INTRODUCTION
I WAS a civilian employee at Camp King (7707 ECIC -- European Command Intelligence
Center) for almost five years, from May 1949 until August 1954, when I married a German
girl and we left for Hollywood. At that time in the American Zone of Germany, the
policy was that if you married a German girl, you had thirty or sixty days to leave
Germany. That rule applied to intelligence people
at Camp King. I don’t know if it applied to all Americans or not. I’ve forgotten
an awful lot of that stuff that was so important at the time. Please bear with me,
or fill me in.
At Camp King, I worked first as an editor of the intelligence reports that
were sent on to higher echelons (either Washington or Heidelberg). Those
reports were, of course, the end product of ECIC, the reason the camp existed. My second
assignment was as a translator (German to English), and for my last few years, I was an
interrogator.
The Camp King years brought many people and experiences into my life. That period was
without doubt the most colorful and fascinating time I have known. Lately, I’ve
been calling on memory long after the fact to set down a few remembrances.
I’ve changed names and have fictionalized spots a slight bit here and there in the
material that follows. Anyone who was there when I was will almost surely recognized whom
I’ve writing about, despite the altered names, If you weren’t there then, hell,
you won’t know or care.
And why did I go at all? To get away from it all! I was less than a year into a job as a
tyro editor with a book publisher in Chicago, near my home town. It could have been a
solid starting point for a career, but I soon found the work tedious. I had been in
Europe during WWII as a soldier and wanted to go
back. And so I did -- how rash it seems now! -- with no job, without knowing anything
about Frankfurt, let alone knowing anyone there, and barely able to afford my one-way
ticket. One way, sink or swim!. I dog-paddled at first and it worked out. I was
almost like an immigrant to this country 150 years ago who travels steerage to New York
City, with high expectations and not much else
except hope.
Finding a Job in Germany
THE GREAT CITIES of Europe once competed with each other to see which could build
the largest, the most impressive, train station. In its utilitarian way, it was the
civic counterpart of royalty having a pissing contest in constructing every more lavish
castles.
Those days are long gone. Yet train stations still play host to more train traffic than
ever. But now, in Florence, in Paris, Rome, or Amsterdam, the stations are magnets
for hustlers of both sexes, for drug dealers and addicts, for the Eurotrash of the
Continent, mostly young kids with backpacks and eyes alert for any sort of chance to
score, whatever the score might be. Some of them first got there by rail, since third
class is fairly cheap. In Germany, third class has the nickname Holzklasse, or wooden
class, because the seats are bare wood, like park benches.
I got to Germany by boat, a WWII Kaiser liberty ship that had been converted into a
small, bare-bones passenger ship. Remember, this was shortly after the end of the war and
you took what you could get in going from the States to Europe. Transatlantic commercial
air travel was just starting up. Air travel was way more than I could afford,
anyway. As it was, I was traveling partly on
borrowed money. The cramped little ship, named the Marine Flasher, needed almost two weeks
to reach Cherbourg, France. Aboard the Flasher, I consumed an awful lot of canned peas and
grainy rarebit on soggy Saltines and not much else as I recall. From Cherbourg, I took a
train to Paris, spent a few days there, to get drunk and get laid, and then traveled on to
Frankfurt.
The area around the Frankfurt Train Station, or Frankfurter Hauptbahnhof, was to be my
neighborhood for the first few weeks after I arrived. I assumed, rightly so, that the
station area was where I’d find cheap hotels and restaurants.
I got there on a beautiful morning in late May, mostly sunny, warm but not yet balmy.
As I walked out of the huge station for the first time, I faced the Bahnhofplatz, a
huge island of concrete surrounded by heavy traffic, much of it American Army
vehicles. The plaza was crowded with Germans waiting at bus stops, piling off of
streetcars, or hurrying ut of the station. They mingled with tourists (not
many of them in those days), back-packers, and American soldiers. Sprinkled in the
crowd were sharp-eyed and street-wise, off-brand nationals from lord knows where
looking for any kind of hustle. They glanced at every stranger who passed. Accents
were strong and often strange, the voices low, as now and then one would mutter to me in
broken English, “You want girl?” or “You want some good stuff?”
On the west side of the plaza, near the Güterbahnhof, or freight station, I spotted
the Eden Hotel. The place had obviously not yet found its way into any guide book except
perhaps as a Not Recommended. There I found a room for about $12 a night, up on the third
floor (or second floor, in European reckoning). I knew that in the Eden, I’d
never be lonely or alone, what with the incessant sound of street traffic, and within the
hotel, slamming doors and hoarse male voices often punctuated by high-pitched cries,
usually female. I went out to a few sleazy bars, or Kneipen, that night, my first back in
Europe, and then had a short, poor night’s sleep.
I spent the first few day strolling up the Kaiserstrasse or walking across the Eisenersteg
bridge over the Main River into Sachsenhausen, taking tram rides all over the city, seeing
the huge PX at WACS Circle, though I was not allowed to enter, and just giving way to the
excitement, the novelty, of being in bustling, raffish Frankfurt.
Soon came the day, though, when my U.S. Government-issued pass to be in the American Zone
was due to expire.
Frankfurt at that time was the Wild West for Americans. There were many ways to beat the
system and no one seemed to care. To extend my pass, I took advantage of that -- in fact,
contributed. As anyone could, I walked into the lobby of the Carlton Hotel, there on the
Bahnhofplatz. (The military government had taken over the Carlton as a hotel for Americans
and Allied personnel.) I took
a copy of my pass, whited out dates and signatures, and had an accommodating German girl
at the hotel desk make me a clean, scrubbed copy. Then, with some trepidation but
with all the cool I could muster, I approached a relaxed looking colonel sitting in
a chair in the lobby of the hotel reading the Paris Herald Tribune. He was
slightly annoyed at having his reading interrupted.
Good! Then he wouldn’t get too interested in what I was about to ask. (I was becoming
street-wise myself.)
“Sir,” I said, “I have a form that needs an officer’s signature and at
the moment, all offices are closed. I wonder if you might sign for me.”
“Well, what’s the form?”
“Oh, something to extend my housing for a few more days.”
“Okay. Where do I sign?” I had a pen all ready and handed it to him before
he could ask anything more. He signed.
Done and done! He couldn’t have cared less, was only glad to get back to relaxing
with his newspaper. Even with that extension, I knew I had to head out and find a job
before my
money ran out.
The next morning, my few days of fun as a tourist at an end, I faced the employment
problem. The place to go was the Holzhausenschule, a former school that was now the
employment office for civilian jobs with the American government in Frankfurt. It was near
the I.G. Farben hochhaus. The Farben complex had been deliberately spared by U.S.
bombers during the war, so that it would be
intact to serve as headquarters for the U.S. occupation.
To get to this U.S. employment office from downtown, I boarded a Roundup car.
These were regular Frankfurt streetcars, which ran every ten minutes or so, except they
were marked Roundup and were for the use of occupation personnel only. Germans
were not allowed to use the cars and if caught, would be put off at the next stop.
One German woman who worked as the housekeeper for an American officer and his family once
boarded with the family’s dog on a leash. The conductor realized she was German and
therefore had to get off. When he asked her if she were German, she replied.
“Yes, but I can ride because I am with an American dog.” No sale.
In those days of continuing hardship for the indigenous personnel, it was vastly easier
than today to tell an American from a German. Look at the clothes, especially the shoes!
The Amis, as the Germans called up, were better dressed and had much newer, better shoes.
Today, of course, the better dressed person may be the German, not the American.
My Roundup car dropped me off just steps away from the Holzhausenschule employment office.
The young German girl who interviewed me showed me a printout of jobs available that week.
I spotted an Army civilian job calling for an editor with a knowledge of German.
I had no idea where that job might be. It was at a place she called “Camp
King.” I hadn’t the faintest idea of the what, where, or why of Camp King.
Still, there was a job available! Then the bad news. Sorry, she said, but my
one year of college German would not qualify me for an interview at the camp.
I persisted, I cajoled, I smoozed, until the girl reluctantly agreed I could go
there for an interview. She said it was north of Frankfurt, outside the small town of
Oberursel. On the form she gave me the facility was identified as the 7707 European
Command Intelligence Center. I had no idea what that was, but the very name fired my
interest.
From the end of the tram line in Oberursel (well beyond the reach of Roundup cars), I
walked several kilometers through the village, past the small railroad station, and on
past farm land until I saw the camp on my right. At the entrance was a guard shack and a
candy-striped boom manned by two soldiers. I showed them my interview slip from town.
They let me through and directed me to
headquarters. On the way, I passed a long row of six one-story, gray buildings badly
in need of paint. a dirt parking lot filled with civilian cars, a few officers and
civilians in the one-lane street flanking the buildings. Farther ahead, on a low hill, ws
the only building that did not have that gray,
weathered, prefab look. That was the Taunus Mountain Lodge, a half-timbered, two-story
structure that was the officers club.
Headquarters was in a two-story building, as drab as the others but much larger. In
front of it, an American flag fluttered in the breeze from atop a high pole.
The Germans built the facility as a PW camp for American and British pilots shot down in
World War II. The interior of each squat, narrow building was divided into small
rooms, most of them eight by ten feet, each with a wall-mounted heater and a single,
barred window. These became, once again, interrogation offices.
The nearby village of Oberursel had a municipal swimming pool. In summer,
back during the war, the pool was closed one afternoon a week for the exclusive use
of the American and British PWs.
On that first visit of mine to Camp King, a corporal in the main office at
headquarters took my interview request and told me to wait. Then, he returned to tell me
very solemnly to follow him. He knocked at a closed door and we heard a gruff, challenging
“Come in!” He opened the door and motioned for me to enter.
I did so to see several things at once. First of all, behind a large desk, the challenging
presence of a stocky, powerful looking captain in the Military Police. Tough guy for sure,
I assumed. I was right, but he was more than that. This was my introduction to Capt.
Malcolm Garrity.
Behind him was a maroon velvet curtain, covering up something, I couldn’t tell what.
To his side in the corner, an American flag in its standard. I stood in front
of his desk. He did not ask me to sit down. Without a word and not looking up, he
stretched out a hand to take the resume I was holding. He studied it for
several minutes, impassive as a poker player staring at his cards.
I knew I’d better play it direct and simple with this man. I assumed what I thought
was a military manner for myself, crisp and impersonal, balanced on both feet, hands
folded behind my back. If I had been a soldier, my stance might have passed for parade
rest. Standing in front of him, I felt like a kid hauled before the principal. My
head was still throbbing from the night before. My throat was dry and I needed to urinate.
When he finally looked up and gave me his attention, he totally ignored the burning
question on my mind, the reason I was there, to interview for a job. He asked
me , in a soft, almost drawling voice that suggested a lot of power behind it:
“When did you get in?”
“Yesterday.”
“Where from?”
“New York City.”
“Is that where you live?”
“No. I stopped off to see a friend.”
“What borough does your friend live in?”
“Manhattan.”
“What street?”
“92nd Street.”
“Near Columbia University?”
“It’s not far from there.”
“Apartment house?”
“Yes.”
“What’s the street number?”
“I’m not sure because he led the way wherever we went.”
“Well, you found his place, didn’t you?”
“Yes, because he met me at JFK.”
I was beginning to squirm. This was turning into a police grilling, not a job
interview.
“So,” he went on, “on 92nd near Columbia. There was a newsstand right near
there. Do you remember that?”
“No. Maybe we drove past. I never noticed.”
“Well, did you notice this big deli in his neighborhood, The Pastrami Place?”
“No, I don’t recall any of that.”
“Not even the deli? You had to eat someplace.”
“We just grabbed a bite wherever we were. A few times in the cafeteria at
Columbia.”
Was he bluffing about these details? As it turned out, no. He knew Manhattan well.
That knowledge stemmed from his days when he studied voice with a vocal coach in the
Carnegie Hall building and later, when he appeared several times at The Metropolitan
Opera. It was clear Garrity was playing a gentle game of cat and mouse. He could
easily have succeeded in throwing me off balance,
but curbed his instincts to bamboozle me as some sort of suspect. In point of fact, he had
already decided that I looked like a good candidate fort he job.
“Okay,” he continued. “Now, how did you do in that one year of German, in
college?”
“I got straight A's. And I learned the basics of grammar.“
“Also, dann,” he continued in German, “Bald wird die Zeit sein für
Mittagsessen. Sofort dannach, werden wir wieder an der Arbeit.”
“Did you follow that?,”Capt. Garrity asked.
“It was a little fast. Something about lunch and work.”
“More or less,” Garrity muttered in a flat voice that told me nothing. Had I
just dealt myself out of the running?
He said nothing more and his expression stayed blank as he looked down again at my resume.
In a few seconds, he looked up again. I struggled to maintain eye contact as he stared at
me for a few more seconds, silent and still impassive. Rivulets of sweat started down my
arms. Would this bliss never end? Finally, he
commanded,
”Hand me your passport and wait here.” I obeyed.
He opened the door and asked the corporal at the desk to come in and stay with me while he
was gone. He returned in a few minutes and escorted me to a large room in the next
building. A man and a woman were sitting there at separate desks, silent and bent over
papers. Garrity introduced me to the man, Bob Wolf.
“Bob, this is a Mr. Smothers. He’s applying for the editor’s job. Mr.
Smothers, this is Mr. Wolf, who heads our Editorial Department.“
Garrity then left. Some of the tension left me.
Bob Wolf smiled and asked me to sit in the chair by his desk. He was 33 years old but
looked more like 53, about 5’8”, overweight at perhaps 175 pounds. He had large,
alert eyes behind wire rimmed bifocals. He had neither the bearing nor strong features of
Capt. Garrity. Where Capt. Garrity had granitic calm, Bob was fidgety. He gave you quick
glances instead of firm eye contact. He
had thin, straight black hair, parted in the middle, puffy cheeks, a rather blotchy
complexion, which was often a bit sweaty, and a pouty mouth of large lips. He wore a
suit coat and vest. The vest was buttoned except for the bottom two. That was
left open not so much out of style but because it would have been difficult to fasten it
over his belly that bulged at that point.
His desk was covered with papers. On the edge of his desk was the large unabridged
Webster’s. In front of him was my passport, open to my photo.
Bob Wolf gave me a warm, encouraging smile. “Mal Garrity showed me your passport, and
your resume.” He emphasized the word resume. Bob had even called this
forbidding officer Mal. That was a surprise after the chilly experience I had just gone
through with the captain.
Wolf’s next words were a jolt: “I think you are better qualified for this
job than I am.” Later on, he told me,
“Your resume looked good, but it was your passport photo that intrigued me. I decided
I’ve got to meet this person.”
He paused, then sat up straight and said crisply, “So!,” as if he felt he had
been too personal before and now he would play the busy executive interviewing an anxious
applicant.
“I see you did editing and writing on college textbooks for a publisher in
Chicago.”
“Yes, for over a year.”
“What was your last project?”
“A textbook called ‘A Writer’s Guide to Good English.”
“Well!,” he said, in mock surprise. I could see I had earned a point with
that title.
“You must realize, we’re not exactly the Oxford University Press here, but
we do try.
“It’s my job to see that the reports we forward to Washington at least hold
together on their own terms, however questionable their content may be. It may
be true that consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. If it is, many of
us stand convicted, because consistency is also the mark of a good editor.
“How does all this sound so far?”
“It's pretty much in line with what I‘ve been doing.”
“Well, then, tell you what. I’m going to assume that you could help.
“I have to warn you, though. You’d start with the spitbacks and I’ve got a
lot of them. Those are reports are so badly written, in English too broken to
be fixed, that I just quietly slip them into my spitback pile. I could give
them back to the originator, but I know every one of these people. And with these
papers that wouldn’t even rise to an F in school, it wouldn’t make any
difference. The worst stuff comes from our foreign-born interrogators. They may be
brilliant at extracting information from sources, but some of them are not
on speaking terms with their own mother tongue, let alone English.
“I’d turn these pearls of great price over to you. It would be grunt work.”
“Yeah, well, I’d be willing to take a crack at it. I’m pretty good at
making
sentences come out even.”
Bob Wolf said, “All right then. We’ll see what you can do.” He smiled. So
did I. I had found a job.