HomeMy WebLinkAboutPete Caler Pt. 2 TranscriptionCity of College Station
Heritage Programs Oral History
Interviewee: Peter Caler
Interviewer: Jared Donnelly and Brooke Linsenbardt
Transcriber: Brooke Linsenbardt
Date: January 8, 2016
Place: College Station, Texas
Project: Veterans of Aggieland
00:00: Jared Donnelly (JD): Okay so in terms of protests you know it was the Red Army Faction.
00:04: Peter Caler (PC): Yeah. Like I said, they were, they were killing individual soldiers just for their I.D. cards so they could, they could enter bases. A couple of do-, couple
days before I left country, to come back here. They attacked Rhine Mein. Shot up the, the terminal, bombs, something like that. I remember, I remember it was all messed up when I was,
when I was, getting on the plane.
JD: This was ’85.
00:36: PC: Yeah. Yeah it would have been ’85.
JD: Right. Yeah. I didn’t know they were operating that late. The Red Army Faction fired up in, early seventies and it was like the people who didn’t think they’d done enough in the
sixties. Kind of like here how things radicalized after the sixties when stuff didn’t get through. And went through a lot of violence. Was there, particular protocol that you guys were
having to follow to deal with, with stuff like that. So if there was protest around, were you specifically told, “Don’t interact. Interact.” Or, or.
01:06: PC: Absolutely.
JD: Yeah.
01:07: PC: Yeah. And you, you better have identification. You know when I first got there, you just walked in through the main gate, comin’ back from downtown. Not a problem. After all
that stuff started happening, they, they clamped down hard.
JD: Really?
01:22: PC: Security wise. Yeah.
JD: I can’t. What was it, the dual-track missiles, policy I think was what was the big issue of this stuff in the eighties for the.
01:33: MX.
JD: I’m sorry?
01:34: PC: It’s MX cruise missile.
JD: Was, was the missile themselves. It was, it was the dual-track where the Soviets would step-down, or add up, increase depending so that we, we would copy what they did, the policy
and that was, people were really angry about that. How would you characterize most of the protestors? Or on average that you, that you saw? In terms I mean, peaceful kids, angry, violent,
I mean.
01:56: PC: Never saw any violence. I mean. I saw the terrorist attacks.
JD: Right.
02:01: PC: But I think the average protestor was not violent. Angry. But not violent.
JD: Confronting you or was it for other, other Germans they were talking to?
02:11: PC: Eh. I. Confronting organizations more than people.
JD: Gotcha.
02:20: PC: I, I, I, I cannot remember a single time, where I had, a German citizen, be angry with me, personally.
JD: Did they ever give you guys flyers or something like that or?
02:35: PC: No.
JD: No.
02:37: PC: No I think they kept to themselves, we kept to ourselves. Pretty much. They were just in our way to get to the bar. I mean, when it comes down to it.
JD: Right. Oh another thing too, how often did you, go out on, on your days off or whatever, in civilian clothes or were you always in uniform?
02:55: PC: Always civilian.
JD: Always civilian.
02:57: PC: Yeah.
JD: Were you able to blend in do you think?
02:59: PC: No. No.
JD: Did you speak any German?
03:03: PC: A, a little bit, enough to, enough to get by. But yo-, you, you really didn’t have to. I mean, it, English was really pretty common.
JD: I guess particularly in towns that you were involved with, where they had an American presence for the last forty years.
03:16: PC: Exactly. I had more problems when I was truck driving, and I had to de-, deliver news print to the newspaper in Quebec City, in Canada. And I could not get, them to give me
directions in English. I had more problems in Canada than I ever did in Germany.
JD: Wow. Huh.
03:35: PC: And I wouldn’t even say Germany ‘cause I went to Paris, Spain, Italy, and all that. Yeah never had a problem communicating.
JD: Oh. Are you good?
BL: Hmm-hmm.
JD: All right that’s it for that then.