Recreational Outing
As you go through life it is easy to get swept up in your own concerns and become unable to look past your problems. Learning about challenges other people have faced is a good way to keep things in perspective. You never know when an opportunity to learn might present itself.
In 1980 I was 19 years old and stationed in Mainz, Germany while serving in the U.S. Army. The military may not be for everyone but ultimately it was a good thing for me, and the late seventies and early eighties were a good time to serve. It was peacetime. Later in life I would work at more stressful and less fulfilling jobs. I tell people being in the Army then was like living in a movie.
Twice a year, our battalion would travel to a training area called Grafenwoehr, near Germany’s border with Czechoslovakia, and go on maneuvers. We would pack up our equipment and weapons as if we were going to war, and drive across the country in convoy on the Autobahn, the German equivalent of our interstate highways. Our vehicles had mechanical governors that restricted our top speed to about 50 miles per hour. German drivers in Mercedes and BMW’s would race by, going about twice as fast; it was exhilarating to watch. It took hours to get there.
On arriving, we would park our machines in a temporary motor pool, and carry our gear to a set of cinderblock barracks that contained rows of cots and latrines. The barracks would be our base for the next four weeks. The following day, we would pack most of our equipment back up and drive out to “the field”, in this case a big training area next to the town, where we would spend the next few days in simulated combat. We would come back in for one day, then go back out for another three to five days, throughout the entire month.
In the field, we slept in tents, usually in blackout conditions, as we would have done in combat. We shaved and bathed in our helmets. We ate field chow or canned C-rations. I was a forward observer for the artillery, so my platoon slept in pup tents next to the observation bunkers overlooking the firing range, where big targets like abandoned trucks and tanks were set up at various distances. Our job was calling in artillery fire on the radio to blow up the targets. Our platoon was assigned to the headquarters company of a tank battalion.
All American soldiers who were stationed in Germany know about Grafenwoehr; most have been there. If you ask a veteran who has been there what it was like, he will tell you it was awful: Too hot, too muddy, too cold, too dry. Too many wild boars. Almost every word used to describe Grafenwoehr will be a superlative, or a profanity. The whole purpose of the place was to train soldiers to operate under simulated combat conditions, so naturally during the month you were there you had to undergo some level of hardship.
Compared with some of the things we would endure later in life, however, Grafenwoehr was not really so bad. Sometimes it was even fun. As hard as the Army tried to simulate combat conditions, it was peacetime. Grafenwoehr was like a big camp-out, with fireworks. The real hardship for a single man was in not being back on post, where you could go to the clubs, drink that good German beer, try to make time with the girls, and play music on your stereo in the barracks.
The old soldiers – the guys who had served in Vietnam just a few years earlier – didn’t mind Grafenwoehr at all. They minded the complaints of the young soldiers more. They had experienced hardship. We had not yet lived much.
The month passed quickly. When we were not on field training exercises, we maintained our gear at the base or spent time in training classes. We were taught to recognize potential enemy vehicles and aircraft. We practiced radio communications. We cleaned our M16 rifles and sanitized our gas masks. We learned basic first aid skills.
It was an exciting time for me; this trip would be my “last Graf”. I had received my orders, and in a few short months, I would be reassigned to a new post in the States, and would get to take a nice 30-day leave at home in Franklin County, Virginia. I was a “short timer.” I liked being stationed in Germany but I was homesick every day I was in the Army.
One day as we got back from a trip to the field and were getting our equipment squared away, our platoon sergeant told us the Army was going to take us on a “Recreational Outing” the following morning. We were to report after chow to a certain area in clean uniforms to board trucks and travel to our destination. The platoon sergeant had no more details.
We had no idea what was planned, but were delighted. If we were going to go on a “Recreational Outing”, that meant we would not have to sit through boring classes, or work all day in the motor pool on our machines.
We got up, cleaned up, hit the mess hall, and then each company in the battalion lined up to board the ‘deuce and a half (2 ½ ton) trucks’ that would carry us on our “Recreational Outing”. It was a beautiful, sunny morning.
On board the deuce and a half, you could hardly hear yourself think. As many as 25 soldiers were packed into each truck – the benches along the sides filled up first, and those who were last to board had to sit cross legged on the floor. All of them talked at once, the whole time, loud enough to be heard over the engine and road noise. We talked about everything in the world: Going to the clubs, drinking German beer, making time with the women, and playing our stereos when we got back to the barracks. I probably talked about going back to Franklin County, Virginia. We laughed and joked and pranked each other. It is a fine thing to be young.
We got off the Autobahn and drove through a couple of small towns, so were getting close to our destination. After passing through the second town, the trucks slowed to a stop in an area that looked at first like a park, but it was not a park. The Army had driven us to a place that, thirty-five years earlier, had been a Nazi concentration camp.
The concentration camp at Flossenburg was opened by the SS in 1938 near the site of a large granite quarry in Bavaria, near the Czech border. The Nazis sent people there for slave labor, originally to work in the quarry but later in the war at a factory built to manufacture parts for Messerschmitt warplanes. Most were Jews, but there were prisoners of war from Poland and Russia, a few criminals, and a number of political prisoners. More than 30,000 people were known to have been murdered by the Nazis at Flossenburg. They were summarily executed, starved or worked to death. Flossenburg was a small camp, with limited capacity. When an inmate would get too sick to work, they were typically transported to Dachau, Buchenwald, Auschwitz, or one of the other, larger ‘death camps’ to be finished off.
Guides explained what we were seeing as we were escorted around the camp and through the few remaining buildings. There was a grass covered pyramid of earth, said to contain the ashes of more than 10,000 dead prisoners. There was a building where the possessions of incoming prisoners were confiscated and sorted into bins. Along one wall, one long wooden bin contained thousands of black and white photographs. Another contained hundreds of pairs of shoes, of all sizes. Another contained eyeglasses. There were all sizes: Men’s, women’s, and children’s spectacles filled the bin. The Nazis were efficient, and thorough. They didn’t just murder enemies of the Reich. They murdered the children of their enemies, too.
The guides took us to the crematorium. Some of the ovens remain. The iron doors were open. The fires had been extinguished decades before, but what we saw there was burned into our memories. It was as if there was no air in the room. No one spoke.
At least 100,000 prisoners were processed through Flossenburg before the camp was liberated by United States Army troops on April 23, 1945. The SS used criminals – convicted thieves, rapists, and murderers – to enforce discipline. The criminals were brutally cruel, every bit as sadistic as the SS guards. Flossenburg was not as large as some of the better-known camps but it was still a living hell. Our guide explained that among the political prisoners executed at Flossenburg were some of the men who had participated in an attempt to kill Hitler: One was Admiral Canaris, who had been the head of German Army Intelligence. Another was a German pastor named Dietrich Bonhoeffer. They were executed just a few weeks before the war ended.
Somberly, we walked back to the trucks. No one talked or smoked. During the hour-long ride back to Grafenwoehr, I don’t believe anyone said a word, and we didn’t talk much when we got back to the barracks. It is one thing to have heard about the Holocaust. It is another thing to visit one of the places where it happened, and to witness the evidence of it. I doubt any of us will forget that day or that place as long as we live.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor executed at Flossenburg with other members of the anti-Nazi resistance, was only 39 years old when he was killed. Beginning in 1933, Nazi leaders had attempted to take over Christian churches throughout Germany, and force Christian clergymen to spread Nazi propaganda. Bonhoeffer was one of the first German pastors to vocally and publicly object to Nazi persecution of Jews and euthanasia of mentally or physically handicapped persons, on the basis that these acts were inconsistent with the teachings of Christ. My Dad was a pastor; I remember him mentioning Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his sermons on more than one occasion. The Nazis arrested and imprisoned Bonhoeffer in 1943. While in prison, he continued to minister to the needs of other prisoners.
Bonhoeffer promoted the idea that churches of different denominations should work together to bear witness to God’s glory, spread Christ’s teachings and do good in the world. He taught that it was not enough for a Christian to accept God’s forgiveness for sins, but that Christians needed to apply Christ’s teachings in life in obedience to His will, contrasting the concepts of “cheap grace” with “costly grace” in his writings. In one of his books, “The Cost of Discipleship”, Bonhoeffer explains the difference:
Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.
Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son.
In other words, after accepting God’s forgiveness for our sins – we need to live Christian lives. It may not be enough to treat others as we would be treated in a passive sense. Bonhoeffer taught that we need to have more skin in the game, and treat others more in the way Christ would have treated them. That is a pretty tall order. It is a thing to strive for.
In the early 1930’s Bonhoeffer moved to America to attend the Union Theological Seminary in New York City. While there he attended the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, and taught Sunday School there. Bonhoeffer was profoundly influenced by the pastor, a man named Adam Clayton Powell, who originally coined the term “cheap grace”. At the time, Powell led the largest Christian congregation in America, with about 14,000 members. He advocated for equal opportunity. He led by example. He has been forgotten by many but was a great Christian leader.
Powell was born in Franklin County, Virginia, of all places – near Martin’s Mill in the Wirtz community, in 1865, just a few days after the end of the Civil War. His mother, Sally Dunning, had been born a free woman of color. His stepfather, Anthony Bush, had been born a slave. The family moved to West Virginia in the late 1870’s, and by 1880 had changed their last name to Powell.
Adam Clayton Powell preached with a deep love for Christ and a love for humanity. “You cannot be a Christian without the love of Christ,” he said, “and if you love Him you will become an active member of His church.” His long life and accomplishments are a testament to “costly grace.” He passed away in 1953. His autobiography, “Against the Tide”, is hard to find as it is out of print, but can be accessed online in the Internet Archive at https://archive.org.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Adam Clayton Powell were heroes. It is hard not to be inspired by these two Christian men. They faced different hardships and challenges in their lives but both set the bar high on what it means to do right and stand for something.
That “Recreational Outing” was the best training experience the Army ever gave me. Forty-six years later, I am still processing it, still learning from what I saw that day.