written while stationed in Germany – 1976
We ride the train at night. Store front signs flash neon onto our faces through the window. Red, green, blue in words we don’t know. Just four foreigners crowded in with a hundred faces. They speak in a language we can only catch a few pieces of. We get stern looks from disgusted fellow travelers each time we speak. So we travel in silence. But I know what they are thinking. They don’t need to say it. I can see it in their anger. “You’d think if they are going to be stationed here, they’d learn to speak our language.”
Jerry Brotherton 
We’ve heard that here in the Des Moines area, about Bosnian refugees, who are learning our language as quickly as they can. What unit were you in in Germany?
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78th Engineering Battalion.
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Once people have reached adulthood, learning a new language is much more difficult than it is for a child. Add that to the fact the English is a language with seemingly more exceptions than rules, I admire and respect any non-native speaker puts the work in and becomes fluent.
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Sounds familiar LOL!
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Thank you for your service!
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Thank you.
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Guess that way of thinking is prevalent in every country.
Appreciate your service in the military, Jerry!
(((HUGS))) and Happy Whee-kend to you and your wife!!! :-)
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Thank you for your service! Happy Veterans Day!
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Thanks my friend.
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