[SECC] Rememberances of K4GA from AA6US

[Dan/W4NTI]

Thanks for sharing that John.

Dan/W4NTI

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Laney" <k4bai at worldnet.att.net>
To: "secc" <secc at contesting.com>
Sent: Wednesday, April 06, 2005 4:35 PM
Subject: [SECC] Rememberances of K4GA from AA6US


> John,
>
> I met Archie when the two of us arrived at Ft. Devens, MA, in late 1957,
> as Army privates enrolled in the communications intercept school of the
> Army Security Agency. Both of us preferred joining the Army for three
> interesting years involved in clandestine communications work vis a vis
> being drafted as rifle-toting infantrymen. Archie was a very skinny kid,
> skinner than even I, back in those halcyon days. He had an impish grin
> that would crawl across his face when something struck him funny. I was
> a Southern California boy who had never met someone from the Deep South
> before.
>
> Archie and I and two others completed our ASA schooling, and then were
> shocked to discover we had been assigned to the Third Infantry Division,
> then at Ft. Benning, and about to "Gyro" to Germany. The four of us were
> upset because (A) we had no idea why we should be placed in an infantry
> division, and (B) we wanted the "hi-tech" atmosphere regular ASA guys
> experience in their clandestine listening posts surrounded by great
> racks of communications gear.
>
> We were packed on a train and taken south to Ft. Benning. In those days
> train travel was luxurious, even for soldiers. I still recall my night's
> sleep in a very soft upper berth as being one of the best nights of
> sleep I've ever had. When we arrived at Ft. Benning Archie helped me
> learn to enjoy to life in the South, which was very different from
> California. Three months later we boarded a troop ship and crossed the
> North Atlantic.
>
> Archie and I and our two compatriots quickly discovered that our
> assignment to the Third Infantry division was serendipitous indeed. We
> were assigned to the signal battalion with an "M.O.S." of Direction
> Finder. And we instantly appreciated the fact that all four of us were
> holding E-5 slots! Sure enough, we all rocketed from PFC to Spec-5 with
> six months. Archie made SP-5 a week earlier than I, and he never let me
> forget it!
>
> Being 18 or 19 and exploring postwar Germany was heaven indeed. Archie
> and I spent two years playing in and around the fair city of Wurzburg.
> Both of us learned to speak quite good German, which the frauleins
> appreciated. And since our "secret" work was off-limits to all but two
> or three signal officers, we really had a cushy job. We'd go out on
> maneuvers in the countryside and set up our DF van and really do nothing
> more than play around! We never did get an assignment from above as to
> what we should do! Nobody knew. It was "Snafu" in the best sense of the
> word! I remember one day Archie and I were sunning ourselves shirtless
> next to our van. Suddenly Archie said, "Larry! get up! Stand at
> attention!" I said, wha--what?" "Just get up!" I then saw why. An
> olive-drab car had chugged up to our spot, and there was a star on the
> license plate! Both Archie and I, half naked, stood at attention
> delivering stern salutes. Apparently we got it right for from within the
> car a shadowy figure in back returned our salutes, and then the car was
> gone.
>
> Finally the day came when it was time to go home. Again we took a troop
> ship, but this time we were holding a little rank, and our sleeping
> accommodations were considerably improved over our trip over. And when
> we docked in New York we all swore, the way high school and college
> students do on graduation day---we'd stay in touch forever! Of course we
> didn't.
>
> I don't recall Archie and I discussing becoming ham radio operators. But
> as I learned from Archie years later he got his first ticket in the
> early sixties. For me it came later---got mine in 1977 at the age of 
> forty.
>
> About seven or eight years ago I got a letter in the mail. It was from
> Archie. He'd run across my name while searching through some callsigns.
> Was I the same Larry Forbes from the Army days? Indeed I was. We had a
> few phone calls and some snail mail, and not long after that e-mail
> started up, and Archie and I became closer than ever.
>
> Just about every day for the last few years the first thing I looked for
> in the morning was a new e-mail from "Mckay." Since both of us became
> writers---Archie in the newspaper business and I in the advertising
> business, we enjoyed writing long e-mails to each other. We shared our
> most secret feelings and thoughts and opinions with each other. We
> discussed a lot of ham radio stuff, or course. But we also forayed into
> politics and much else, including our day-to-day activities.
>
> Archie had a lot of health problems. He'd had a bypass, and he'd had a
> bout of colon cancer. We discussed  a lot of medical stuff. I believe
> strongly in lots of vitamins and in particular fish oil for heart
> disease. I urged Archie for at least two years to get on the fish oil
> program, and he indulged my exhortations but always gently told me that
> his doctors knew best. Like Archie said, it was the luck of the draw,
> and heart disease ran in his family. He also told me he thought his
> clogged arteries were due to a decades-long diet of greasy Southern
> fried food. Archie had ten stents in his arteries, and he received his
> eleventh stent last year.
>
> Archie's daughter Jan decided to write a book about house musicians
> working and living in Las Vegas. Archie and Cuba had just last year
> completed a book about Rabun County. So in early January of this year he
> and Cuba drove to Jan and her husband's place outside of Vegas. Archie's
> e-mails became somewhat fewer than daily, but I ascribed this to his
> work interviewing for the book. He had set up a ham station there but it
> didn't quite seem to work right.
>
> The about ten days ago I received an e-mail from an unfamiliar
> addressee. Turned out Archie was in a hospital in Las Vegas and had
> borrowed a laptop from a hospital worker to let me know what was going
> on. He said he'd been having some dizzy spells, but it was no big deal.
> Then around ten days ago he wrote me to tell me had had gotten out of
> the hospital and was feeling better. He suggested we get together soon
> on forty meters.
>
> Then the messages stopped. He'd had problems setting up a reliable
> computer arrangement there in Nevada, and so I figured his computer was
> not getting the e-mails out, because some he'd sent me earlier were
> never received, and vice-versa.
>
> I felt uneasy though. Once he'd reached Nevada, his emails didn't seem
> to have that old "spark" in them. I grimly thought that one day I'd get
> an e-mail from "Mckay," only it would be from Cuba, bearing the news I
> dreaded to hear.
>
> That e-mail came last Friday morning. Archie had died the night before.
> Quickly, and apparently painlessly.
>
> Archie didn't seem to have a mean bone in his body. In our e-mails I'd
> sometimes go into diatribes about things going on that made me mad, but
> Archie's responses were always calm and collected, never wild and crazy
> like mine.
>
> I have most every e-mail Archie ever sent me, stored. I can't bear to go
> back and look at them right now. That last e-mail he sent was about a
> week ago. It was short by his normal standards. In it he mentioned that
> when he got back home he was going to see if his doctors couldn't find a
> way to lighten up on the heavy load of medications he was taking.
>
> Archie will never be far from my mind. He was just a couple of months
> older than I and his death has reminded me of my own mortality. He was
> also the second very close friend of mine to die prematurely. Both of
> them were the most decent and kindest persons I ever met.
>
> There does seem to be truth to the saying that the good die young.
>
> Larry Forbes, AA6US
>
>
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