Close Enough For Jazz~ Out of Step with Sgt Protzinger's Flying Beer-hall Brass Band and Noise Machine

By Steve Smith

The General's first mistake was granting the men of the Kitzingen Area Band leeway to provide a musical background for his exalted command. His second mistake was not establishing someone to keep an eye on us. The company where we billeted were told that we were "hands off," that they were to leave us to our own devices. Corruption naturally followed, helped along by letters and cards from the White House to a tuba player whose farm abutted President Eisenhower's at Gettysburg. Soon the KAB was more a rollicking college frat than a military unit, a close cousin to M*A*S*H. So climb aboard and discover why we were called "The Fucking Band."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steve Smith
• Release date: Oct 13, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463657133

Steve Smith

Steve Smith (March 11, 1962–March 13, 2019) served overseas with the International Mission Board (SBC) for eighteen years, helping initiate a Church Planting Movement (CPM) among an unreached people group in East Asia, and then coached, trained, and led others to do the same throughout the world. Upon his retirement from IMB in 2016 until his death, Steve served simultaneously as the Vice President of Multiplication for East-West Ministries, as a Global Movement Catalyst for Beyond, and as a co-leader of the 24:14 Coalition.

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Preface

This book continues my peacetime Army adventures begun with Single Striper and chronicles a time of going through the motions with one's brain half asleep and no ostensible purpose guiding our actions other than keeping the military machine from going to rust.

Luckily, a few of us found a niche playing music instruments in a wacky outfit called the Kitzingen Area Band, which freed us from the usual tedium of soldiering and let loose the unruly civilian in us. The immediate Army through which we carelessly strolled, however, cast a jaundiced eye on our unmilitary bearing and sought ways of infiltrating our ranks.

Then a birthday greeting card for a tuba player named Stretch arrived from the White House, signed by his Gettysburg friend and neighbor, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and the wacky dance began . . .

Author's note: Scenes where the viewpoint of others carries the narrative have been novelized, though I have remained faithful to the events as witnessed or recounted to me

Chapter 1

The General Cometh

Surrounded by the nineteen other members of the Kitzingen Area Band, I squatted in the drainage ditch just off Hayes Avenue, the main thoroughfare of Flak Kaserne, our small hilltop sub-post in Kitzingen, Germany, and leaned back against the grassy bank. Around me Zippos chinked open and rasped into flame. Plumes of sighed-out smoke billowed into the gray air of the overcast September morning.

Don't get too comfortable, said the Drum Major, Corporal Herb Dahlke, over his shoulder. It's about that time.

Dahlke stood at the edge of Hayes Avenue shifting his six-four 210-pound bulk idly from side to side, his meaty hands clamped atop the bulb of his four-foot aluminum baton. I gazed at his craggy profile with its prominent nose and bulging forehead set off by an unruly mop of red hair that far exceeded military allowances. He hummed to himself and stared down the avenue from which the General’s chauffeured sedan would come. Through the quiet chatter around me I cupped an ear. Appropriately enough, Dahlke was humming We're off to see the wizard . . .

A smile bloomed in my chest. I was a member of the wackiest unit on post, maybe even in the entire U.S. Army. The ability to play a decent trumpet had rescued me from line company life of 5:30 a.m. wake-ups, guard duty, KP, and NCOs sourly marking time until their retirement, and installed me in the best duty the Army offered. Despite the cold morning dew seeping through my olive-drab fatigue pants, raising goose flesh on my rear, I was too much at peace to care. Inside my skin it was a balmy day in May.

This stop was on the last leg of our morning rouser march trooping the half-mile length of Hayes Avenue blasting out Sousa marches to shake the post awake. At 8:15 a.m., however, few enlisted men were prepared for a brassy assault on their eardrums, and disgruntled stares had followed us down the street as we shut down one formation after another. At the west end of the post we turned off the avenue onto a dirt road and came about to await the arrival of Post Commander Brigadier General Vernon D. Raines (privately called V.D.) to start off his day with a musical salute.

While we waited, PFC Don Zimmerman, clarinet player and the band's official historian and legend spinner, explained to new bandsman Private Tom Langdon the special niche we occupied in the military caste system. We aren't a military band in the usual sense, Zimmerman said, squatting in front of Langdon, PFC Frank Filar and me. When the General transferred from the Pentagon to this Bavarian cow pasture in the spring of 1958, the first thing he did upon arriving was to have his adjutant scour the personnel records for musicians to make up a band.

Why would he want a band? asked Langdon.

Well, suppose you just came off a four-year tour in Washington, D.C. with your own office and secretary at the Pentagon. Just imagine the perquisites that go with all that.

The what?

Benefits, said Filar.

Right, said Zimmerman. Like being chauffeured around in a shiny green Cadillac, eating at the best restaurants and charging it all to the taxpayer, along with the pomp and ceremony and exhilarating bustle of the nation's Capitol, and rubbing shoulders with congressmen, senators, foreign diplomats and lobbyists bearing gratuities.

The right side of Langdon’s boyish features screwed up. Bearing what?

Bribes, I said.

Not to mention the veritable sea of nubile young office girls yearning to drape themselves all over someone in a seat of power.

Zimmerman paused, his audience of three enrapt. Then the bombshell. Your orders come informing you that you are to leave this paradise for a Spartan post in a cow-infested village of some fifteen thousand non-English-speaking people in a remote corner of southern Germany.

So what does this have to do with wanting a band? said Langdon.

I'll get to that. Now imagine how you'd feel trading in your motorized hallway scooter and chauffeured Cadillac with a backseat bar for a year-old Chevy sedan painted olive drab. Then having to leave behind the daily swim and massage at the Pentagon Health Club, along with happy hour at the General Officers' Bar.

Filar snorted, his restless fingers popping the pads of his clarinet.

Okay, Langdon said, I bleed for him, but what—

The point is, Zimmerman interrupted, "after years of mingling with the country's political and social elite and being squired around the world's most important city and having doors opened for him as if he were somebody, not to mention the heady feeling of being the object of all that feminine adulation, you become addicted to it.

"Then to be sent over to the land of honey-wagons, lederhosen and scratchy toilet paper and stationed in a drowsy little burg with cobbled streets littered with fresh ox dung, you go through some hefty withdrawal."

Langdon nodded grudgingly. Yeah, but—

Zimmerman plowed on. "The first thing you notice is the unholy stillness. There's no traffic noise at all. Leaves fall off the trees with a clatter. You can hear a chipmunk break wind a mile away. It's so spooky after all the noise and activity of Washington that you run screaming from your office and form a band.

They don't even have to play well, which we don't, only loud, which we do. And that's why the band was formed, to make a kind of white noise to drown out the sound of cows munching grass and ox-carts trundling over cobblestones and the sound of his career sinking slowly in the west.

White noise, grunted Filar, shaking his head. Zimmerman, can't you just tell a story without all the bullshit?

Okay, put 'em out! Dahlke announced. Here comes the big cheese.

Chapter 2

Dahlke strode to his place before the trombone section, the front row of our marching formation, while the rest of us rose and threaded to our places on the packed dirt road just off the avenue.

Without embellishment, Filar, said Zimmerman as he rose up, mere facts are as interesting as the hair on your knuckles.

Laughing despite himself, Filar took his place in front of me. I picked up my silver Olds trumpet from the roadway and caught Langdon grinning at me. Listening to Zimmerman is almost as good as having your mom read you bedtime stories in your jammies.

While fishing in my pants pocket for my trumpet mouthpiece, I recalled what the General was reported to have said soon upon arriving in Kitzingen: We need a band or something—it's too goddamn quiet in this medieval pisshole.

I inserted the mouthpiece in my trumpet and seated it with a twist. Dahlke called us to attention, then raised his baton signaling us to bring our instruments to playing readiness. Over his left shoulder he watched the green ’58 Chevy sedan rolling toward us. As it approached our front, he yanked his baton down, launching us into Stars and Stripes Forever. He then pivoted 180 degrees.

The sedan rolled abreast driven by a frozen-faced SFC (Sergeant First Class, two rockers) in gray sunglasses and dress greens. The car was almost past our formation before Dahlke manipulated his baton across his body in the inverted position of salute. He did this indolently and with a lack of sharpness that showed no concern for the General’s star and lofty status. In the dim interior a gloved hand raised in a languid return salute.

As the car started up DivArty Drive to 3rd DivArty HQ and the General's private office with its plush carpeting, private bathroom, and toilet paper monogrammed with a single star, Dahlke pivoted to face the band, continuing to direct while looking over his right shoulder. The SFC eased the sedan to a stop by the side entrance of the DivArty HQ building, killed the motor and swung out of the car on the run. He circled the rear of the car with head stiffly erect and his arms held rigidly at his sides and opened the right rear door.

The General climbed out and strode briskly up the short walk to the door. Having stayed to quietly close the car door, the SFC had to sprint to reach the door before the General, who breezed through the hastily opened portal as if both driver and door were invisible. It was closer than usual and the SFC slumped in relief. If his hand had slipped off the door handle, the general would have plowed into the door beak first and the SFC would have been transferred to a roving field latrine construction unit.

Dahlke cut us off the instant the door closed behind the General. While we watched with a sort of sympathetic revulsion, the SFC opened the passenger door and withdrew two square tan coverlets. He circled the car, slipping these over the single star attached to the top of the front and rear license plate frames, indicating that the personage was not in residence.

Langdon looked at me and shivered.

Mmf, muttered Zimmerman with undisguised scorn. What a loser. Repulsive display. No self-respecting—

The rest of his remarks were lost as Dahlke barked, "Band, for-ard, harch!" and directed the snare drummers to tap cadence on their drum rims for the stroll back to our billets at Third Division Artillery's HQ Battery.

Striding down the avenue, I felt buoyant to be free of such galling and servile duties as displayed by the General's driver. The air we breathed was crisp and invigorating, unsullied by intrusions from the surrounding military. Though in the Army, we were not of it. We were spared the regimentation and ass-kissing the rest of the post was subjected to by a dictum laid down by the General himself. It stated that except for matters of administration through HQ Battery where we billeted, we were hands off, accountable only to the General through his adjutant, Major Happleton Hap Bristow.

This made us the General’s private band and personal noisemaker, much as Zimmerman had related. And within this permissive climate our sole mission was to make music, which set us free as it was possible to be in a sub-culture as rigid and class-conscious as the Army.

Approaching our billets, Dahlke guided us off the avenue onto the spacious blacktop by the HQ Battery offices where the CO, the Exec, the First Sergeant and assorted clerks were scratching away with pen and paper or tapping at typewriter keys. Dahlke barked, "Drums—hit it!" and the drummers went to full drumbeat.

At the first explosive crash of the twenty-two inch marching cymbals on the off-beat, heads jerked in surprise in the offices. Before the cymbals finished reverberating, they crashed again.

Ignoring the stony glares directed at us through the office windows, we executed an oblique left turn toward the entrance to the band’s wing set some seventy feet back from the street. As we neared our entrance, Dahlke executed the series of short whistles and baton flourishes intended to halt our formation in unison.

This had the effect on us of a squirt gun on a forest fire. That close to the entrance to our billets we were disinclined to stop and wait to be dismissed. You’re anticipating again, Dahlke said wryly as we stumbled past, showing no more concern for his authority than he had earlier showed for the General’s arrival.

As I trudged past Dahlke I glanced up and saw Master Sergeant Ted Protzinger, the Bandmaster, at the band office window, his droopy basset-hound eyes regarding us with reproach. He must have witnessed our usual lack of military crispness as well as our assault on the battery citadel where he has long tried to cultivate some good will. Inside he’ll take Dahlke aside for a private huddle, reminding him once again to avoid disturbing the battery people because they don’t like us much as it is, right? So why make things worse? Just be a little more careful, okay?

Dahlke will nod solemnly but the injunction will last no more than a week before it happens again. Driven by some deep-seated issue with authority, Dahlke regarded any formation we passed as inviting disruption and musically shat upon such gatherings with a kind of casual indifference. This, along with our unmilitary bearing and appearance, was why we were labeled post-wide as the Fucking Band. We wore this designation with a jaunty sort of pride, happily set apart as a kind of pariah unit with the separateness and reverse elitism that implied.

As Langdon and I shouldered our way through the inner swinging doors and into the band hallway, I felt the familiar nudge of concern. Only minutes before Dahlke had displayed his blatant disdain for the General’s exalted status, and then used the percussion section to throw a finger at the ranking hierarchy of the battery in which we were housed. I wondered if he was trying to pick a fight with the Army in general and its local brass in particular. As I saw it our continued existence hung by a thread and Dahlke didn’t give a damn. I hoped that the General was too preoccupied to notice us as he passed through on a wave of inflated grandeur.

Langdon grinned and gave me a friendly poke in the shoulder. Another memorable day in our military careers, right, Stephen?

I smiled, reflecting how playing a trumpet had lifted me from line company life under a runtish martinet of a crew chief two months before and installed me in the wackiest and most unmilitary outfit in the whole of the peacetime Army, a living, breathing comic strip called the Kitzingen Area Band . . .

——~~——

Chapter 3

Flak Kaserne sat atop a broad bluff on the southwest edge of Kitzingen, a wine-producing town of 15,209 in northern Bavaria, the largest state in Germany. After rolling up a long incline, the jeep passed the guard shack and swung left onto Hayes Avenue, having carried me from my former duty station at Schweinfurt’s Conn Barracks to my new posting with the Kitzingen Area Band—officially the 3rd DivArty Band.

We rolled down the avenue at fifteen mph beneath massive oak trees lining both sides of the street, passing well-tended lawns and handsome three-story buildings that looked more like college dormitories than military billets. Compared with the barren Army posts I'd known in the states, Flak seemed a veritable Tahiti: shady, well-groomed and restful on the eyes.

Five long blocks later we drove onto a spacious blacktop, passing the wing of the three-story L-shaped building that housed the HQ Battery, 3rd Division Artillery, and came to a stop at the band entrance. I got out and wrestled my duffle from the cargo area behind the seats.

Good luck, Smith, said the driver. Wish I'd kept up with them clarinet lessons. He shifted into low and roared off.

I went up the concrete steps, swung the outer door wide, shoved through into the foyer and butted through the swinging doors into the band hallway. There I dropped my bags, feeling weight of another kind slide from my shoulders, and breathed in the spacious atmosphere of my new home for the next fifteen months.

The high-ceilinged hallway was eight feet wide and surfaced in grey terrazzo tiles. Save for a murmur of voices all was quiet and serene as it was several days earlier when I had auditioned. While taking in the tranquil atmosphere, however, I felt an electric current simmering beneath as if the place could erupt with happy energy at any moment.

I started down the hallway to the band office, glancing into the rehearsal room on my left. Two bandsmen wearing khakis sat staring at a chessboard set on a chair between them. I recognized PFC Ron Stannard, the band secretary, lounging in a tilted chair with his feet propped on a broad windowsill, smoking a pipe and reading. The usual tension prompted by the unspoken stricture always present in army installations to look alert and engaged in some form of military activity was absent. The off-kilter sense of unreality kicked in again.

I set my bags outside the band office and presented myself in the doorway. Sergeant Ted Protzinger, the Bandmaster, reposed in his tilted office chair with his feet crossed atop his desk and his right hand flung over his head. A cigarette burned in his fist near his left ear. A buck sergeant (no rockers) sat on the edge of the desk across from the Bandmaster. Three enlisted men sat on the floor with their backs against the wall. Everyone was smiling as if they had just heard an amusing story. At my knock all faces turned toward me and the smiles broadened.

Here's our new man, said one of the PFCs.

Sgt Protzinger swung his feet from the desk and rounded his desk with his big hand outstretched and wearing an amiable grin. At a broad-shouldered six feet he was an imposing figure.

Smitty! Good to have you with us! He smiled with genuine pleasure and squeezed my right hand, clamping his left hand over it. Used to being addressed by NCOs as Hey, troop! or Smith, get your ass in gear! this unlikely and personable gesture only increased my self-consciousness.

Well, I'm, uhh, glad to be here.

A slender black-haired PFC pushed up from the floor and offered his hand. Welcome to Kitzingen, Steve. I'm Bob McGrath. But everyone calls me Jack. As we shook hands he introduced PFCs Ken Rieger, Lewis Riethmann and Joe Penxa, each saluting me cheerily from the floor. At first I took this as mockery, but there was something artless and welcoming in their expressions. They looked so relaxed and open—concern over rank seemed absent here—that I wondered if they had been smoking the green weed.

And this— McGrath said, indicating the buck sergeant, —is Sergeant Joseph Burford Hayner, generally called Burf. He plays Sousaphone.

And bass drum, said Rieger.

Sometimes both at the same time, Penxa added.

Sgt Hayner slid off the edge of the desk and offered his hand. He was about six-two, somewhat stooped, black hair going bald on top, pear-shaped with sloping shoulders and unusually short arms. Nice to have you here, Smith.

Thanks, I said shaking his hand, surprised at this warm welcome accorded a mere private and wondering if I had somehow wandered into a boy scout troop meeting by mistake.

Sgt Protzinger said, Jack, why don't you help Smitty get settled in. Take him around, show him where everything is while I call division and see if they've shipped his trumpet yet.

Smitty . . .

My trumpet.

Warm tingles prowled throughout my chest. In an instant every lingering vestige of Schweinfurt and my septic former crew chief, Sgt Billie C. Bracie, evaporated and I almost lifted off.

On the way down the hall I asked McGrath why everyone was in khakis, to my mind semi-formal dress. Smiling, he explained that fatigues equated with and were for work, to which no self-respecting band member would stoop. Also, khakis were required wear for going off-post during duty hours, though this was generally overlooked by bandsmen.

We pick up our passes at the HQ Battery orderly room in khakis, then come back and change into our civvies. The rules don't apply to us the same as other enlisted men, said McGrath. You'll see what I mean after a few days here.

He smiled again and continued, We're a little crowded at the moment. You're going to be in room 10 with four other guys. But it won't be like that much longer. Most of us start shipping out in a few weeks. We're losing our two best trumpet players, so the Sarge is relieved to have you transfer in.

We passed room 8 on the left and came to room 10 across the hall from the entrance to the washroom and latrine. McGrath opened the door and I shoved in sideways and dumped my bags in the center of a room about twenty feet square. Five bunks and as many wall-lockers lined the walls.

A wiry soldier lying on his bunk in rumpled khakis and a white T-shirt propped himself on his elbows and looked me over with a sardonic smirk. Welcome to Phi Gamma Sigmoid Colon Hexagon Alpha Rho! he exclaimed. You're now a member of Sgt Ted Protzinger's Civilian Preparatory Academy and Rumpus Room. How does it feel to be out of the Army?

Stunned by this improbable reception, I mumbled, Uhh, am I?

Are you, he guffawed. Jack, tell this boy where he is.

Well, McGrath smiled lazily. It's the next best thing.

Hell, said the soldier. This is the closest thing to a college frat you'll ever find in the damn Army.

I don't doubt it, I said. McGrath then introduced him as Private Rob Mecklin, cornet player.

A fifth bed had been set up for me against the wall opposite the door. While arranging my stuff in my foot and wall lockers, the rest of the room's occupants drifted in. Beside Mecklin, there was PFC Ronald Stretch Snyder, a lanky, rawboned farm boy from Gettysburg, PA, who greeted me with a gusty, Hiya, fella. How the hell are ya! Displaying a mouthful of even white teeth and eyes shrunk to slits amid copious smile wrinkles, he assaulted my right hand in a knuckle-cracking grip.

PFC Luther Randolph approached with a cordial smile, sliding his palm into mine with a touch of reserve. Of the four, only PFC Don Zimmerman showed antipathy toward my presence, shaking hands in a desultory manner and glumly avoiding my eyes. I learned later that his response was due to a resistance to change and a dislike for crowded living quarters. When he heard his room was to have a new boarder, he had lobbied to have me put elsewhere with no success.

Just then someone in the hallway yelled, Five minutes. At this everyone began moving toward the door. Mecklin grabbed his shirt and shoved his arms into it while I stood before my open wall locker preparing to unpack the contents of my duffel bag.

Don't sweat that stuff around here, Randolph said. Just throw it in your locker and lock up. As everyone was short-stepping in a mob to get out of the room, I followed his advice and jogged after them. In the hallway bandsmen were emerging from every room and moving with purpose down the hallway toward the end away from the rehearsal room.

Sliding into a gap, I quick-stepped to avoid being trampled. The onrushing tide carried me past rooms 12 and 14 to the end of the hallway where it swung right and moved in a silent unstoppable phalanx through swinging doors and down another hallway.

Randolph appeared suddenly on my right, grinning at my perplexed expression. In case you're wondering, we're heading for the mess hall. This is the only time you'll see us move fast. That was the shower room we just passed on the left. Coming up is the Medics section, and on the right is the First Sergeant's office, followed by the CO's office and HQ Battery’s Orderly Room.

We swung left past a narrow cubicle, which Randolph said was the mail room, and a few steps later turned right and plowed through heavy wooden doors and outside. We flowed down the steps and across the street and filed by twos up a narrow sidewalk alongside a long one-story building giving forth the characteristic aroma of mess halls everywhere: steamed cabbage, scorched lard and unseasoned meat.

As I was looking around, a strident bell rang in the battery. This was followed by a dull rumbling as booted heels plunged down multiple flights of stairways throughout the building. From two exits poured the enlisted men of HQ Battery to jostle and mill and eventually form into four platoons on the battery blacktop at the corner where our wing intersected at a right angle with the battery's wing. I understood then that we had quick-marched through the hallways as much to avoid being trampled as to be first in line.

I watched the SFC in command of the formation take the attendance report, platoon by platoon. When finished he bellowed, "When I give the order, gentlemen, walk, do not run, to the chow line. Diss-missed!"

The parade began innocently enough but after a few steps someone on the far side of the formation broke into a quick-step to take the lead, instantly galvanizing the rest, and the stampede was on. In seconds the race ended behind the last bandsmen and those at the rear of the formation trailed down the walk and along the sidewalk.

I turned to Randolph. How do we get away with this? We just waltzed past the battery offices and took first place in the chow line free as a breeze. Doesn't that say 'screw you!' to the whole battery?

You're catching on, said McGrath behind me.

It's like this, Randolph said reasonably. "We're not really part of the