I watched a movie called good bye Lennon which is about a family living in East Germany before the wall fell in 1989. One gets some insight as to what their life was like under communist rule. In many respects they had it much better than we were made to believe in the US. Their ideals seemed, to me, to be much more humane. As a whole they (people, institutions, businesses) were expected to dedicate themselves to the good of society, as oppose to dedicating yourself to personal interest, what one might say of capitalist based societies. Another plus, they weren't bombarded with commercialism like we were, products from the West just weren't available. The East Germans, at least in the movie, seemed to be a little more concentrated with life and less with products, which I thought was good. One thing would have really got under my skin though, the overbearing control of the state, TV, radio newspapers they controlled it all and their was no way of leaving! Very similar to the atmosphere surrounding the U.S. Air Bases overseas. In my case, unless you were willing to really throw yourself in the German culture, and learn enough German to read, they had ya. Everything you saw, heard or read coming from the states was filtered by a group of institutions and people leading right up to our base General, who made it known that Bevis and Butthead wouldn't be seen on his base. (what a tight ass) Their was one American Radio Station set up for American soldiers AFN (Armed forces Network) that was your radio contact to the states. You had one channel on TV, the only other choices were the German stations which aren't too interesting if you don't speak German. The Newspaper was theirs too, The Stars and Stripes. Mind you this was before the computer boom, which completely opened ones access to information. Being in the middle of Germany and not speaking a word of German made life quite hard for a lot of soldiers. A lot of guys were homesick, not that they wanted to fly back to mama, that was true for some, but the rest seemed to be suffering from some kind of turkey for lack of a better term, having just gotten off American culture. AFN would play the American charts, and have country day and crap like that. Instead of commercials they would send out propaganda. They would talk about saving electricity, (they made this queer song called the energy rap), or water, they would promote the idea of ratting someone out, even your friends, if they happened to be abusing government property, selling black-market items, taking drugs, or had an alcohol problem. The alcohol ads seemed to be ran constantly. Kinda made you want to get a drink. It was all a bunch of shit though. On the one side they continually talked of abstaining from alcohol, on the other, the base ran businesses seemed to be very much interested in catering to the alcoholics. It was definitely a duel message which was hard to overlook. Let me explain, while Rhine Main was at its max, there were some 5000 people their, (soldiers and dependents, also those under age). This culture was able to support 7 different sources where one could buy alcohol, two of which where open 24 hours a day. I would think if they didn't want you drinking they could have made it a little harder for you to get. The East Germans had what was called The Stazie, that was their secret police. They would mix in with with the people looking to weed out all of the bad apples. The guy overheard watching West German TV could be ratted out by his neighbor he had known for 20 years. These types of stories aren't uncommon. Yet our military, whose objective is to protect our free society and way of living does the same thing. The institution is called OSI, Officer Special Investigation. These guys would maybe live in the dorm, be an Airman for a while and try and be your friend, or maybe one of your friends was OSI and you didn't know it. Could you talk to your friend about OSI? Maybe he really was just pretending to be your friend. Maybe he was some lieutenant dressed as an Airman pretending to be your friend just so he can bust you for something, or put you on some kinda list. You would never know. There were lots of rumors going around about all types of people who had gotten busted. The rumors very well may have been true as far as I'm concerned. A gut feeling and common sense is what I based my personality judgments on. Knowing all this OSI crap and thinking it over a little it was hard for me to imagine that any of the guys I served with, was an officer pretending to be Airman. Maybe I have an over inflated idea of what an officer is, but this bunch for the most part was either too raw, or too young. The guy that looked like he was 16, that walked around with his mouth open all day was no officer in disguise. Buck Hole, was known for shiting in the toilet and not flushing it. I had caught him a few times, their wasn't even toilet paper in the brown, just a big log. That nasty fuck! He definitely wasn't on the OSI team. Oh, then their was the dumb fuck NCO that saluted the Colonel with his left hand three times during an award presentation ceremony, he probably wanted to be OSI but they wouldn't let him, too dumb. No, no one was pretending to be anything else in my unit. In our little world, the service had managed to control almost every aspect of your life. Only, their were a few holes in the system, and that's where I made my cash. It wasn't a lot mind you, it amounted to about 800 to 1000 bucks a year but when your making around 12 G a year that's quite a boost. I was a black marketer dealer. I made my cash mostly selling cigarettes, but I would make some bucks with other stuff if I had the chance. The deal went like this, every oversees soldier was allotted cigarettes and tea. With means of a ration card system they would control how much you bought. Giving you a max of 5 cartons a month. I don't smoke so this gave me at least 5 cartons a month to sell, later I was working as a middle man selling friends rations as well. Taxes are the main reason why cigarettes are so expensive, oversees military instillations are tax free zones. This meant that a carton cost but only seven bucks. On the German market the buyer would pay around 30, I sold the same carton for 20. The cartons went understandably fast, by the end of the first week of the month I was always maxed out. I always tried to keep regulars, it was even worth giving them an occasional discount to keep em coming back. Then their was the occasional request from my German boss, he got them at wholesale price. Toward the end I was selling anything I could make a profit at. Cigarettes, Levis jeans, meat and gasoline were my regulars. Some of my friends were scared, 'I don't want to fuck with that shit.'� They would cry. Maybe they were right, but I really didn't see the danger in it. In the end, even my friends were coming around selling me their rations and I in turn would sell to the customer. It was fun, and we made money to boot. I don't really feel one bit guilty doing it either considering the services twisted policy on these types of items. Its like the service portrays the idea that its doing its members a favor by giving them access to cheep cigarettes. You end up becoming hopelessly addicted as a youth, and in a worst case scenario the service member ends up dieing of lung cancer. There are the guys that will eventually kick the habit, this addiction mind you, which had been encouraged through the availability of inexpensive dope, had in most cases become deeply integrated into the service members lifestyle. I knew lots of guys that smoked two packs a day and more, and why, 'because fuckit their so cheep!'� Well that doesn't sound like a system that's been set up for the long term good of the soldiers it serves, so, I fucked that system and feel good about having done it. Ya!!

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