Carlson served in West Germany News, Sports, Work

It was a place where Soviet troops would definitely attack if a conflict arose. And while it might seem like a very stressful place to serve, Carlson said it’s anything but.

“We didn’t have any fights or anything like that.” he said. “We just conducted periodic military exercises.”

“I tell people it was like being on vacation, and the Army provided the vacation,” he added.

Carlson, who now lives at the Friendship Shelter in Fort Dodge, has driven the Jeep on a variety of military missions. He used his leave to tour West Germany, Holland and Belgium.

He grew up on the family’s 100-acre farm south of Oto. He said that the farm was “sort of squeezed between” Des Moines River and Hwy. The family grew corn, soybeans and pigs.

“We made money from pigs” he said

Carlson graduated from Fort Dodge Senior High School and Fort Dodge Junior College.

In 1956 he was drafted into the Army and sent to Fort Hood in Texas for basic training. After the initial training, he received the specialty of telegrapher.

Finally completing his training, he joined a large group of other soldiers being sent to West Germany as a single combat command.

The troops were sent to Europe on a slow ship.

Carlson recalled that when his ship left New York Harbor, the passenger liner Queen Elizabeth called into port. Queen Elizabeth later passed his ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on her way back to Britain.

Arriving in West Germany, Carlson was assigned to the 66th Armored Field Artillery. According to him, the unit has 105-mm howitzers mounted on armored vehicles.

“I only saw them shoot once” he said. “It was when we were doing a demonstration for NATO units.”

He remembered that there was no need for a telegraph operator in the unit, so he was put in charge of a jeep. His regular Jeep was a holdover from World War II, and a large piece of steel was welded to the front bumper, designed to cut the wires of mine traps.

According to him, the Jeep was fun to drive.

Carlson drove his jeep on a variety of tasks, including transporting supplies, food, laundry, and even other soldiers who were arrested by the military police.

“I did a lot of freelance work” he said.

One summer he spent a lot of time driving an archaeologist looking for ancient Roman ruins in the mountains around Friedberg, the closest town to where his unit was based.

His vacation was spent on tours of West Germany and other European countries.

The damage caused by World War II was rapidly being repaired by the time Carlson reached West Germany.

“You could see the bombing sites, but they were so rebuilt that you really had to look for the damaged areas.” he said. “They rebuilt a lot.”

Most of what he saw was very picturesque.

“I saw many castles up and down the Rhine” – said Carlson.

The highlight was visiting Neuschwanstein Castle, a very complex structure in southern Germany. Carlson said that he visited it in the winter and went there on a sleigh drawn by horses.

When it was time to return to the United States, Carlson crossed the Atlantic in another slow boat. He recalled that as the ship approached the United States, Hurricane Jenny was churning up the East Coast, so the ship turned out to sea to avoid the storm.

When the ship finally came to shore, it was directed back out to sea for a medical mission.

At the time, Carlson said, the Navy had a number of ships in the Atlantic Ocean on radar duty to provide early warning of any Soviet ships or aircraft heading toward the United States. He said that on one of these ships a sailor had appendicitis, but there was no doctor on board to take care of him. There was a doctor on Carlson’s ship, so he was sent to pick up the sick sailor.

Carlson’s ship finally arrived at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York. He then took a train to Fort Sheridan in Illinois. He was discharged from the army there in 1958.

He returned to the farm near Oto and worked for about 50 years. He added pumpkins, gourds and squash to the farm produce. His hobby became carving and painting pumpkins, turning them into artistic masks.

The farm was sold to a neighbor when Carlson moved to Friendship Haven.