe the reason why they wanted to fire me was my displeasure about all the falsehood.

My Only Experience with a PTSD Breakdown

My wife got a job as a surgical tech at a local hospital due to my pay not matching our basic needs.  But a couple of years later, when our first son was in elementary school, the teacher requested a special parent teacher conference with my wife.  She got permission to leave early.  She only left five minutes early because her case ran overtime, but she got to the school barely on time to learn that our son had not done anything wrong, but the teacher was concerned about him not paying attention.

My wife arrived at work the next day to discover she had been fired for not having permission to leave early.  A coworker tore the page out of the logbook and gave it to her to use as evidence in a lawsuit, but instead, my wife went home, locked herself in the bedroom, and danced to her favorite music, alone.  She would leave the room to ensure the boys were fed breakfast in the morning and to check their homework.  She would cook supper at night, but otherwise, I took care of making sure the boys did their homework and took a bath and went to bed on time.  With the bedroom door locked, I went to the sofa, lit a fire in the fireplace and eventually fell asleep.  When she first started emerging from her room is about the time that I volunteered my wife to be a den leader for the cub scout pack.

Okay, before I get cards and letters, she was starting to open the door some, spending a little time with the family, but she was not back to her old self again either.  And I only suggested that she loved kids and she would be a good den leader.  We went to the meeting on the following Thursday night and she saw that she could be a kid again, and she was hooked.  But her story was always that I volunteered her.

For the next six years, she was a den leader, three years with each son, and then she was a cub scout leader training person and roundtable staff person.  She would even get her Wood Badge beads, but that can wait until next time.  The point is that having usefulness in serving other people got her out of her funk and the entire family benefitted with her becoming an active part of the family again.  We never knew it was her PTSD from her military days.  She would not talk to me for those several months, even through a locked door.  And the locked door only slowed me down.  She learned quickly that I knew how to unlock internal doors.  I knew how to pick locks, but I am all thumbs and I have little patience, but internal doors have a failsafe in case the toddler locks the door by accident.

And what is next?

During the next few years, two influential people in our lives would pass away, and my wife and I would get busy almost every night of the week.

And to all this, I give praise and honor to God.  Only He knew that the two of us would one day marry each other, and it would truly be until death did we part.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.