WHEN KENNEDY WAS ASSASINATED
Most people can remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when a momentous world event occurs. Such is the case for all of the early members of Alpha Battery. It was Friday, November 22, 1963, at 7:35PM that we learned that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas, Texas, just a few minutes before. I had been watching a division level basketball game at the Leighton Barracks Gymnasium. We were told to report to our quarters. (I lived at Skyline along with most of the other NCOs in the unit.) When I got to my quartes it was announced over Armed Forces Short Wave Radio that Kennedy had died. We received a phone call to tell us that all personnel were to report to their unit in Class A uniform at 8:00AM Saturday, the next day.
In those days we did a lot of car-pooling. It was my week to drive. I had Specialists Weldon Moore and Harold Summerville, and SFC's E-6 Harold Dickerson and D. K. Johnson. We went to Emery the same way every day: Down the hill from Leighton to the Berlinerplatz traffic circle, then onto Hauggerring which would take us past the Bahnhof and on out to Emery on Veitsochheimerstrasse. There was a traffic light at a pedestrian crosswalk by the railroad station. That trafic light almost always stopped us.
Flashback to Kennedy's visit to Germany. The one where he made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech at Checkpoint Charlie just a few months before he died. After the Berlin wall went up Kennedy showed great resolve by dispatching Vice President Lyndon Johnson on a motor convoy from West Germany, through East Germany and into Berlin. The German people absolutely adored John F. Kennedy.
We got stopped by that traffic light and there were German people everywhere. I was driving a 1960 light green Plymouth station wagon, the only one like it on the continent. It was a balmy day for November and all of the windows of the car were down. We were immmediately surrounded and the people, some crying unashamedly, were reaching into the car to touch us and hold on to us. Many of them were carrying freshly cut flowers, probably for their workplace or whatever. I don't know where they got them but the flowers were being tossed into the car. Finally we all got out of the car and received hugs and kisses from men and women, and all kinds of expressions of sorrow, some in English, some in German.
We stood there and acknowledged their condolences for at least six light changes. I looked back toward the traffic circle and could see that there were other American car with servicemen receiving the same tribute. We finally got going and there was not a word spoken in that car the rest of the way to Emery.
Those few moments at that traffic light by the bahnhof in Wurzburg, Germany validated my entire military career. I have told this story often to my children and grandchildren. They never get tired of hearing it and I never tire of telling it. It is great to be an American.
Al Garrett
