Roman Zehbel: The Clever One

An American Family's Adventures in Iran
1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-1-62095-964-0
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 396 Seiten

Zehbel: The Clever One is the story of an ordinary family in extraordinary circumstances and how one clever man survived a decade of intrigue to bring his family home again. I have described Zehbel: The Clever One as coming from an American perspective. It would be far more accurate to describe the Roman family as one so enmeshed in Iranian culture during their ten years in Iran, that they took some of Iran itself, it's generous, warm-hearted people, food and customs with them on their return to Pennsylvania. Certainly it is true, as Mike, Lucretia and their seven children have declared, they will never forget Iran. It was a place they had to leave, but Iran never left them. In that sense, it will always be home.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Roman, Michael

Leseproben

Preface
By September 1976, many attempts had been made on my life, yet miracle after miracle allowed me to survive another day. I was sure my luck would soon run out. I resigned myself to the fact that I would not make it home alive. My only fear was that my body would not find its way home to my beloved wife and children back in the States. I wanted to be laid to rest near all the people I loved. I wanted my children to know who and where I was. Most of all, I wanted them to remember me. Iran had been my home for ten years. My life there, by any standards, was fantastic. When my wife and I first arrived in Teheran, in April 1967, things were very different. Iranians loved Americans and were proud to be associated with them. There were people in Iran who were very friendly with me. Some of them helped me more than they should have. If things had remained status quo it wouldn’t have mattered. Now that life was gone. In the past five years, things had changed so dramatically. It was hard for me to believe, but my paradise had turned into hell. How was I able to get into the position I held in the Imperial Iranian Air Force (IIAF)? The Iranians called me Most Honorable Engineer. I was not an Engineer, but, because of my thorough training at the FAA academy in Oklahoma City, I was able to do engineering work. The FAA training programs were much stricter back then. Thirty percent of the students flunked out, including some who already held engineering degrees. I had always been considered very smart, even when I was a small child. I had grown up in a town called Hokendauqua, north of Allentown, PA. We had a good-sized family; I was the second of eight children, six boys and two girls. When I attended Whitehall Elementary, I was a goof-off. School was too easy. The important thing for me was the Boy Scouts. I joined at 13, when I was in the 7th grade. The scout troop was sponsored by a Methodist Church in Catasauqua. They liked me because I won all the awards and brought honor to them. I attended Central Catholic High School (CCHS) in Allentown. CCHS was an excellent school. I was two years behind when I went off to high school, so I had to catch up fast. The nuns taught me after school. They taught me a lot of things I didn’t know. I caught up, then started goofing off again. My first summer after freshman year, I worked on staff with the Boy Scouts at Camp Trexler. That first summer, all I did was wash dishes. I worked one day, and had the next day off. Whenever I had a free day, I spent it working on my merit badges. That was how I was paid, by being able to use the camp on my days off. My second summer, I was paid $75.00 for the whole summer, for peeling spuds. They called me “the spud boy.” In my third year on staff, George Babyar, the camp director (another WWII veteran from the Pacific Theatre), put me in charge of the largest Scout camp, Camp Hawkeye. My new title was Area Director. Camp Hawkeye had five campsites. George liked me because I could beat people up, and I organized people well. I was a Merit Badge counselor as well. I flunked one kid because he just wasn’t good enough. The kid’s dad was a bigwig in Western Electric, and boy did he go off the deep end! But George, the camp director, would not reverse my decision. So I had a lot of influence with the Boy Scouts. It was at Central Catholic High School that I met my beautiful wife, Lucretia Gladis. I had heard about her first, because her name was so different. She was interested in science classes. I saw her because she’d come to my class to meet Peggy, a friend of hers. Lucretia lived in Fullerton and walked across the 4th Street Bridge in Allentown to attend CCHS. Later, we met again, at my Uncle Andy’s wedding. Uncle Andy married Lucretia’s cousin. Her mom was also at the wedding. She was a beautiful woman with light blond hair. Lucretia’s hair was dark; they looked so different. That was when we really started up. She was in the smart classes with me, the college prep classes, so we got to know each other. We had one thing in common; we were two very devout Catholics (I had been an altar boy for twelve years). It was puppy love, I guess, but it was real. Women were attracted to me, but I wasn’t interested in any of them, until I met Lucretia. They liked my golden blonde hair. I guess it was attractive to women. Lucretia and I went our separate ways after high school, but we wrote to each other and I knew I had plans to keep her in my life. She was in nursing school. I entered the U.S. Army to get a background for my life’s work, electronics. I went first to basic training at Camp Gordon near Augusta, Georgia. Then I took a train to El Paso, Texas. There I started my Nike/Ajax training. Once training was completed, we were given assignments. Most of the assignments were teaching positions, so I kept going to the back of the line. I didn’t want to teach. You could teach Acquisition Radar (AR), which has a range of 300 miles, or Information/Friend or Foe (IFF), or Target Tracking Radar (single beam) or Missile-tracking Radar (also single beam, but coded). You would only teach one thing and forget the rest of your training. I didn’t want that. Finally, they declared, “all the rest of you will be responsible for maintaining the systems,” that students learned on every day. That meant working all night long and sleeping during the day. We made our group the #1 equipment team in the country. Everyone else got an award on that team, except me. Someone did give me an award of 2 days off. Washington brass gave other people awards, not me. So I worked all night; of course, I didn’t sleep much during the day. Instead, I went to college at Texas Western University. With almost no sleep, I wore myself out after three classes. Next, someone approached me about being in the movies. I guess they liked my blonde hair too. I played one of the main characters in a training film for the U.S. Army. That was my day job for a few months. I also took courses by mail, through the Army. I was just driven to learn new things, I guess. I got off maintaining systems and spent four months training on the Hercules Nuclear Guided Missile system. These missiles were powerful enough to annihilate an entire wing of airplanes. It was a nuclear warhead missile. I had a motorcycle when I was in the Army. It was great fun, driving around in the desert in my spare time. I was on guard one time, out in the desert, and stole some ammunition. Well, one of my friends helped me. He brought me the bullets and I packed them around my waist, etc. I was shooting a target. You were supposed to shoot on semi-automatic, but I shot with full automatic. I filled up my canteen, my boots with bullets. I was weighed down, with about 500 rounds packed all over me. My friends would surround me as I walked to the bus from the rifle range, so I went undetected. I’d take my rifle into town with me and bring bullets to the other guys, so we could all go shoot coyotes. I was a popular guy in the Army. The guys all liked me because every once in a while I’d have to beat someone up. That adds to your status. I was in a unique group. I was on the experimental project, tracking the missiles . One went into Mexico and landed near a shit house. One time, I was riding my motorcycle out in the desert and saw a Volkswagen Beetle parked out in the middle of nowhere. There were two figures, a boy and a girl, in the back seat and they were causing the car to rock back and forth. I was up on a mesa, looking for coyotes, just for fun. I had my 30/30 with me. I had already shot one that day. It was running up a hill, over the rocky side of a hill. I was above him on a cliff. I got him. That afternoon, aside from the rocking Volkswagen, it was quiet. Suddenly, bullets started flying, coming right at me. I looked down and saw these chappinos. That was what I called them, these Mexican guys. They were up to no good, but my 30/30 was handy. I picked out the leader and shot in front of him, to spray him with rocks and sand. It makes quite an impact, when propelled by a bullet. The leader went down. His friends picked him up and they all ran away. Mentally I named him El Chappino, the choppy one. I only had 2 bullets left and there were 6 of them, so I didn’t go after the rest of the Mexicans. A few yards away, the young couple in the VW was still making a lot of noise, moaning and groaning. I didn’t bother them; they were having fun. They didn’t hear the bullets, apparently. Not long after that, I was riding around in the desert when an old woman cut in front of me on a highway and caused a serious accident. I spent three weeks in the hospital. When I got out, I went home for a month to recover. When I came back, I saw the Warrant Officer, a nice guy with seven kids. He had been in charge of the systems we maintained. There was a scene; he was disciplined for not keeping up with the Officer’s Club (because he couldn’t afford it). He was no longer the Warrant Officer; they assigned that job to someone else. I had already been welcomed into the Officer’s group by a Colonel, but when I saw what happened to the Warrant Officer, I changed my mind about going to Officer’s Candidate School (OCS). If that was the way officers were treated, I wanted no part of it. Three days later, I was transferred to MacGregor Guided Missile Range near White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico. Coincidence? I wasn’t sure about that. However, it turned out to be a blessing. I learned so much at MacGregor. There I was exposed to firing systems that actually fired on airplanes. It also gave me a good background in electronics and shooting down airplanes. I...