A Sort Of History of BMH Iserlohn

nobby clark wrote:

I get real German Bratwurst,Bockwurst and Frikadellen from ALDI or LIDL here in Manchester,plus of course DAB or any other German pils on offer.

Funny you should mention Frikadellen nobby. Just recently down the street from our place there's a bakery/deli (The Bake Oven) I have discovered serves a Frikadellen. Been buying my raisin bread there for years and only just noticed this.

Also yesterday a friend of our took us out to the other side of the city to a newly opened German bakery (The Crusty Bun) first time in my life in Canada that I've had a Wasser Brochen as I remember them.Crisp on the out side and angle soft inside. The bakery was originaly to open up in our part of city which has a large German pop. but zoning wouldn't let it. But I noticed that it didn't stop many German speakng couples being at this location. We had lunch there and it was a steady line up all the time I was there of people getting real German baked goods. We're also fortunate in having a German Gasthause here that serves wonderful authentic German food. The only one of it's kind that I have found so far.

[quote="Stephen Lock"]

Stephen wrote:

I don't at all remember a daughter. . . .

I think she was quickly hidden away at the slightest sniff of a Canadian Accent

[quote="Gwynno"]

Stephen Lock wrote:

Stephen wrote:

I don't at all remember a daughter. . . .

I think she was quickly hidden away at the slightest sniff of a Canadian Accent

Oh dear... We weren't that bad were we Gynno.

Though I do remember a time in the UK on leave when I was not to be trusted around the bride on her honey moon at a B&B I was staying at. Situation was like this. An older couple and younger couple. Older couple was parents of the groom. The groom slept with his father in one room. The bride with the mother-in-law in the other room. Father-in-law or M-in-L would watch over the bride if I was about. My land lady knew me well. We both enjoyed a hearty giggle over that one. My land ladies daughter was married to my mate.

Only jesting, I have family in Vancouver and Powell River and I'd be lynched if I said otherwise ;¬)

Great story re protecting the B2B from you.

I wander how many Canadian/British servicemen found true love with a local German girl, it must have been a reasonable %. And then how many like yourself found that the Fatherland was more like home than home ?

I felt, and still feel, an affinity with Germany and recall one New Years Eve been invited back from a pub to a German Families home and being made most welcome. I recall thair Opah (sp) grandad sat in his chair having just one leg and how he told us tales of days in the war and how he lost his leg but felt no grudge whatsoever. Quite remarkable.

So what branch of the SS would you have joined ... Jewish Welcome Wagon. In my day in Germany, 1951, just 6 years after the war, fraternizing with the 'enemy' was still frowned upon, they did not like us and after being on the sharp end of the daunted Luftwaffe during the Southampton Blitz and loosing two uncles to the Kreigsmarine, I did not like them. But I suppose time dims many an eye and the younger soldier serving in Germany perhaps tended to forget why we were there in the first place, and don't tell me it was to stop the Russians, that came later.

Len (Ciphers)

Len - humble apologies, no upset intended

I guess for any teenager this time of your life is the most influential and one where you look back most and say if only I could have that time again. It then depends on which decade you were a teenager, what was going on in the world at that time and how much suffering you endured/saw as to whether these were good times or bad.

Luckily for me my teenage years were the 70's and in Germany at that time times were good. And you are spot on, the younger soldier in Germany at that time was, on the whole, probably having the time of his life.

So, apologies again - naive comment, wish I'd pondered a little more.

Gwyn

No offence taken Gwyn and no apologies required, your last 6 words sum it up adequately. Germany as a geographic location is, and here I agree with you, a great place to visit and possibly live in todays world ... but give me Canada any day ..

Len (Ciphers)

Gwynno wrote:

I wander how many Canadian/British servicemen found true love with a local German girl, it must have been a reasonable %. And then how many like yourself found that the Fatherland was more like home than home ?
.

Funny you mention about German wives. Only a Canadian soldier who did two tours in Germany would meet his German wife in Canada. Yeah, that's how I did it.

Len,

I agree British Columbia is rather a special place. I have family who live just down the road from you in Nanaimo, now moved up to Powell River, wonderful place, wonderful people and incredible extremes of climate.

I live in Wales and I wouldn't anywhere else - if for no other reason for me its home. So I guess its true home is where your heart is. Or, for some, where the wife tells you it is.

Take care,

Gwyn

Gwyn I agree about the weather extremes, saw on the news last night that the Cariboo district had snow in the morning and 23 degrees celsius in the afternoon. We in the Fraser Valley are lucky we do not get the extreme weather conditions, more like Hampshire where I hail from although I have been in Canada since 1966.

Len (Ciphers)

hi guys,just to add to what was said earlier.i was 19 and 4 days old when i arrived in my first german posting(HEMER)after 3 and a half years at see i had seen a bit of the world and was chuffed i had got the job in germany.the young people my age kept on saying sorry all the time for their forefathers part in the war.the older men i met in the local bars all said they only fought on the russian front and were not nazis.after being there a few years(including dating german girls)i learned differant.one of my german landlords even showed me his photos of him and his mates in ww2.he said all of them were party members.they were all from hemer,iserlohn,altona and the local villages.they still met up once a month for a drink to the *good old days*. could go on for ever about what i saw and heard.anyway to finish,we all have our own take on life in germany.

Hardrations wrote:

Stephen I well remember MLS but CLFEX? it was CANEX still is, I just checked on Google to make sure. Hope you don't mind me correcting you on this.

Hmmmm...I am, of course, also familiar with "CANEX" but I could have sworn that, at one time in its history, it was also known as "CLFEX" (which, I have in my head, probably stood for Canadian Land Forces EXchange). Ah well, perhaps my memory isn't as...uhm...as...ahh...what? Who is this? LOL

Hardrations wrote:

A curry wurst, pomm frits and an Iserlohener Pills made a Canadian soldiers idea of a great square meal. I have learned over here to get the Thurnigeau wurst for them and have made my own curry sauce. The standard for curry sauce in Germany unfortunately has dropped from my experience in the past year or two. Incidentally a lady from Soest who married a Canadian soldier (she's much older than me) tells me that the Curry Wurst was brought to Soest by the Belgian soldiers and wasn't a German invention. Hard to find a real German Imbiss now, seem to be all Spanish, Turkish, Hungarian, Check, Polish, etc.

You're quite right re what constituted a great square meal for Canadian soldiers (and not a few Canadian teenagers, I might add!). I'm guessing it wasn't too different for the squaddies....

Curry sauce, in my day, was quite spicy and thick but even then (circa 1970) there was a movement to create "curry sauce" out of some pre-packaged concoction (add water and stir...ugh...). Cheaper and more convenient, so of course it went downhill from there.

I wasn't aware of the role the Belgiques played in introducing Currywurst to Soest...I just sort of assumed it was a cultural cross-over thing introduced by Hungarian and Turkish gastarbeiters. Certainly Ziguener Schnitzel (Gypsy Schnitzel) was. Loved that. And Jaegerschnitzel as well.

I rather suspected the traditional German schnell-imbiss, run by Germans, has gradually disappeared and not at all surpised it has been taken over by Turks, Spanish, Hungarian, Yugoslavs, Czechs etc., as those nationalities tended to make up the majority of gastarbeiters many of whom stayed on and produced families. The next generation "moved on" from the manual labour of their fathers and into small businesses -- opening and operating a schnell-imbiss would be a relatively cheap start in business.

Gwynno wrote:

Len - humble apologies, no upset intended

I guess for any teenager this time of your life is the most influential and one where you look back most and say if only I could have that time again. It then depends on which decade you were a teenager, what was going on in the world at that time and how much suffering you endured/saw as to whether these were good times or bad.

Luckily for me my teenage years were the 70's and in Germany at that time times were good. And you are spot on, the younger soldier in Germany at that time was, on the whole, probably having the time of his life.

I would agree with Gwyn on this. My time in Germany was also as a teenager in the 70s and, while I was quite aware of the Nazi past and understood the NATO forces in Germany were, by and large, an army of occupation, it certainly didn't interfere with my experience of Germany or Germans.

I can recall only one instance in which my being a Canadian (or, probably more correctly, NOT a German) was an issue and that was with some rather corpulent under-educated bricklayer/mason named Willie who lived in a dark little hovel in some small village just south of Soest with whom I worked. Quite bluntly, Willie was an asshole....regardless of nationality. He didn't like Canadians, he didn't like the Brits and he for sure didn't like the Italians or Greeks or Yugoslavs we had working alongside us (not many, granted).

Neither I nor my parents ever perceived the Germans from whom we rented accomodation or interacted with as "the enemy."

Of course, the Hemer/Iserlohn/Altena/Hoennetal area, and I now know also the Soest area, were quite strongly "Party" which is why, I suppose, we were stationed there but I never encountered any of that.

As Gywn points out, for those of us who were lucky enough to live in Germany in the 1970s, it proved to be one of the most defining, if not 'the' most defining, period of our lives.

Gwynno wrote:

So, apologies again - naive comment, wish I'd pondered a little more.

Gwyn

Why? You were speaking from your own experience, which like mine, was positive. Not a thing wrong with that....

ciphers wrote:

So what branch of the SS would you have joined ... Jewish Welcome Wagon. In my day in Germany, 1951, just 6 years after the war, fraternizing with the 'enemy' was still frowned upon, they did not like us and after being on the sharp end of the daunted Luftwaffe during the Southampton Blitz and loosing two uncles to the Kreigsmarine, I did not like them. But I suppose time dims many an eye and the younger soldier serving in Germany perhaps tended to forget why we were there in the first place, and don't tell me it was to stop the Russians, that came later.

Len (Ciphers)

I find this unduly harsh.

It is understood, and appreciated, that you being posted to Germany so soon after the war that there was residual distrust, dislike, whatever term you might wish to apply, between British and Germans.

My maternal grandparents, who did visit us in Germany from Canada, were deeply suspicious of Germans who they perceived as "Huns" and worse. Their experience visiting us in Germany and actually meeting individuals we knew and who had been very good to us altered some of that prejudice. I don't think this necessarily translated into forgiveness of what Nazi Germany did (including Blitzkrieg, which my Nana also lived through) with everyone linking arms and singing Kumbaya around a campfire or anything, but it did help her realize -- as did we -- that your average German was not a Nazi and that living under that totalitarian regime, even if they voted the NSAP into power, was not what they had bargained for. That, in fact, it was a period of profound fear for many, and rightly so. Gestapo would just as easily show up at your door and cart you off to God-knows-where as anybody's.

That Gywn's -- and others' -- experience differed from yours is hardly cause to suggests 'joining the SS.'

Steve,

My experience in Germany like yours was positive and I like many people made an effort to mix with local people and learn the language (well enough to be able understand what John Wayne was saying in those poorly dubbed American Westerns). I enjoyed exploring German culture, yes I even linked arms and swayed side to side in a bar to an umpa band during a Shutzen Fest. I was never aware that the region was "quite strongly party" and why should I have ? and would I have cared ?

I lived in several towns including: Celle, Iserlohn, Munster, then finally Hemer. My dad was not in the army during these years he was an auditor with NAAFI so I felt no real direct comradeship with any particular regiment, unlike my friends whose dads were in the army and felt a strong affiliation to a particular regiment.

My dad was in the War though and he saw terrible things that kept him awake some nights which he would never talk to his family about. Yet he felt no bitterness towards the Germans whom he said were just doing their duty to their country. My sentiments in my in my previous message reflected this and I make no apologies for what I said. However, other peoples experiences might have been more personal than mine because they were there and they saw things first hand. So whilst I was surprised that people still felt this way towards germans I felt maybe I hadn't considered how my comments might have come across to these people. Hence Len asking me which Branch of the SS would I have joined - which I felt was hurtful but obviously reflected his strong views towards germans.

So my apology was for not considering any ill feeling that might still exist, certainly not for having the time of my life mixing with both British and German people.

nice to see a thread running well on this brill site.we are all a bit older now but i think our time in germany was charecter building at least.as i have said on other threads on this site i played for local football teams and for the ad hoc team we had at the bmh.i even played in tournaments down in the mosel most summers staying in luftwaffe camps down there.as hosts you could not fault them.theres only a couple of years differance in age between me and gwyn so i think i know where he is coming from.though i only worked with him for the one summer and it was a long time ago i can fully understand and agree on his memories of being a young lad in germany during those heady days of the 70s...graham.

hi gwyn,must have been posting at the same time.well said mate.graham...

got my daughter coming up from london in acouple of weeks(she was born in bmh iserlohn)she is looking forward to seeing all the talk of iserlohn ,hemer and soest where she once lived.(e mailed those photos you sent me stephen to her).i hope she goes onto this site while she is here as she bombards me with millions of questions about what was it like when she lived in germany.she was only 3 when she left.graham.

Well I appear to have stirred a 'hornets nest' with my comments to Gwyn .. makes for a lively forum .. but I assure you I am not anti German or anti anything, what I was pointing out was that his feelings to the 'Fatherland' as he put it would not have been tolerated in my day. It would be foolish in the extreme for me to suggest that every German was a Nazi and I realize that after 13 years of pre war propaganda most of the school kids would have been indoctrinated with the Nazi dictates, and that to oppose it would have had dire consequences, however closing ones eyes to what transpired over the years 1932 - 1945 is also naive.
To close, I never met a member of the Nazi Party or the SS while I served in Germany, every one I met either served on the Russian Front, or were Austrian ... anyone want to buy a battleship ..

Len (Ciphers)

Graham,

On a lighter note . . .

My brother Gareth was also born in BMH Iserlohn, way back in 1964. I hope your daughter enjoys our memories. Some of my fondest memories of living in Iserlohn were Christmas times it always seemed to snow which helped make christmas so special.

Every year an army sergeant, Tug Wilson (do you think that was his real name), used to make all the squaddies empty their pockets of change and he would buy all army officers children a small gift and deliver them on christmas eve to our houses. Can you imagine the excitement, we thought it was the real thing. One year we waited and he turned up in an armoured vehicle which we thought was an odd thing for Santa to do, his breathe stunk of whiskey. My dad was working late. To our surprise Santa put his arm around my mum and said "So where is your husband?", my mum said he was picking up the car from being serviced but he'd be home any minute now. Tug got even closer to my mum and said "well whilst your husband is having his car serviced why don't I service you". Just at that second in walks my dad and says "whose left a bloody tank outside my house!". Santa bid us well and made a hasty retreat. You just could not have written that script.

Anyway say Hi to your daughter from us.

Take care, Gwyn

ciphers wrote:

Well I appear to have stirred a 'hornets nest' with my comments to Gwyn .. makes for a lively forum .. but I assure you I am not anti German or anti anything, what I was pointing out was that his feelings to the 'Fatherland' as he put it would not have been tolerated in my day. It would be foolish in the extreme for me to suggest that every German was a Nazi and I realize that after 13 years of pre war propaganda most of the school kids would have been indoctrinated with the Nazi dictates, and that to oppose it would have had dire consequences, however closing ones eyes to what transpired over the years 1932 - 1945 is also naive.
To close, I never met a member of the Nazi Party or the SS while I served in Germany, every one I met either served on the Russian Front, or were Austrian ... anyone want to buy a battleship ..

Len (Ciphers)

Actually I met a German who fought the Canadians in Normandy. This was in 72 when I was on my second tour. This was in the Village of Kippenheim near Lahr. He would always remind us, that he ended up a POW of the Russians because of us. He was recovering from wounds received from Canadians at Normandy in Checkoslovakia and in hospital when the Russians took over. Yes he was severely wounded hence the long time in hospital. He really had no grudge against us. He was the landlord of a friend of mine.

One of of my workmates when I first arrived in Canada was a German names Armin Diechfus who was also a prisoner of the Russians. He was an engineering student when the war broke out and he was called up. Due to attrition on the Russian Front he was promoted to officer rank. He was captured and worked in numerous oil fields and petroleum plants for them. Then inexplicably he was released and migrated to Canada in the mid 50's. Damn good mechanic and we became friends, fishing and drinking buddies. I also worked with another ex German soldier Karl Walters who was a Sgt and held the Iron Cross First Class, quite a decoration, he brought it to work to show me. So much for my anti German sentiments.

Len (Ciphers)

Speaking of Santa and tanks...during my father's first tour (1959-62) when I was 5-8 years old (and so still believed in Santa...for a couple of years anyway), I quite remember Santa showing up at a kids' Xmas party in one of the camps in a jeep or APC or some such. Of course he would, right? This was the army!! Made perfect sense to me at that age LOL

I also remember when we were living in Helle-Balve in two blocks of flats (actually 4...two set aside for Canadian families and 2 were resided in by families of workers for some local factory who owned the blocks) and St. Nicholas visited us along with Black Peter.

Kicking around somewhere are some photos of me in our flat with St. Nicholas who, of course, was one of the local young men dressed up as the venerable bishop (or so the story goes...I still suspect it was the REAL St. Nicholas ).

I was in awe of this tall, slim, white-bearded individual decked out in red velvet bishops' robes as he was decidely different than the roly-poly Santa Claus I was familiar with. I suspect for British kids the difference between St. Nicholas and Father Christmas would not be as pronounced since Father Christmas is far more aligned with the "traditional" St. Nicholas figure than the North American Santa Claus is....it is the St. Nicholas visit that sticks in my memory, far more than any of the Santa Clauses I likely spoke with on base.

As an adult now, what strikes me was the fact whoever it was portraying St. Nicholas actually took the time to visit the Canadian kids and not restrict his vistation to the children of the German families in the two blocks of flats next door to us. He easily could have and nobody would have known the difference or taken exception. To me, it speaks to the...I don't know if "acceptance" is quite the word I am looking for but it will suffice...the acceptance of the local population of us in their midst.

Gwynno...I may have already asked this, but where in Iserlohn did you live? I am rather assuming you lived in the Iserlohn Married Quarters.

Steve,

Yes we lived in married quarters in Ruben Strasse off Calle Weg. At the end of this road, at that time, was a turn around point and on the right was a pair of semi-detached houses which backed on to a small cliff. Not sure of the house number but we lived in the house on the right. You could see the Naafi from the back of our house.

You're right we should not have been too surprised by the sight of Santa scrambling out of an armoured vehicle given that we were guests of the army and knew no other life as such. I'm not sure what type of vehicle it was, no tracks like a tank and it was six wheeled job- 432 ?. But anyway for us it still looked mighty odd, nothing like the fairly tale image of Santa in a sleigh flying through the sky that had been instilled in us.

I think we felt that the European Saint Nick, although more ornate in appearance than our Santa, had a dark side, with Schwartzer Peter (Santa's devil twin) in tow with his stick to beat naughty kids.

I still peep out of the window on Christmas eve - Just in case Santa turns up in some old tank !!.

So, getting back to the subject of BMH Iserlohn does anyone have a feel for what % of Doctors / Nurses in the hospital were German / British. I went for eye tests there, had teeth removed under ga, my brother was born there my sister had verrucas removed there and to the best of my knowledge all staff were german. Was this just my experience ?

There was a dentist who lived on the hill in Iserlohn close to the Naaffi (between Ruben and the road below), he had a very attractive daughter I can't remember their names but they were there 64-66 and probably again 73 - 75 ish. I guess he must have worked out of BMH Iserlohn.

There names will come to me overnight.

Guten nacht.