In the next eighteen months following my mission, which started in the fall of 1963 and ended in the spring of 1966, I took on part-time jobs and also tried another year at BYU, which turned out to be equally disastrous as the first year. I was becoming very uncomfortable as a returned missionary that was falling ever further into disbelief and yet living among those who would be shocked to know what was happening to me. By the summer of 1967 I had reached my breaking point, and the only course of action I could think of was to escape in some way from that environment. I ended up joining the US Army. I signed up for four years so that I could be guaranteed a place in the Army Security Agency. The main reason I chose the ASA was because the recruiter told me that there were no ASA personnel in Vietnam, but the sign up period was for the full four years. I did not want to go into a combat situation where there was a possibility of my being shot, or the equal possibility of my having to shoot someone else. So I decided that the ASA was for me. Later on, after I had completed my basic training at Fort Ord, California, and had begun my advanced training as a high speed Morse code interceptor at Fort Devens, Massachusetts, I learned that my recruiter had told me only a half-truth, and that my army class was "block-allocated" for duty at, you guessed it, Vietnam. I found out that though the ASA was, in fact, not a presence in Vietnam, soldiers from the ASA were there; they were just reassigned to the Signal Corps for their combat duty. I was devastated by this information, but I came to accept what was apparently to come. My letters home at this time started to prepare my family for this news when it did come. About halfway through our advanced training, we filled out our "dream" sheets indicating where we would like to pull our first duty, and I wrote down Germany, in spite of what we had been told about the block allocation of our group to Vietnam when we first arrived. Surprisingly, when the orders came down and were announced, Germany was where I was going. I was overjoyed, and my family was also when I quickly wrote them the news. I would spend all of my remaining army time in a part of the world I already loved, and my life and my spirits took a sudden swing for the better.

My army time in Germany was filled with excitement and adventure. In my army job, copying high speed Morse code from the radio onto a teletype machine, I experienced the "Czech Crisis," when Russian and East German troops were suddenly activated and then poured into the small Russian controlled country to quell the uprising that was taking place there. All vacations were cancelled, and for over six months we worked twelve hours a day, seven days a week, getting an occasional revolving day off every three weeks or so. There was much to do, and many troop movements to follow and their corresponding communication transmissions to intercept. All we had time to do during this period was work, eat, sleep, and then start all over again. We were on full alert, and we lived with the pesky thought that if a major conflict broke out between the major powers over this incident, the enemy forces would hit our base in about twelve seconds after they crossed the border. This never happened, of course, and fortunately for us and the world, the crisis time passed relatively quickly. I advanced to the rank of Specialist Five during my four years, and if I had reenlisted for a second term, I would have immediately been promoted to staff sergeant and would have received a $10,000 cash bonus. Though I did contemplate seriously remaining in Germany after my army time was over, I never did seriously consider remaining in the army. The experiences I had while in the army, way too many to tell about in writing, and the great friends I made during that time made those four years of my life some of the most enjoyable and care free years of my entire life. I have thought back on those times countless times since then, and I suspect that I will be thinking about them well into my old age.

In the second half of my 36 months of army life in Germany I bought a new car, a 1970 Volkswagen 1600 fastback, replacing an old 1960 Volkswagen Bug that took me many places, and provided me and my friends a lot of fun, but always between constant repairs on the car. In the year and a half remaining I traveled extensively in this new car, visiting friends in Vienna and Knittelfeld, Austria on several occasions. In the summer of 1970 my parents even fulfilled a lifelong dream and made the trip to Europe, where I took them into nine countries over a period of 30 days. We visited Germany, Austria, Italy (Venice), France (Paris), Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Holland, Belgium, and Luxemburg. We had very memorable experiences, and Dad took many 35mm pictures of the entire trip. Our travels would the subject of many conversations in the future, and I am very thankful that we could have this fine experience together.

Soon after my arrival at the army post in Rothwesten, Germany, a post a short distance from Kassel in the more northern part of Germany, I was asked to play dinner music at the officers' club two evenings a week for a couple of hours each night. My pay came three ways. First, I was paid a straight five dollars an hour. Then a large brandy glass was set on the piano for tips, and by night's end, it was full of dollar bills. Finally, another glass was set on the piano, and this glass was kept full of champagne. Because of this beverage, the music sounded better and better as the night progressed -- at least it did to me. I'm not certain if the dinner guests thought the same. In any case, after each of my two hour gigs I walked, well, sometimes staggered back to the barracks a bit richer, and feeling quite good. One night, after several months of doing this, one of the dinner guests came up to the piano and asked me if I would take on a second musical job. I accepted, and I immediately became the post organist for the Protestant congregation. For the rest of my army time in Germany I played for many services and weddings conducted on post for the religiously minded, making quite a bit of extra money, and getting a lot of time off from my other army duties, something that somewhat humorously bothered some of my army friends, who, in their envy, teased me about my "gold bricking" ability to get out of army work. For me, this opportunity was a definite improvement in my already not too unpleasant stay in the army.

As post organist, I came to know two army chaplains quite well. The first one, and the one that "discovered" me in the officer's club that one champagne and music filled night, was an Assembly of God minister; the second, a Lutheran minister, was a very interesting and well-grounded man who was slowly dying of emphysema from smoking heavily all his life. I came to hold the Lutheran minister in particularly high esteem, and I occasionally talked with him about some of my own life's concerns and troubles. (The only other religious leaders I ever consulted about such matters were a Catholic priest, taking place many years into the future, and a Mormon bishop or two in much earlier years.) The services themselves were of a general nature so as to be suitable for all denominations, and I found the sermons for the most part quite interesting and uplifting. I also came to feel quite comfortable being associated with those who attended the church. I even had the honor of playing for a wedding, for which I received my first "fee" for doing it -- a whopping thirty-five dollars, quite a good sum for about five minutes of playing time in a 20 minute ceremony.

As the post organist, I was also able to attend two religious retreats in two consecutive years at Berchtesgaden, a lush mountainous area in southern Germany, where Hitler had built several buildings, including a private retreat home up on a mountain cliff, that became known, in English, as the "Eagle's Nest." Many of these buildings had been taken over by the US Army, the main one being a very luxurious hotel, and were now used for vacationing military officers and their families. The main hotel was the center for the retreats that I attended. The retreats themselves were geared for those involved with church service music of all types, and organists and choir directors from all the posts throughout Europe attended. All my expenses were paid, and the time spent there was very informative and very enjoyable. There were workshops of all kinds that we could choose and attend, and there was also a lot of free time for sightseeing and for general fellowshipping. There was also a lot of room for questionable activities on the side.

The second retreat I attended, in the fall of 1970, I arrived late in the day, and because the main hotel was full, I had to take up lodging in the valley at a different hotel. When I walked into the room I found that I had a roommate, another latecomer, and a choir director from the Frankfurt area. Upon my entering, he quickly put something away and out of my sight. We got to know each other briefly, and in our conversations the subject, for some reason, turned to drugs, specifically marijuana and hashish. Being very naive in this area, I commented that I didn't know anything about either one, but that I supposed I would at least try something like that if the opportunity ever presented itself. At that, my roommate pulled out a pipe and asked me if I wanted to try it now. I hesitated, but then agreed, forgetting that we were due at our first get together, a massed choir rehearsal, in just a little while. I had already taken up smoking tobacco, having forced myself to learn while at Fort Devens, just to find out what it was like. So smoking the hashish from the pipe he offered me was not hard, and I drew the smoke into my lungs and held it there as he instructed me to do. The effects hit almost immediately, and I soon found myself falling over sideways and laughing about it almost uncontrollably. We then realized that we had to leave for the rehearsal, and drive the winding road up the side of the mountain to the retreat hotel. I was very nervous about making this drive, but since I was the only one with a car, I had to somehow maintain and do this. The effects of hashish are many, but include a slowing down of all reflexes, a strong difficulty to concentrate and focus one's mind on everyday activities (like driving), and a strong tendency for the mind to wander or simply "float away." The overall effect is extremely pleasurable, and one has the distinct impression that the mind expands into areas of thought that goes beyond the normal conscious level. With great difficulty we made the drive up the mountain to the retreat house, but I had to constantly jar myself into maintaining the car on the correct side of the road by focusing on the yellow line. At the hotel, I felt much more comfortable, and the rehearsal was very much fun for me. Afterwards, however, my roommate laughingly told me, "You looked like you really enjoyed the singing, but you never once changed your music." We talked and laughed all the way back to our hotel, and we carried smiles on our faces all the next day. It was such a fun experience, and I never felt a twinge of guilt for having it.

Upon my return to the post, I became involved with the drama group on the post. I became the pianist for two musical comedies that the group produced and then performed for the soldiers on the post and their families. The first musical was "The Fantasticks," and the production was such a success that we were asked to take it on the road and perform it in several other places. We spent nearly two weeks traveling northern Germany, visiting the East German border in several places, and ending up in Frankfurt for the last and largest performance of our tour. After the performance there, I had a person come up to me and ask me if I would consider being transferred to Frankfurt for my remaining time, and then if I would consider staying in Germany after my release to work with the drama groups there at the main post as a civilian. I had only a few more months to go, and though I had previously considered remaining in Germany after my release from the army, I had by then decided to return to the States, and I thanked this person for the offer but declined it.

The second musical we produced and performed was one called "Promenade." I actually liked this second one better, finding the songs more irreverent and emotionally piercing. There was a song in this production that was called "Capricious and Fickle" that I came to associate with a girl and a situation I experienced in the earlier production. The female lead in "The Fantastiks" was a very pretty young woman named Sherrie. She was quite reserved in her nature when she first started with the group, and she explained why as I got to know her. She was from a Pennsylvanian Mennonite family, and she had grown up very conservative and proper. By the time the production went into performance, she had totally changed, had let her hair down completely, and was having an absolute blast. Though she was married, I fell for her quite strongly. She sensed this and played into my feelings for her by telling me that her marriage was quite unstable and would probably fail in the near future. I guess this situation got a little out of hand, and also obvious to the others, because there started to be circulating rumors that the leading lady and the piano player were having an affair. After a time, our feelings for each other began to subside, and our involvement slowly came to an end. I do not know what happened to her later on, after the performances of "Promenade" came to an end. But that one particular song we performed together became one of my fondest memories. I often wondered if the words of the song pierced her soul as much as they pierced mine, or what she was thinking of when she was singing the song in her very intoxicating way. In any case, Sherrie sang this song with such deep feeling and intense passion, and for me it was always the climactic moment of the production, and of the night itself. I was the piano accompaniment, and I played the song with equal passion to hers. It was such an unforgettable experience every time we performed this song, one that could never be erased from my memory.

The drama group involved me with another smaller side group of people. During one of the early rehearsals of "The Fantasticks" I somehow mentioned to one of the cast members, a soldier like myself, and one that I trusted, that I had had a hashish experience at my last religious retreat. He asked me if I liked it, and I answered strongly in the affirmative. That very night I answered a knock at my door (I had my own room in the barracks) and found this same buddy standing there. He asked me if I had time to go with him for awhile, which I did, and he took me over to the building where the drama group rehearsed. Waiting for us was a woman who I recognized as the person that did the bookkeeping for the drama company that was actually managed and directed by two civilian men, one a very good director and singer, and the other one, the head of it all, who I found out later made regular trips to Turkey to obtain, bring back, and offer for private sale the best hashish the world had to offer. In short, he was a drug dealer. He wore a patch over one eye that had several short strands of colored beads dangling from it, and he dressed in the typical "hippie" style that was presently so common stateside in the late sixties and early seventies, and which style I adopted myself for a short time as I was being released from the army and as I was traveling back to Utah. Anyway, the three of us sat down, they actually sat me down, and proceeded, with the use of a straight pipe known as a chillum and a process known as a "stovepipe," to get me stoned so high I could hardly walk. When they got through with me and then got themselves into the same condition, we all climbed into one of their vehicles and drove off post to a nearby restaurant, where we then ordered and enjoyed probably the best tasting food I have ever eaten. We also ordered a red wine, and though I have never acquired much of a taste for wine, that night it was wonderful for the state I was in. I don't remember anything about the conversation we may have had, but I do vividly recall that there was much laughter and a very deep feeling of friendship among the three of us. When the meal was over, I was presented, in a very humorous but formal fashion, my dessert. I was told that as good as the meal and the wine was, what I was about to do would top everything else. They then handed me my first of many Nestle's Crunch chocolate bars that I would eat and savor lusciously in that particular state of stonedness. For many years after this night I would look forward to getting high and experimenting with this very unusual and mind expanding state of mind. I would eventually experiment with speed, cocaine, PCP, all types of marijuana from Hawaiian to Colombian to homegrown, and even have a few bouts with LSD with names such as "blotter" and "orange sunshine." Many stories came out of all these experiences, but I think it best to leave them within my own mind and let them die with me when I do.

Not long after this it was time for me to begin mustering out of the army. I dreaded going back home and facing life there. But I simply could not see myself making the Army a career either. I again thought long and hard about remaining in Germany, and trying to make a living and a life there, but in the end, I finally decided to forget about the "European out" and go back home. I had not had very good luck with German women, and finding work that I could do in civilian life, and in the German language, which I never really liked conversing in, or felt very adept at speaking, would have been very difficult for me. So I shipped my car a couple months before I left and then waited out my time. In the fall of 1971 I became a civilian again, flew to Baltimore, picked up my car, and spent two weeks traveling home. I traveled down the eastern coast into Florida, where I stayed with an army buddy and his wife, just off the beach front at Daytona Beach, spent some time at Cape Canaveral, then traveled on across the lower part of the United States to Biloxi, Mississippi, where I spent several days with Sonja and her family, the people that accompanied me back from my mission in Austria, and then traveled on in to Utah. I arrived with long hair, a tie-dyed T-shirt, cutoffs and sandals, and a leather necklace with an ankh cross hanging from it, and reeking of tobacco, the proverbial hippie. I'm sure my parents died when they saw me. Knowing that I would not be able to live at home any longer, I decided to move to Salt Lake City, if I could find work there. This move would mark the beginning of one of the most difficult periods of my life, and it would culminate in my coming to the brink of suicide some seven years into the future.

Go back or go to My First Marriage.