Hobnobbing with Hans

June 12, 2006

In the grounds of a dirty youth hostel at Pippas Passes, I met Hans, a hefty and square-shaped smiling cyclist who's lived in Ohio since 1958 but still has some of his German accent. He was finishing off a ride across America that he'd had to abandon a year or two earlier. We spent much of the evening talking and he told me that his family left Dusseldorf during the war because of the bombing and moved to the north.

'And people in Schleswig-Holstein are very different. They say that in the north it takes 20 years to make a friend but then you can steal his horse; in the south you make a friend instantly but he'll steal your horse straight away.'

He learned bricklaying, 'which seemed a promising trade after the war', then moved to America where his brother already lived.

'They still had the draft then and from the moment you came into the country, you were eligible for it. But only the army had the draft and

I decided to apply for the navy. So I applied and they said to come back once I spoke some English, because I didn't speak a word. So then I went to the air force, and in a big naval base like Newport News where I was, they weren't getting any recruits so the guy just stood over me and said "Put an X here" and "Put an X there", and I was in.

'They sent me to the supplies department and I went to a supplies school and once I'd qualified they welcomed us all and told us not to expect any promotion.

'"Why?"

'"Because we always have more people than we need."

'"Then why did you recruit us?"

'"Because in supplies, nobody ever re-enlists."

'So one day the air force got a computer and this thing filled a huge room, with flashing lights and whirling tapes, and it was 28K. They wanted us stores people to run a stores computer and I stayed 20 years with the air force and then got a job with an insurance company because in the air force you're still young when you finish. When I retired, I got my pension from the insurance company, and the one I'd been getting from the air force since I left, and so I thought perhaps there'd be a pension from my years as a bricklayer in Germany and I wrote and I get 200 euros a year, which I think of as my beer money.'

He was once even posted to Germany with the air force. 'It didn't really feel strange. We were there to hold back the red menace and since then Germany has changed so much and all my family and friends there are dying, so I never go back.'

He said 'red menace' with an air of mockery, perhaps not convinced there'd ever been one, perhaps not sure that his antics in Germany would have left him fit to fight it if there had been. As he said, 200 euros a year may pay for his drinking now but it wouldn't have done back then.

'We used to have a few beers - well, maybe more than a few - and then we'd look at each other and say "You realise we're the last defence against the communist hordes, don't you?"'

By the time I woke up next morning, he'd stowed his tent and left. Lovely man.

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