The books that it pained him the most to sell were his hardback set of Matthew Henry’s Commentaries and his set of The Rational Biblical Theology of Jonathan Edwards. But he knew that he had to travel light.
He unlocked the second footlocker. It contained mostly clothes, about thirty audio CDs and a dozen DVDs. He already had MP3 backup copies of the CDs burned onto Kaylee’s laptop in New Mexico, so there’d be no regrets in leaving those behind.
Laine cut the tape seal on the cardboard box and pulled out the modular sleep system (MSS) sleeping bag that he had bought at the post clothing sales store during his officer basic course. Also in the box was a civilian bivouac bag, a Millet brand “Cyrano.” This was a top-of-the-line bivy bag made with an olive green Gore-Tex top and a heavy brown rubberized waterproof fabric bottom. This sleeping bag’s cover could take the place of a tent and was so waterproof that he could practically sleep in a puddle and it wouldn’t leak. The bottom of the box was filled with clothes, a rappelling Swiss seat, and a binder full of his college term papers.
Andy sorted and then resorted his civilian clothes, paring them down into two piles: “Keep” and “Sell.” He sorted through the contents of his suitcase, duffel, and flight bags with the same ruthlessness. He placed everything that he planned to take on his trip home in the closet, so that it would be out of sight when buyers arrived. He took the time to check the condition of his compact Elecraft KX1 QRP shortwave transceiver. This low-power rig could be used to transmit Morse code in the 20-, 30-, 40-, and 80-meter ham radio bands.
Powered by six AA batteries, the ten-ounce radio was capable of transmitting around the world when ionospheric conditions were right. It put out just 1 to 2 watts of power (or up to 4 watts if using an external 12-volt battery). Using his 200-watt Kenwood HF rig in Texas, Lars had several successful two-way contacts with Andy in Afghanistan, even though his younger brother’s transmitter put out only a few watts of effective radiated power. Andy carefully repacked the transceiver and accessories in two thicknesses of zipper-lock bags and then in a pair of Tupperware containers.
The two lieutenants returned at 1815. Right behind them were a TDY Marine Corps captain and a WO2 aviator. Then came a couple of majors: one was a field artillery officer and the other was a chaplain.
As they crowded into the room, Laine announced:
“Okay, here are the ground rules: I hold up each item, describe it, and name a price. The first one that says ‘Dibs’ gets it. The prices will be very reasonable but nonnegotiable. Keep in mind that I just had to pay $125 for a dinner at Burger King, so don’t try to nickel-and-dime me. Each of you grab a notepad from the desk there and keep your own tally. We’ll settle up at the end, in cash. Now, any part that you pay for in euros, you can divide by four—a four-to-one exchange ratio. Klar?”
The sale was over in less than a half hour. Most of the items sold for between $10 and $50 each. Laine was surprised to see some of the officers buy clothes in sizes that didn’t fit. Then he realized that they were desperate to get out of dollars and into anything tangible that they could later barter or sell. He even sold the two empty footlockers for $100 each.
The one item that brought in the most cash was his laptop. It sold for $2,500, which was a pittance, considering the recent inflation. Andy was sad to see it go, but unless the Internet connections inside the United States started working again, it would just be a boat anchor. And if the connections were reestablished, Andy surmised that he could keep in touch using borrowed laptops or rented PCs at Internet cafés.
Laine took the small remaining stack of the books that hadn’t sold and put them on the half-empty bookshelves of BOQ lounge. Most of what was already there were Reader’s Digest condensed books, out-of-date travel books, and romance novels. After he had added his books, the collective IQ of the shelves rose dramatically.
Andy returned to his room and wrapped his remaining gold coins in duct tape. He similarly wrapped the wedding band mate to the engagement ring that he had presented to Kaylee just before his Afghanistan deployment. He then removed the screws to the Primus backpacking stove lid’s sheet metal heat shield. He inserted the duct tape squares inside the lid and used even more tape to hold them in place. When the heat shield was reinstalled, the extra thickness was undetectable.
14
Clerks and Jerks
“This first stage of the inflationary process may last for many years. While it lasts, the prices of many goods and services are not yet adjusted to the altered money relation. There are still people in the country who have not yet become aware of the fact that they are confronted with a price revolution which will finally result in a considerable rise of all prices, although the extent of this rise will not be the same in the various commodities and services. These people still believe that prices one day will drop. Waiting for this day, they restrict their purchases and concomitantly increase their cash holdings. As long as such ideas are still held by public opinion, it is not yet too late for the government to abandon its inflationary policy.
“But then, finally, the masses wake up. They become suddenly aware of the fact that inflation is a deliberate policy and will go on endlessly. A breakdown occurs. The crack-up boom appears. Everybody is anxious to swap his money against ‘real’ goods, no matter whether he needs them or not, no matter how much money he has to pay for them. Within a very short time, within a few weeks or even days, the things which were used as money are no longer used as media of exchange. They become scrap paper. Nobody wants to give away anything against them.
“It was this that happened with the Continental currency in America in 1781, with the French mandats territoriaux in 1796, and with the German mark in 1923. It will happen again whenever the same conditions appear. If a thing has to be used as a medium of exchange, public opinion must not believe that the quantity of this thing will increase beyond all bounds. Inflation is a policy that cannot last.”
—Ludwig von Mises, The Anticapitalistic Mentality (1972)
Rose Barracks, Vilseck, Germany
Early November, the First Year
Andy was ready to turn in his green active-duty ID card, but there was some confusion and a day’s delay while some red Army Reserve card blanks were couriered down from the Garmisch Garrison. Technically, after leaving active duty, Andy still had a two-year obligation in the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) control group, but he wouldn’t be expected to be in a local Army Reserve unit.
A GS-12 civilian clerk—a jovial and rotund retired chief warrant officer—prepared his Form DD-214. Handing Laine a draft copy to check for errors, the clerk said, “Here are your walking papers, but I’m afraid they really are walking papers!” Andy groaned. The clerk added, “I guess you heard about the groundings.”
“Yeah,” Andy replied glumly. There had been two recent Islamic terrorist incidents in the three days since Laine had returned to Bavaria. The first was a bombing of a train station that adjoined the airport in Nürnberg, and the next day a 9/11-style hijacking in France had ended tragically in a fiery crash just short of the Parliament building in London, killing 242 people. These events had prompted a grounding of all civilian aircraft for at least a week. Most trains except for some local U-Bahns and Strassenbahns had also been stopped. Even long-distance bus lines had been halted.
With the drama of the economic news, riots, and the terrorist attacks, the newscasters had plenty to talk about. In Europe, the focus seemed to be on the terror attacks, while in the United States, the emphasis was on the galloping inflation and the riots. The volume of news was so overwhelming that the day-to-day clerical bureaucracy at the post slowed to a crawl. Several times in the past two days, Andy had to nearly shout, “Hel-looo! Can you please get this outprocessing finished for me?” to get the various “clerks and jerks” to turn their attention away from their laptops, computer monitors, televisions, and text screens on their cell phones.
Andy and the clerk next turned their attention to his quarters clearing papers, making sure that he had all the proper clearance stamps. They were variously stamped in blue and black: “CIF,” “Cleared Finance,” “S2 Outbrief,” “No Mess Charges,” and “PMO.”
“Where’s your ‘YOYO’ stamp?” the clerk asked.
“YOYO?” Laine asked suspiciously.
“That stands for ‘You’re on Your Own,’ pal.”
“Very funny.”
That afternoon Andy went off post to go to the local Raiffeisenbank branch. He got in a long queue in front of the counter with a sign above it that read: “Geldwechsel/Change/Cambio.” After twenty minutes he came to the front of the line and began to pull out his remaining afghanis, U.S. dollars, his few remaining U.S.-dollar-denominated traveler’s checks, and Iraqi dinars that were left over from his previous deployment. They made a fairly large pile on the counter. The teller seemed unfazed. Obviously, in recent weeks he had seen much larger piles of cash.
“Euros, bitte,” Andy asked quietly.
As the teller began counting the stacks of afghanis, Laine countersigned all of his traveler’s checks. He then pulled out his passport and his military ID card and set them on the counter, knowing that they’d be needed next.
The teller clucked a “Tsk, tsk” after he did the Wechselkurs calculation.
“The exchange of dollars rate, I am afraid, sir, is very poor.”
“That’s understandable,” Laine replied.
After clearing the counter and handing Andy back his ID, the clerk said matter-of-factly, “Five hundred and eighty euros.” Then he asked Andy, “Cash or EC card?”
“Cash—Bargeld, bitte.”
Andy already had another forty-five euros in his wallet. Together, those notes totaling 625 euros would barely cover the cost of a two-hundred-mile bus ride or a dinner at a decent restaurant. Such were the ravages of the recent inflation.
Next, Andy walked across the bank lobby to the indoor Geldautomat ATM machine. He tried both of his credit cards, with the same result: the message “Credit Card Transactions Suspended” flashed on the screen. “Oh, joy,” Andy muttered.
Back at Rose Barracks, Andy Laine was told that there would be no scheduled military flights for at least a week, possibly longer. At the rate things were deteriorating, he dared not just wait and hope that flights would be resumed. Even if flights were resumed, active-duty personnel might have higher priority than someone traveling on an Army Reserve ID card. Or, worse yet, civil order could collapse in Germany, just as it had in the States, and flights might not resume for months or years. Andy wondered how he’d get back to the States and, once he did, how he’d be able to travel to New Mexico.
He had the vague idea of heading west through Germany to the coast of France to see if he could find a ship of any description heading to the U.S., or perhaps even to Mexico or Canada. Just before close of business at the post headquarters, he made arrangements to get a flight back to Ramstein. There, in the U.S. military’s largest complex in Germany, he’d have the best chance of getting transport out of Europe.
Two more frustrating days of hurry-up-and-wait landed Andy at Ramstein. The BOQ there was full, so he was sent to the nearby Sembach Annex. Seeing Laine’s red Army Reserve ID card, the desk clerk asked him for a copy of his orders. “I don’t have any orders,” he said. “I’ve just been released from active duty and I’m trying to get home.” Even after seeing Laine’s DD-214, the clerk was belligerent. “No rooms without orders for reservists.” It was only after threatening to call the clerk’s manager that Andy was finally given a room.
Shepherding his rapidly dwindling cash, Andy bought food for dinner entirely from vending machines. Because the inflation was so rapid, the vending machine prices had not yet been raised to match the store counter prices. The news on television was all bad. Flights were all still grounded and most trains and buses were not running. Some runs on grocery stores had begun in Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic. There were also some large street protests and riots building up in the larger cities throughout the European Union. Reserve police and military forces were being mobilized throughout the EU and in the UK. There had been a widespread power blackout in Greece caused by a labor union dispute. It was also reported that no long-distance calls were getting through to the United States except, oddly, to Hawaii.
Andy turned off the television and called a couple of acquaintances stationed in K-Town, begging favors. One of them phoned an hour later to say that they had found him a ride.
Early the next morning, Andy got on a five-ton supply truck that was headed to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center. Following the end of U.S. military presence in France, this was the westernmost Army installation in USAEUR, the U.S. Army’s European command. Beyond there, he truly would be in YOYO territory.
The next morning was depressingly foggy. Laine did not feel his best, since he had slept so poorly the night before. The Specialist E-4 driving the truck to Landstuhl was envious that Laine had ended his service and was headed home. “Sir, I still got 112 days and a wake-up,” he said forlornly. “I don’t know what things’ll be like by then. My family all lives in Atlanta. You’ve seen it on the TV, right? There’s big dang riots there. They say half the city is on fire.” Laine decided that it wouldn’t be helpful to mention that this was the second time that Atlanta had burned, so he made no reply.
The truck, he learned, was mainly filled with MREs. It was just one of many truckloads of MREs from as far away as Wiesbaden that were being sent to the Army hospital, since local transport of food for patients and staff had become intermittently disrupted. Even more MREs were being sent to various Air Force bases and to U.S. embassies. The big MRE shuffle was part of a “contingency stock leveling” measure, just in case food supplies and grid power were to suffer more severe disruption. “It’s like some kinda siege mentality, sir,” the Specialist commented.
At just after ten a.m., Laine was dropped off at a Strassenbahn stop not far from the hospital complex, and the driver left with a wave.
Andy stood alone at the tram stop, feeling overwhelmed. The fog was beginning to lift, and he could begin to see hills of the Palatinate Forest in the distance, stretching to the south. After a few chilly minutes, a streetcar approached on Eisenbahnstrasse. Andy put on his duffel bag using both shoulder straps. Then he picked up his flight bag in his left hand and his overseas bag in his right hand. He waddled to the streetcar. The weight of the duffel bag pressed the holstered SIG uncomfortably into his lower back. When the door opened, he asked the driver, “In Richtung Landstuhler Stadtzentrum?”
“Ja, klar, klar,” the driver answered, gesturing him in.
Laine stepped up into the streetcar, which was nearly empty. He thumbed in his fare card and then awkwardly sat down, placing two of his bags in front of him and hunching out of his main duffel bag.
An elderly German woman was sitting across the aisle from him with the seat beside her piled with string shopping bags. A long-haired Dachshund sat in her lap. The streetcar lurched and picked up speed.
The woman recognized Laine’s bags and asked, “You are away going on leave?”
“No, I am going home to America permanently—ständig—if I can find a way.”
“The luft flights are all aground und die Züge fahren nicht.”
“Yes, I know about the trains.” After a moment Laine added, “Are there any Omnibusse still running to Frankreich or to the Low Countries? Das Benelux?”
“Nein. Alles eingestellt.”
Andy shook his head. “These are crazy times.”
“Ja, and the money, it is no good. This is like the Weimar time again, I think.”
As they neared the center of Landstuhl, the Strassenbahn stops got closer together, and Laine began to eye the shop signs: “Apotheke,” “Deli,” “Bäckerei,” “Optome
trist,” “Moden,” “Eisenwaren,” “Schallplatten,” “Kaufhaus.” The many buildings with whitewashed walls, exposed beams, and red-tiled roofs looked nineteenth-century vintage or earlier. Andy wondered if the city had been spared any damage in the Second World War. The old buildings looked remarkably intact.
“Is there a Fahrrad shop in Landstuhl?” he asked the old woman.
“Ja, at Adolph-Kolping-Platz. I tell you when you are getting off.”
After another three stops, the woman said, “Here it is you are!” and pointed to a sign that read, “Gebrüder Becker, Fahrräder.”
The bicycle shop was smaller than Laine had expected, but then he realized that this might be a good thing. One of the big stores wouldn’t have the flexibility to make the deal that he had in mind.
Andy lugged his bags through the front door of the shop and glanced at some price tags on the bicycles as he walked toward the store counter. He set all three of his bags down in a pile. He felt like he already had the aura of a vagabond.
Since it was not yet the noon hour, there were no other customers. The store was in an older, poorly lit building, but most of the selection looked new and state-of-the-art. There was a fairly large inventory, with a mix of children’s bikes, mountain bikes, and high-end racing bikes. It was much like a bike shop that he had visited in Germany before his tour in Afghanistan. The difference was the inflated price tags. Two years ago, a typisch mountain bike was about 300 euros, but now they ranged from 800 to 3,000 euros.
Andy introduced himself, and the store owner did likewise. His name was Kurt Becker, a slim, muscular man in his forties who spoke good English. Judging by his physique, Andy concluded that he must be a daily cyclist. An older mustachioed man wearing a heavy leather apron sat at a bench in the back of the store. He was balancing a bicycle wheel, adjusting the spokes by hand.
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