Bad Aibling was also unique in that it happened to be the same location my mother's brother was held as a POW during WWII. I went to the approximate area of the airfield where he said his POW camp had been located, which was a huge grassy field approximately sixty acres. Intuitively searching it, I found an area with numerous belt-buckles and buttons from U.S. Army Air Forces uniforms buried in the dirt. He had told me about how bad the conditions had been in the camp toward the end of the war, about the starvation, and the cold. I can't imagine what it must have been like being trapped behind barbed wire for years, surrounded with what appear to be insurmountable mountain peaks, covered with year-round snow. He luckily didn't know that no one in the family knew that he was a POW. He had been reported missing in action, fate unknown. Over those years, my aunt never left her house, knowing that he was still alive, regardless of what anyone said to her. Maybe an intuitive nature is inherited?
For me, it was very comfortable living right on the edge of the Tyrolean Alps. So, I spent weekends climbing in the mountains, skiing the glaciers, hiking in the forests, and drinking a lot of beer. (My uncle did ask me to urinate in the Rhine for him, which I graciously did, and I sent him a picture, my back to the camera, a fine yellow stream arching into the water.)
After about a year, I walked into the border site commander's office and volunteered for border site duty. Eventually I was assigned as commander of a small border site near Passau, Germany, in Bavaria. There I managed a detachment of eighteen individuals doing classified border site work a hundred miles from the nearest American base. At the time, I was both the youngest and the least ranking border site commander in Europe. It was an awesome responsibility that I took very seriously.
The detachment sat on the outskirts of a village called Pocking, which lay due east of Munich along the Rott River and was predominantly a rural place of multi-century-old farms and stone buildings. It was a tough job for me, because I was younger than most of the personnel assigned, but outranked them. I was also the only person assigned who was married. There had been a great deal of reluctance to assign such a young man to this duty, but they felt that since I was married, it would probably balance out. As it turned out, this assignment was doubly tough on my newlywed wife. Aside from occasional detachment parties, there was not another English-speaking person around for a radius of a hundred miles. I was leaving Sue for extended periods of time alone in the apartment in town, where she had to fend for herself, a tough test of any marriage, never mind a new one.
Time we spent together was always with German nationals, or German senior noncommissioned officers and their wives. They were always very friendly and quite charming, opening their homes to us in friendship, but Sue was never comfortable. As a young wife who had trouble with the language, she appeared to become more and more shy about outside contact.
It was also hard being in charge of a remote detachment while having a family. All of the other men assigned were single, and my wife was a very beautiful young woman. So, attending the detachment parties was very stressful, especially for me. I understood my men, so it wasn't jealousy that made me wary. I also knew my wife was spending long hours alone, a serious situation under any circumstance.
It may sound as though I had very little time for my family life. Well . . . this is true. The demands of an active intelligence mission required days that sometimes exceeded eighteen hours, and there was always some form of crisis. The entire situation really sucked, and having done this sort of thing for twenty years, I can now understand why they've always said, "If the Army wanted you to have a wife, they would issue you one." Any man who has a career in the military and retires with the same woman he started out with should kneel before her feet and worship her forever, as she probably has more grit than he does.
While I was assigned to Pocking as the detachment commander in 1970, I experienced something that changed me profoundly and permanently. I had what can be called a classic Near Death Experience (NDE).
One Friday evening in July, I met my wife and another man from the detachment at a small gasthouse (a bed and breakfast, usually with a restaurant) across the Inn River in a town called Braunau am Inn. We were meeting for dinner. We ordered before-dinner drinks. After taking a couple of sips from my drink, I began to feel quite nauseated. Not wanting to be sick in the restaurant, I excused myself and tried to move outside. When I got to the front door and attempted to push it open, there was a sound like a pop and I found myself standing on the cobblestone road out front, watching with curiosity as the rain passed through my hands.v
Events then unfolded as though I were just outside the boundaries of reality. My initial fears departed and were quickly replaced with curiosity. I drifted over to see what the commotion by the door was all about and found myself staring down at my own body, laying half in and half out of the gutter. I watched as my friend pulled me up into his lap and attempted to put his finger down my throat. I had gone into convulsions and he was attempting to keep me from swallowing my tongue. I found out later that he was unsuccessful and I had bitten halfway through his finger. I watched them load my body into a car, and followed alongside the car as they drove back across the border to Germany, and a hospital located in Passau. Once at the hospital, I quickly grew bored with what the doctor and nurses were doing to try to revive me. I felt as though I began drifting upward toward the ceiling, then gently rolling over backward, where I suddenly found myself falling into a wide tunnel opening.
The emergency room receded, growing smaller and dimmer in the distance as I accelerated downward into the tunnel. As it faded from sight, I attempted to turn my attention to where I was falling. But I seemed to lose focus at that point. I was suddenly feeling very warm all over, especially across the back of my neck. A tingling sensation washed over my entire being, almost like an electrical charge, but it wasn't at all unpleasant. The feelings kept growing inside me, until suddenly I entered a new space, which was filled with the whitest and brightest light I have ever experienced. I was overwhelmed with the sudden sense of joy, comfort, and love. I felt as though I had finally reached the ultimate destination, the one place where I could feel whole and complete, where I could simply be without any conditions, needs, or wants.
I then found myself reviewing my entire lifetime, good and bad. I saw all the ways in which I had failed myself or others. I experienced all the nonconstructive and noncreative aspects of my life up until that moment in time. It was just like reliving every single moment of my life up to that point, except that it went by incredibly fast. I became totally aware of all the feelings and intentions of all the people I had ever interacted with throughout my lifetime. When it was over, I was filled with the most incredible sorrow. Not so much sorrow for what I had missed or not done, but sorrow for all the times that I had misunderstood, thought wrongly or too quickly about someone, had not paid attention when they needed something from me that I could have given. It was intensely painful, yet very cleansing. And then I had an intense feeling of forgiveness flood over me. It was a feeling of love that flooded inward, washing over my soul, flushing away the corruption, the guilt, and stupidity.
At that point a voice in my mind said that I could not stay, that I had to go back. It was not time for me to die. I tried to argue with it, but to no avail. There was a second sudden popping noise and I sat up on the hospital bed and looked around.
The Army moved very quickly. So quickly in fact, that the men who worked for me in the Detachment thought I was dead.vi The next day, the military moved me to a private clinic in Munich and relocated my wife to military quarters on a base not far from there. I was forced to undergo numerous tests to determine how much damage had been done to my brain as a result of the event. I found out that after I had gone into convulsions and swallowed my tongue, I couldn't breathe, so it was not long after I stopped breathing that my heart stopped. I had arrived at the hospital in Passau clinically dead.
Being in the Munich clinic was frightening. I was ha
ving numerous spontaneous Out of the Body Experiences (OBEs) over which I had no control. I also noticed that I could read the minds of those tending me. I wasn't actually hearing them thinking, nor was I reading their thoughts verbatim, but I was picking up on the general gist or subject matter contained within their thoughts. It was almost like seeing through an upper layer to another layer underneath.
At first I tried talking about what was going on with some of the doctors and nurses. It quickly became apparent that they didn't believe me. I was learning that if I ever intended to get out of the clinic, I was going to have to at least act normal. So, I made a decision to keep the experiences to myself.
The only problem with this decision is that once you have had an NDE, it is almost impossible to act normal again. It alters the very color of the light in which you see things. In addition, I lost my fear of death and began to dig much deeper into the metaphysical world—something I was neither familiar nor comfortable with doing. I spent my free time searching out and reading some of the great philosophers' writings, and read copies of Judaism's Tanakh, Christianity's Apocrypha and New Testament, Islam's Qur'an, the Analects of Confucius, Hinduism's Rig Veda, and Buddhism's Dhammapada, which I admittedly gravitated toward the most. I even bought a set of the great books and started reading Homer, Plato, and Aristotle, picking my way through the 54 volumes. I found some of the writings of Madame Blavatsky, Jane Roberts (Seth), and Carlos Castaneda, although I had considerable difficulty assimilating all of the material into one naked ball of truth. Things that had previously been incredibly important to me became secondary or trivial. Parts of my character began to fade and be replaced with other elements that were totally strange to me. I began to actually look at reality in a totally different way. I used to pride myself on looking people directly in the eyes. But now, I was not only looking into their eyes,
I was seeing through to their souls. Not in a judgmental way, but with a different kind of compassion. It was as though my inner sight had suddenly become crystal clear, no longer filtered through my greater burden of old history, but somewhat enlightened by my newfound sources of knowledge.
After I was released from the rest home and declared okay, I was given another job in the city of Munich, working for military intelligence, until I rotated to my next assignment.
In the meantime, within the newfound clarity of my paranormal mind, I was able to discover who had doctored my drink that night at the gasthouse. I know who they are. They should know that while it was my choice that they should go unpunished, they should never take this a sign of weakness on my part. I know who they are and where they live even today. It is my choice to let the matter rest and not theirs.
Chapter Four
Reaching the Top
Leaving Germany, I left my wife at her home in Miami, while attending an advanced school back in Area G, at Fort Devens. This was not by her choice or mine. I was authorized a single move from Europe to my next assignment, and rather than have her sitting and waiting for me at the new base, I felt being close to her home, parents, and friends might help defuse some of the difficulties she suffered for three years in Germany. I would later find that this, too, was a mistake, but hindsight is a cruel master.
The school I was attending was only for four months and I only took it because my career adviser at Department of the Army said it would keep me in the United States. What he didn't tell me was that with the additional school, I would be eligible to work as a noncommissioned officer in plans and operations. After four months in the snow and ice of Massachusetts, instead of permanent orders to an Army base, I was given temporary orders to Vint Hill Farms Station, Virginia, where I was assigned to work as a senior NCO on special projects for both the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency. The only redeeming value in being assigned there was that I was able to be close to my wife when our son, Scott, was born.
Back then, I was not allowed to stay in the room during the actual birth, but I did get to hold him within the hour of his delivery. It was absolutely breathtaking. In my memory it was like holding a small, warm star in my palms—a segment of the universal energy. He was absolutely beautiful. (I must admit to hoping the flat area on the back of his head would eventually fill out, however.) I spent the first months of his life watching him grow. I still have near-perfect memories of his little body falling asleep on my stomach, face down, drooling small stains into my dress green uniform. But I was living in constant fear of being sent back to Southeast Asia. It was 1972 and it didn't seem likely that the war would ever end. I had career friends who were returning for their third tours, so I knew it was only a question of time. I'd sit on the edge of my bed in the darkness of night in fear of what was to come. I was both shattered and relieved when orders arrived, assigning me to up-country Thailand. I didn't even know we had troops in extreme northern Thailand. While it wasn't Vietnam, leaving Scott and Sue was like cutting my heart out with my own bayonet.
From the latter part of 1971 through early 1975, Thailand was a hotspot for intelligence operations in support of the war that was winding down in Vietnam. I was assigned to a unit outside of Udon Thani City, Thailand. My old buddy Steve from the Bahamas was also in the country at the time, but he was down south near the Bangkok airport, instructing Thai soldiers in special intelligence technologies.
The time I spent in Thailand was good and bad. The times I spent working (which I'm not free to discuss) were terrible, but when I was not working I was able to spend time living in one of the local villages. The moments shared with the people of that northern region are still etched deeply within my mind and soul. Just across the Mekong River to the north of Vientiane in Laos, a secret war was being successfully waged against overwhelming odds. Had we used the same methods of warfare in the Republic of Vietnam, I cannot help but think things would have ended differently there.
My time in Thailand provided me with almost a natural backdrop to the pursuit of the metaphysical. The mountain people, whom I had the opportunity to live with off and on, were very much into the magical and mystical. The very way that birds would alight on trees told them stories about where they should hunt or when and where they should move.
My journey there opened new doors into an understanding of Buddhism, living myth, and the shaman rituals of animistic teaching. I learned there is real power to inscribing a prayer on your skin with a ballpoint pen, or tying a protective talisman made from bones and feathers, or even simple string, around your upper arm. I learned that the heart of any man is worth no more or no less than another, and that some hearts in the smallest bodies are greater than those in the largest.
The village I lived in for some time (whenever I was not working) had numerous young children running naked in the clearing.
They used to point at me and call me names that roughly equated to specter or ghost, because my skin was not as dark as theirs. The kids used to try and rub through to the darker skin they were sure existed just beneath the surface layer. They would hold their breath when I bathed in the river, waiting to see the paleness slide off my body.
As a singular example of what a small world this really is that we all share, I'll jump ahead for a moment. In 1998, I underwent my second open-heart surgery. It was aggravated by a number of complications, so I spent a few extra days in the intensive care unit at the University of Virginia Hospital. One night, late, after shift change, the night nurse entered my unit to do her normal tasks. I recognized her as being Thai, so as best I could from a half-lying-down position, I raised my hands in a gesture of prayer above my forehead and bowed in formal greeting. "Sa'wa'dee Krop," I exclaimed.
She was very flattered that I recognized her as being Thai and responded in kind with a smile and a like greeting. I asked her from where in Thailand she had come and she told me it was a very small village, too small for anyone outside of northern Thailand to know of it. I pressed her anyway. To my total surprise, she said she was from the very village I lived in so many year
s before.
It was very endearing and quite emotional to know that one of those little kids who had once sat naked on my lap under jungle trees in northern Thailand was tending the high-tech equipment on which my life now depended.
I had my second near-death experience while assigned there. We had a field doctor whose automatic cure for almost anything was a shot of penicillin, usually nine million units, given in the buttocks with a 20-gauge needle. I woke up one morning running a slight fever and had the chills. I reported to him and received his normal cure. Over the next week I progressively got worse. I reached a point where I could no longer keep water down. My state of dehydration was so bad that I couldn't sit up in my cot. An Air America pilot friend with whom I had done some drinking rescued me, flying me to Bangkok in an antique DC-3. He had me delivered by ambulance to the American Tropical Disease Center, a converted four-star hotel. I was diagnosed with Hepatitis B. I spent almost three months flat on my back getting shots of an experimental drug under the skin or in opposite hands every morning. When I was discharged, they moved me to a Buddhist nunnery, where I recuperated. I had wasted away to about 129 pounds. The nuns fed me some of the rankest teas I've ever drunk, but eventually got me to a point where I could walk. When I returned to the unit, I was ordered to stay in the main base and only work half days. I also had to follow a very strict diet that lasted two years—no beer, tea, booze, or milk, and a severely reduced fat, meat, and oil intake. It was difficult.
During my tour in Thailand I was promoted to sergeant first class, after which I immediately applied for warrant officer. My application was turned down, because they said I was too young. I was 27 years of age, and had nine years of service, all (aside from my time in schools) spent overseas, a circumstance that was not about to change. After a couple of months pushing papers in the Mission Command and Control Management Office, I left Thailand.
The Stargate Chronicles: Memoirs of a Psychic Spy Page 8
