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Volume CXXXIII, Number 10 |
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Alumnus Ludwig Rang, interpreter at large
LUDWIG RANG
STAFF WRITER
"Where's the interpreter," you will remember a
Sergeant shouted as I arrived in Germany, a freshly baked GI, to be whisked
off to 8th Infantry Division headquarters at the pleasant spa town of
Bad Kreuznach.
My interpreting duties for the most part were confined to
accompanying the Commanding General when he made courtesy calls on civic
officials such as the Lord Mayor.
There were three CG's during my time with the Division.
One was called Moses, an odd name for a military man I thought, and the
other Goodpaster, even odder perhaps. Though junior in rank to many others
in line for the job, Goodpaster was made Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff by President Kennedy.
Highly intelligent and urbane, Goodpaster had the genial
air of a college professor. Moses on the other hand was rather forbidding.
Before my first interpreting job for him I was told to sit next to the
chauffeur in the General's official car and wait for him running outside
the entrance of the headquarters building with the engine.
When Moses got in, the chauffeur said, looking at the General
in the rear mirror, Sir, this is Specialist Rang, the interpreter."
In reply, Moses mumbled something I didn't catch. That was all I got from
him beyond a curt "Thank you, 'Specialist,'" at the end.
Goodpaster was completely different. Calling me down to
his office he showed me the draft of a short talk he was to give during
Sunday services in the Post Chapel, also attended by German civilians.
He didn't want me to interpret he said but to translate it and teach him
how to say it in German. He couldn't have been nicer.
Yet another and altogether different type was General Rossen,
a "soldier's soldier" whom, at the beginning of the fateful
involvement of the US in the conflict between North and South Kennedy
made Chief of the Green Berets, the elite force acting in an "advisory"
capacity to the Armed Forces of South Vietnam.
My most interesting but also harrowing job was as interpreter
at a court martial. The defendant was a black paratrooper accused of having
raped a German girl, sitting a few paces from him with her mother and
their council, the prosecutor facing them. Sitting with the latter, I
had the panel of senior officers on my right.
It was an embarrassing business. Council took the line that
though admitting attempted rape, the defendant had not actually achieved
penetration. This the girl strongly denied. Everything thus hinged on
what exactly constituted penetration, how many millimeters. There was
a lot of haggling about this. In the end, the accused was found guilty
and sentenced to 20 years.
The sentence would of course be reviewed by higher judicial
authority in Washington and no doubt was aimed at local public opinion,
as much as anything else.
Had the court known of my predilection for blacks, I might
of course have been debarred as interpreter.
In spring '63 my army life and interpreting career came
to an end. Having requested an overseas discharge, I was determined to
make the most of the coming summer of freedom by traveling all over Europe
in my black beetle.
For a start I took my girlfriend Helga to England, while already thinking
of taking her back to America with me in the fall, married or not. But
somewhere along the line I got cold feet and the informal engagement was
off. I told Helga during a stop in Paris on the way back. She cried, but
not for long. A few weeks later she started going out with my brother
at Bonn.
He in turn bequeathed his former girlfriend to me, a sexy
blonde called Barbara. Told by him, I hadn't actually slept with Helga,
she tried her best to seduce me. We even spent a night together at a hotel.
But though finding Barbara extremely attractive, I didn't want to sleep
with her. Could I not at least undress her she said; she liked to be looked
at. Fool that I was, I said no. The opportunity didn't arise again, with
a different girl, for another five years, in San Francisco. With a different
outcome, this story will be the subject of a future installment.
I spent the rest of the summer at St. Tropez with two American
friends, a gay couple. One was called Redvers, black like my New York
friend Ronald (also spending the summer in Europe, though we only met
once), the other Bradley, scion of a Boston Brahmin family and an artist.
Brad painted portraits, of his friends mostly, in highly realistic fashion,
so real they looked almost like photographs. Tall and thin, with sallow
complexion and a mop of black hair, he looked every inch the artist and
liked dressing up in the fashion of the Belle Époque, wearing extravagant
suits with colorful cravats, and a straw hat with ribbon. Shorter and
stockier than him, but with lovely skin the color of ebony, Redvers also
liked dressing up.
The two together really were a sight. Thus attired they
would dine with me, underdressed in comparison, at the most expensive
restaurants they could find. Fluent in French, Redvers did the ordering
while Bradley as a rule paid. Once however, I ended up paying for the
three of us gay musketeers, a horrendous bill. Served me right I suppose
for sponging off them.