McKinley upon graduating from bootcamp
The early 1960s was a different world than our modern, pandemic stricken time.
Memories of World War II and Korea were still fresh in the minds of Americans as news coverage of a distant land called Vietnam began to take up more of Walter Cronkite's CBS Evening News during the decade.
Locally it might have looked a lot like the movie Stand By Me in that the events of South East Asia and Europe seemed far removed from Canoe, Alabama.
Meanwhile, in the basement of the Atmore Post Office, the United States Army had a recruiter and his door was darkened by my dad, Henry McKinley (he had recently turned 18), on April 16, 1962. He had signed up to be a heavy equipment operator but the needs of the Army prevailed and, after boot camp at Fort Gordon, Georgia, he was sent for training at a signal battalion school. He shipped out to Germany aboard the USS Rose which was a WWII era ship which regularly transported servicemen back and forth across the Atlantic. He was assigned to the 25th Signal Battalion in Karlsruhe, West Germany near the Black Forest.
The Cold War was red hot and the chances of a confrontation with the Soviet Union were great. Just 8 months before he enlisted, the Berlin Wall had gone up in Berlin. The wall divided that city and ensnared its war weary residents. Germany was less than 20 years removed from the end of WWII and ruins, bombed out bunkers, and the memories of the recent past were everywhere.
While my dad was in Germany, several pivotal events occurred in the world. The Cuban Missile Crisis unfolded from October 16-28, 1962. In this epic standoff, the US and the USSR came as close as they ever would to mutual nuclear annihilation. "Our officers gathered us and took us into the Black Forest to await the outcome," stated McKinley. "At the time, it was said that the Warsaw Pact could overrun Western Europe in 90 minutes, and we were prepared to fight with our rifles, side arms and .50 caliber machine guns," added McKinley.
President Kennedy visited West Germany and Berlin while my dad was in Germany. "Kennedy gave a speech near our base and we were all present to hear his remarks, I was part of a company detail which carried the flags and banners of our regiment," said McKinley.
Later in the trip, Kennedy gave his immortal "Ich bin ein Berliner" ( "I am a Berliner") speech at the Berlin Wall, to a crowd of 450,000 people on June 26, 1963.
On November 22, 1963, Henry McKinley and several friends were in Karlsruhe, enjoying a night on the town, when German police forces entered the establishment and told all the servicemen to return to base in that President John F. Kennedy had been shot. "I thought they were kidding," stated McKinley.
"No one knew what had happened, or who was responsible in those early hours after Kennedy's assassination, and there was talk of a Soviet attack. The units were quickly gathered and moved towards the border with East Germany in order to defend against a possible attack which never came," he added.
For my dad, Karlsruhe was a universe away from Canoe. There was political intrigue in the form of protestors who opposed the Americans, Soviet officers on official business traveling near the base, conversations with buddies as to who really killed General Patton, trips into the countryside and the boredom of garrison life. "During the winters we would sometimes be ordered to sand down the paint job on a Duce and a Half truck, paint it, and then do the whole thing over again just to stay busy," he said.
Yet there were fun times in Western Europe as well. "A friend of mine, Billy Earl Thomas, from Bogalusa, Louisiana, and myself would sometimes walk into France to eat, and we went to Amsterdam, as well as other points of interest," said McKinley.
"On one occasion me and some guys found our way into a boarded up castle, it was a very old structure, made of stone, no windows, and we made our way, to what we thought was the dungeon, but it may have been a root cellar. We went to several old places like that while I was there," added Henry.
Henry McKinley was also on a rifle team which competed across the region on behalf of the 25th Battalion. "I qualified as Expert three separate times and our Major asked me to join the rifle team," he added.
This wiry old Major was known for keeping a stuffed fox in his desk and when someone found himself before him for some infraction of the rules, he would place the stuffed fox on his desk before beginning his meeting with the offender and make the statement, "You can't outfox the Old Fox young man."
McKinley noted the challenges of being on the team. "We competed in a variety of weather conditions such as the time we competed as a heavy snow was falling. The captain of our rifle team, Sgt. Rodgers, asked me if I had radar in that I was able to hit the target even as the snow obscured our vision; yet the snow was falling in waves and I would simply wait between the waves of snowfall to fire and thereby hit the bullseye every time."
Shortly before his return home, he developed pneumonia while at a competition in Italy and spent some time in the hospital. His enlistment was up on April 6, 1965 and he was anxious to return home. "I was two weeks late leaving Germany, the ship I was due to embark on, the USS Rose, had collided with the RMS Queen Elizabeth and we had to wait on the USS Patch to pick us up.
That was the beginning of a rocky trip home, in that the Patch was in rough seas seemingly all the way to New York City. "If you needed the salt while in the galley, it didn't require getting up from your seat, just set still long enough and the salt shaker would come to you," he was referring to the rough conditions as the ship pitched and rolled in the tall waves battering the ship and sending salt and pepper shakers and any unsecured items flying across the tables.
"After docking in New York City, I took a turbo prop from New York to Mobile, and a Greyhound Bus to Atmore, where my Father was waiting to pick me up," said McKinley. He married Helen Driskell in April 1966, I came along a few years later. He bought a house for $200 in 1968 (which had belonged to Dr. Abernathy's cook) and moved the house to Canoe/Robinsonville where a lot of work made it a home. He got another house, for free, in 1975, and moved it to the homeplace as well and made a home for my grandmother McKinley and my Driskell grandparents as well (my McKinley grandfather had passed in 1973).
Time has a way of putting all things in perspective and so our lives are weighed as to what we accomplish and how we lived. Today, my dad is 76 and has lived most of his life at Canoe, Alabama.
After his time in the Army he worked as a carpenter, originally working for Leonard Wiggins of Walnut Hill, Florida and others, as well as having his own crew at one point. Cleveland Boatwright, Mack Harrison, Ralph Lowery and my dad, all from Canoe, were some of the local carpenters back in the 1970s and they were much sought after among people wanting additions to homes, new homes or other structures.
My dad often points out houses, barns and other structures he either built or helped others build during his career as we are driving to doctor appointments or other places. I also remember folks like Lester Godwin, a carpenter from Bratt, Florida who would come over after work sometimes. They'd look at the garden and talk shop. Lester was a WWII veteran, a kindly gentlemen who always had time for a small child like myself, in that I was probably 4 or 5 years old at the time, and even then I hung on every word of his stories from his time in the South Pacific.
Later my dad bought his own semi and was an owner operator trucker and travelled the East Coast for 30 years hauling loads from Container, Jefferson Smurfit, Smurfit Stone and eventually GP. As a kid, we were never rich, never affluent or well connected; but we never went hungry, never asked for a hand out, paid our bills and his work ethic set an example for others to follow.
Quote for the week: "Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away." Book of James 4:14
