Appalachian Army Brat

By Tim Ratliff

Tim will take you on a journey that started from his earliest childhood memories from an Appalachian coal town to the time he separated from the US Army. In between that time is a tale of the turbulent sixties, the wild seventies, lost friends who were never seen again, drug and alcohol abuse, and lost love.

Everybody has a story to tell, and Tim wants the reader to hear his story. Some parts of this tale will have you laughing, but some of it will give you some moments of reflection and perhaps let you ponder your own life. Why most people struggle and battle literally to carve out a place for themselves.

Read about how a young boy is taken out of the mountains and thrown into a totally alien world and how he adapted. How a teenager goes from a good football player and turns into a teenage delinquent in a matter of a few months. Learn about the poor state of the military after Vietnam, plus much more.

This is Tim’s tale as seen through his eyes, so hang on. It will keep you entertained, and he is sure you will love it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: May 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662465574

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Appalachian Army Brat

Tim Ratliff

Copyright © 2022 Tim Ratliff

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2022

ISBN 978-1-6624-6556-7 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-6557-4 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Appalachian Beginning

Crailsheim, Germany

Fort Carson, Colorado

Munich, Germany

Augsburg, Germany

Back to Munich

Back in the USA

Vine Grove

Reefer Madness

The US Army

The Atlantic

The Sutton

Chapter 1977

Volunteers for the Sutton

Central Correctional Facility

Back to the Seventy-Third Transportation Company

Goodbye

To my wife, Cuarlita. I will love her forever and when I leave this world, she will be my last conscious thought.

Chapter 1

Appalachian Beginning

The town was dusty, with coal trucks running back and forth on US 460. The place had a courthouse, a Piggly Wiggly, and it came with a cinema, a pool hall, and a small department store. Did I almost forget to mention that the town had several coal mines nearby that were the economic lifeblood of the county?

All this bring back memories when I was a little boy. Grundy, Virginia, was the name of my hometown, and although I have lived in many places in my life, if anyone asks me where I am from, I tell them I am from the Appalachian Mountains in Virginia. My tenure was short-lived in the hill country because of events beyond my young life to control, but I made many trips back to visit my papaw, mamaw, and cousins.

The people who settled that area started a few years after the War of Independence. They were Scotch Irish for the most part, with some English and a smattering of German thrown in for good measure. As settlers, they were a tough bunch, and they loved to drink, to fight, music, and were distrustful of any authority outside of their own. And of course, they had to make a life for themselves in a raw wilderness. As an ethnic group, the settlers were totally isolated from mainstream society. In some places, it remained that way well into the later part of the twentieth century.

Now, this book is about me, so now that I gave a general background of what brought this place together, I will continue with my story.

My earliest memories of life in the mountains were when I was about four years old. Just fragments of little things, like sitting on the front porch with my papaw. It was my favorite thing to do. Papaw’s house sat on the base of a small mountain. We could look down to see US 460 and watch the cars and coal trucks roll by. I always sat in one of his many rocking chairs, and when I rocked, that made the cars and trucks on the 460 have a swooshing sound that I thought was neat.

Another memory I have was of my mamaw. She would get us to pick apples off her apple tree. We would bring her apples; she would make the best apple cobbler. Then she would make apple butter, which I can still taste today.

My papaw’s name was John Henry Ratliff, and my mamaw’s name was America Virginia Ratliff. Another memory was the fireplace in my grandfather’s house. It was the only source of heat, and they used coal. I remember Papaw (Grandfather) would send me and my older brother, Mike, down to the railroad tracks to collect coal for him. There was a coal temple not far from his home. A coal tipple is a place where the coal trucks dumped their loads on a conveyor belt to load the trains. When that occurred, there was always some that fell off the train, so that was how he got some of his coal. The coal buckets he gave us were very heavy when full, so we half-carried and half-dragged them back to Papaw’s house. I guess we were about seven, eight years old. Later, when Papaw and Mamaw got old, the coal company would send them a full truck about twice a year for free.

The mountain folks love their children, old folks just as much as anybody. Next to my grandparents’ house lived Uncle Paul, Aunt Oweda, and our favorite cousin, Danny. Danny was fun-loving, sweet, and kind, and he always took time to hang out with us.

Danny had a dog named Buck. When we were little kids, when we went anywhere, Buck was always with us. He was our protector. Danny was about nine, Mike was six, and I—Tim—was five when we played in the hill country as little kids. If Mom or Dad tried to whip us for something, Buck just somehow knew and would not let anyone come near us.

I have a picture my mom gave me of the three of us and Buck playing together in a child’s swimming pool. Danny’s mom, Aunt Oweda, would feed us lunch. I loved their home. It had beautiful wood paneling, and it always smelled like she was cooking something good in the kitchen.

Danny had a pool table in the basement, so we went often to play pool downstairs. Uncle Paul owned an antique store, so the house was decorated with nice stuff. I was told that if you gave Uncle Paul one dollar, he would turn that into five dollars.

Uncle Paul had one eye missing from a childhood accident, and every now and then, he would take out his glass eye, and that scared the hell out of Mike and me. Danny also had a little sister named Beth, and she was as sweet and cute as any little girl could be. Two brothers made up the rest of the family: Charles and Budd. They were way older than us. We did not see them very often. Charles was in the Air Force, and Budd lived in another state.

Uncle Burton was another favorite of mine. He was a World War II and Korean War veteran. We did not realize that Uncle Burton (Little Birdy) had a serious drinking problem, as did most of my family on my dad’s side. But we will get into that later in another chapter.

Little Birdy stayed upstairs in my papaw’s house in his own room. He never worked that I know of. He had VA benefits he never used. He could have gone to college, worked at the post office, or taken advantage of his time in the Army, but he never did. He just wanted to get drunk and stagger back to Papaw’s.

Sometimes, Birdy would work as a painter, but mostly, he would mooch money off Mamaw and Papaw. It was only after we got older did we realize what was going on with him: Uncle Burton was a full-blown alcoholic. But we loved him anyway. He was always happy and fun to be around. Dad said when Uncle Burton came back home from Korea, he never hit another lick.

He served in the European Theater during World War II and was stationed in Japan when the Korean War started. He was part of the first group sent over to stem the tide. Now it is well-known that garrison duty in Japan after the war was gravy. US Army troops stationed there, all they did for the most part was party and chase girls. Little training took place mainly because after World War II ended, the military budget was slashed beyond the bone. In short, when these troops arrived, they were in poor shape, and things went bad for them in a hurry.

Anyway, Uncle Burton got caught up in all that, along with another uncle I had by the name of Ron. He would never talk about what he had seen, and I asked him why did he not stay in the Army and retire. After all, he already spent more than ten years in. He told me after Korea he was quite sure he would never live long enough to make it till retirement.

My father came from a large family. There were three girls and eight brothers, not counting one who died when he was about four or five years of age. I believed he died of a fever sometime in 1920. From what I could gather from firsthand accounts from my father, they had a hard life.

Dad told me he got caught stealing other kids’ lunches one time because he had no food to bring to school. I asked him how he accomplished this dastardly deed. He told me that he would leave the classroom under the guise to use the bathroom, steal all the food he could get, and eat it before he got back to class. I told him that sounded like Oliver Twist. He told me that they made fun of him because of his poor clothes, and after he got caught stealing the food, things got worse.

My father grew up during the Great Depression, and they did not have much back then. When my grandmother died, my dad and I were cleaning out her house. I found a history book with his name on it. My father’s name was Elmer Ratliff, and somebody had written on every page, My name is Elmer Fudd.

My father was very sensitive and got into many altercations throughout his life over people picking on him. I guess that what was going on in his childhood made him that way when he became an adult. He got into fights over the silliest things that a normal person would pay no attention to. This will come to you, the reader, in some chapters in this story of my life.

There was a neighbor named Jim Slater, and he had a bunch of coonhounds. At night, he would go hunting, and those coonhounds would start baying, howling. That would scare the living hell out of me and Mike. You see, up in the mountains, it would get very dark at night, and just being in one of the most remote places in the country would play on a little kid’s imaginations. Especially after we watched a werewolf movie on TV; I think it was Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. When we heard those dogs howling, we thought for sure that the werewolf was coming, so death and destruction would be coming with it. It was assholes and elbows back to Papaw’s house, where we knew we would be safe till the next full moon.

Jim Slater had a sweet wife named Mary, and she worked at the Grundy Drive-In. Every time I would go to eat there, I would order cheeseburgers and fries (they made the best). She would never let me pay for them; she would pay for them herself. I heard many years later that she died in a nursing home. I wish I could have seen her before she died. She was so sweet and kind to us when we were little. All of us kids loved her so. Mary was a widow at a young age. Her husband, Jim, died of cancer back in the late sixties or early seventies, and she never remarried.

My father’s family were violent mountaineers. This violence was fueled by alcoholism, short tempers, and a life in rough country. I always thought that some of my dad’s brothers had weird names and weird personalities to go with their strange names. I will list them for you, starting with the oldest, and get back to me and let me know what you think: Aggie, Sog, Clod, Gallie, Burton, Kenny, Ronald, and Elmer, my father, who was the youngest of the family. My father’s sisters had pretty names—Etta, Oweda, and Jessie.

The Ratliff idea of a good time back in the day was for all to get together on a Friday, or Saturday evening. Go to Grundy, drink liquor, fight, and chase women. They all were armed with an assortment of personal weapons, blackjack, pocketknives, brass knuckles, pistols, and anything they could lay their hands on. The old man, John Henry, was the leader of these rough bunch of Appalachian outlaws. And I was told that their cousins, and close friends could exceed more than a dozen, and that they beat up anyone they did not like, or anyone that who got in their way.

I was told their list of crimes ranged from drinking, disorderly conduct, fighting, making moonshine, illegal gambling, and illegal discharge of fire arms, (my Grandfather shot the hands off the court house clock). I have been told he was the best pistol shot in the county.

One uncle gave his wife syphilis while she was pregnant. Then his wife came home and fell asleep with a lit cigarette, and the house was caught on fire. She was badly burned and died a few days later in the local hospital. Rumor was she was drunk and passed out.

In another incident many years later, another of my dad’s brothers shot and killed his wife of over forty years over an argument. He was sentenced for a lengthy time in prison. He died there on the five-year anniversary of his wife’s murder.

And now for the stupidest or most unhinged episode of all. My father had a cousin who was a police detective living in Michigan. The cousin caught his wife having an affair with a woman. He then went to her place of employment and shot her dead. She was a circuit court judge. Then he proceeded to barricade himself in her court chambers and shot it out with his deputies till he ran out of ammo. Then he surrendered. As he was being led away, it was announced over the radio that his wife was DOA at the local hospital. My dad told me the cousin sank to his knees and had to be carried to the awaiting cruiser.

My mother’s side of the family were hardworking farmers, and her dad was a coal miner. We did not interact with her side of the family very much. My mom’s mother died when she was a little girl. I think there were some bad feelings between my mom and her dad regarding his remarriage I think his new wife was mean to my mom. Papaw Justice died many years later after my mom left. She did not attend his funeral.

My father worked as a house painter, but his income was spotty at best, and he wanted to try something better. He told me there were three ways in Grundy to do better for yourself: the coal mine, the auto industry in Michigan (people from the Appalachian Mountains were moving to Detroit to work in the automobile factories), and the military. Dad thought he would check out the coal mines. He told me he got on a car. It took him down into the mine, and he got out, looked around, and took the very next one out. The next day, he joined the US Army.

Dad took basic at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, then I believe he went to Armor School at Fort Knox, and after, he went to do his enlistment stationed in Germany. When his three-year tour of duty was over, he was discharged and went back to Grundy. At that point, he met my mom, and they were married in 1957. They started a family, with Mike the first son, and a year later, I came along. Little brother Ted showed up four years after me. Ted was born in Kentucky at Fort Knox. He is the only one of the family not born in Appalachia.

When my dad was discharged the first time (using his own words), all I did was lie around drunk and worked only every now and then as a house painter for Papaw. We lived in what was called a washhouse (that was a small tar paper shack that miners used to wash themselves after coming home from the coal mines). It was next to Papaw’s house and was used by him when he worked in the coal mine. My mom said it was the lowest point in her life: to live in a shack with no running water, stove, or heat and with two little babies with no means of support. To make matters worse, they had to depend on Mamaw and Papaw to feed us. What little money my father made half he spent on liquor.

Things came to a head when John Henry told my father that my mother and us grandchildren can stay but my father had to go. My dad told me the very next day he bummed money from a friend, bought a bus ticket to Roanoke, Virginia, and reenlisted in the US Army. He never looked back.

When all this took place, I was just a toddler and have no memories of these things. I am going by what my mom and dad told me years later. I know after he reenlisted, he was sent to Korea for a year. We stayed in Grundy while he was deployed. That is when my memories start coming into focus. I guess I was about three or four years old.

When Dad came back from Korea, that was when we lived at Fort Knox for the first time. That was back in 1962, and my little brother was born. I remember Dad bringing us (Mike and I) to a place called New Gardens and bought us both a toy Greyhound bus to play with when my mom came home with Ted. Also, I remember setting the quarters on fire when we were at Fort Knox (I was playing with matches and threw one in the trash can), and I got my ass whipped for that. I guess I was about four years old.

One time, the post engineers came to our neighborhood. They were flushing the fire hydrants, and rusty orange water came gushing out. To me, it looked like Orange Crush. I asked Mom to give me a bucket so I could get my share. She said no and made me stay in the house till they were done. I sat and looked out the window wondering, thinking about all that Orange Crush and I cannot have any. For a kid, sometimes life ain’t worth living.

When this was going on, our life in Grundy was coming to an end. In late 1963, Dad got orders to go to Germany, and went ahead of us. We moved back to Grundy and waited for him to send for us. We had a few months to hang out with old Danny, Buck, and all our relatives. We stayed in an apartment across the river from Papaw’s. It was an easy walk from our apartment. (Back in those days, people looked out for little kids, so sending them out to play was not as dangerous as it is today.)

The only terror we came to face with is one time on the way to Papaw’s there was a huge long black snake stretched across the road just before Papaw’s house. As me and Mike approached, the snake raised its head and hissed at us. Well, it was asshole and elbows all the way to Uncle Paul’s antique store.

When we came running in, he knew something was up. We told him about the fiendish snake from hell. He told us to get some rocks and throw them at the snake and it would go away. We gathered all the rocks we could get in our pockets and prepared for battle.

Mike was the spearhead; on account, he was the older brother and, therefore, the leader. We decided that we were going on offense, and we were going to send the ghastly serpent back to hell. If we should fail, we would go down like true Ratliffs: with our guns (rocks) blazing.

Well, we went in together side by side and with a handful of rocks. Mike and I figured we would go in with the shotgun effect; we would have a better chance of killing the beast. We crept up the road, ready for the desperate encounter, and as we got closer, we realized the snake had gone. We were disappointed, but there would be other battles ahead for the Ratliff brothers. Time at Grundy was running out for us, and it was not long in coming.

When Dad was stationed at Fort Knox, we made many trips to Grundy. Dad had a 1957 Chevy, and we would visit often. When Dad went to Germany, he sold the Chevy to Uncle Paul. I am sure the sharpshooting Uncle Paul made a nice profit off it.

Grundy was coming to an end, and I was about to embark on a whole different experience. As I have told you earlier, the Virginia Appalachians will always be my home when asked, but I was to embark on a journey that changed me forever.

We said goodbye to our beloved cousin Danny and good Old Buck. Then we went to the Grundy Drive-In one more time. Sweet Mary made sure we got our standard cheeseburger and fries. We went to the movies one more time with dear Danny.

One day, the movers came to get our stuff. I and my older brother, Mike, were watching Bugs Bunny. The movers just unplugged the TV and took it away. Mike threw a fit, and Tim just watched in sadness as we missed The Looney Tunes. It would be another three long years before we could watch American TV again. Dad thought it was too expensive to convert our TV from AC to DC. Dad had to have beer money, so that was that.

Chapter 2

Crailsheim, Germany

The trip to Germany started with a bus ride to the nearest international airport. The Army gave Mom enough money to take a Greyhound bus. I am quite sure we took a Trailway because that was cheaper. My mom took the extra money and used it to feed us along the way.

What I recall most about the journey was the flight to Germany. We—that is, Mike, I, and Ted—all came down with the measles while in flight, so we were very sick on the way over. I remember the flight attendants were very good to us. They gave us our own little section and plenty of liquid to drink, along with food, blankets. I know not who they are, but I must say thank you, and God bless all of you for your kind, sweet consideration. I have loved flight attendants ever since.

We reached Germany. The flight took about nine hours, and we touched down in Frankfurt. We entered a whole different world than which we had come from. Everything was in German, of course. My mom had to carry Ted and what luggage she could. Somehow, Mom managed to find the right train. Mike and I had to carry the bulk of the luggage (we dragged it the whole way). When we got on the train, I collapsed in a seat. Tim was still sick and plum worn out.

The town of Crailsheim is a picturesque little place. It looked like most German rural towns. It would have been a great place to film The Sound of Music movie. Yes, it was nice, all right, but we never got to see it. We stayed on a little garrison that we called Crailsheim (Dad said the soldiers called it Crailsfunk because they were in the field six months out of the year and they were dirty for six months). I think the real name was McKee Barracks. Anyway, we had quarters in a big apartment building, and we were on