Fred's Ramblings

I belong to a Facebook group that deals with my Air Force days and recently there was a post that asked who had been stationed at Aviano AB in Italy. That brought back a memory…After graduating from my Air Force tech school, I was given a set of orders that would have sent me to Aviano AB. The air base is a little northeast of Venice which placed it within a 4 hour drive from where I was born.

Unfortunately, my orders were changed when the Consolidated Base Personnel Office (CBPO) realized that I was still an Italian citizen, and re-assigned me to Ramstein AB in Germany. I had mixed feelings about all that because I did not want to go overseas to begin with, but figured that at Aviano, I would at least be able to speak the language when I went off base. In retrospect, the Air Force did the right thing because at the time (and perhaps now also), going off base posed a threat to me that involved the Italian government “kidnapping” me and placing me in their Army. As an Italian citizen, I had an obligation to serve in the military for an 18 month period beginning at age 18. I had just graduated from high school in the US so I was technically considered a deserter in the Italian army when I did not show up for my obligatory stint in the army.

Going to Ramstein AB proved to be a great move for me because once I got used to being overseas, I couldn’t imagine a better assignment. This was in the late ’60s, everything was cheap and Ramstein is in a very central location that allowed me to travel all over Europe. As an added bonus, I met my late wife there and the rest is history. I wonder what would have happened if I had stayed in Aviano…