Ep. 12: Chapter 10 — Army & Europe (Harry's Memoir)

PhredIt is. We're a proper show now, Maxine. We've got a name, we've got listeners — well, listener-shaped entities — and we've got a photo on the about page that I think captures my good side.

MaxineIt captures your bill.

PhredThe bill is part of the charm. Anyway, today's piece. We've done Harry's England years, we've done his MIT years, we've even done him singing about Caracas. Today we're doing the bit that comes right after MIT. Harry graduates, gets his commission as a second lieutenant, and goes straight into the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Chapter Ten of his memoir: Army and Europe.

MaxineI'm glad we're doing this. We've seen Harry the philosopher, Harry the technologist, Harry the singer. I want to see Harry the young man.

PhredRight. And this chapter delivers. It's 1961 to 1965. Cold War Germany. The Berlin Wall's up. And Harry's stationed ten miles from the East German border, ready to blow up bridges if the Russians invade.

MaxineThat did not deserve a drumroll.

PhredCome on, Maxine. "If the balloon goes up" — that's what they called it. Blowing up bridges to slow down a Russian advance. That's cinema.

MaxineIt's someone's actual life, Phred.

PhredFair. Fair point. Let me read you how Harry opens the chapter.

MaxineThat little choice — staying in ROTC when everyone else dropped out — that tells you something.

PhredWhat does it tell you?

MaxineHarry follows through. He commits. Even when the requirement disappears, he stays. There's a pattern there — the honesty practice, the Boppers project, the radio show. He doesn't do things halfway.

PhredToo right. And his father was there for the commissioning ceremony. Colonel G. Emery Baya, watching his son become a second lieutenant. That must've been a moment.

Maxine...Was that a train.

PhredHarry took a train from Frankfurt to Wildflecken. Tiny station, heavy mud, sergeant in a jeep. I wanted to set the scene.

MaxineYou wanted to set the scene with a train whistle.

PhredIt's called production value, Maxine. Atmosphere.

MaxineIt's called unnecessary.

PhredRight. So there he is, this young MIT graduate, sent to the edge of the Iron Curtain.

PhredAnd then — November 1963.

PhredKennedy's been assassinated. Harry's unit is called into the field on full combat alert, carrying live ammunition, ready for war. The only time he ever did that in the Army. He writes: "There was concern that this was the start of WW III."

MaxineThat's... remarkably understated.

PhredThat's Harry. He just reports it. But think about it — he's been there less than two months. He's twenty-four years old. And suddenly he's on a combat alert because the President's been shot and nobody knows if the Russians are going to come across the border.

MaxineI keep forgetting how young he was. We read his philosophical essays and he sounds like a man who's lived ten lives. But here he's barely out of university, standing on a Cold War front line, carrying live rounds.

PhredAnd their job, if "the balloon went up," was to blow up the bridges. While the 14th Armored Cavalry fought the invasion on the Russian side of those bridges. The cavalry would be sacrificed — left on the wrong side — while everyone else retreated to the Rhine.

MaxineThat's horrific.

PhredIt's the logic of the Cold War. And Harry reports it plainly. No drama. Just: this was the plan.

PhredA bit of cold wind for the Cold War.

Maxine...Fine. But keep it low.

PhredNow, while all this is happening, Harry writes a letter proposing marriage to Bonnie Birdsall. She accepts. He comes back to the States, marries her in her parents' backyard in Westfield, New Jersey.

MaxineSeptember 1964.

PhredRight. And here's a detail that stopped me: none of his Baya relatives came. Because Harry and Bonnie didn't get married in a Catholic ceremony. All of Harry's family were Catholics except him. His mother later told him his father considered not coming.

MaxineThat's painful.

PhredIt is. And Harry puts it in there so matter-of-factly. Not crying about it. Just: this is what happened.

MaxineIt connects to something we've seen before. Harry's rejection of Catholicism at MIT — we touched on that a few episodes back — and here are the consequences. The fracture runs right through his own family. His father considered not coming to the wedding.

PhredAnd yet his MIT fraternity brothers came. Jim Kee was his best man. Andy Stokes was there — "probably the best male friend I ever had," Harry writes. And Jim gave him a small wooden Buddha with a note: "As this pilgrimage you make, may Buddha bless the steps you take."

MaxineThat's rather beautiful.

PhredIt is. And it's not Catholic. It's not anything his family would have understood. But it was real friendship. Real blessing.

PhredAfter the wedding, they honeymooned on the Queen Elizabeth to Europe. Then back to Germany — Karlsruhe this time. Beautiful city on the Rhine. Harry was a platoon leader in a panel bridge company. They had fifty dump trucks and equipment for building Bailey bridges.

MaxineI don't know what a Bailey bridge is.

PhredGiant steel erector set for making bridges over gaps. Portable, temporary, military engineering. Very Harry, actually — building things that help people get where they need to go.

MaxineYes. I see that.

PhredThen in July 1965, Harry takes an overseas discharge from the Army. And here's a detail that gives me chills: "I did not know it at the time, but had I extended my tour, even a month or two, I would almost certainly have been sent to Vietnam. The second half of 1965 was a time of tremendous troop build-up in Vietnam."

MaxineHe missed Vietnam by a month or two.

PhredBy a month or two. His whole life pivots on that.

MaxineAnd then — the VW bus.

PhredThe VW bus! They buy a brand new VW camping bus with a pop-up roof and travel around Europe for three months. England, Holland, Norway, Denmark, Austria, Switzerland, Yugoslavia, Greece, Italy, France, Spain. His sister Madge joins them in Rome.

Maxine...Is that meant to be a car horn.

PhredIt's a VW horn. A little beep-beep. For the bus.

MaxineOf course it is.

PhredHarry loved it. He writes that plainly: "I loved it." Three words. No elaboration. But you feel it.

MaxineI do. After the tension of the Cold War border, after the family fracture at the wedding, after nearly being sent to Vietnam — three months in a VW bus, just driving.

PhredFreedom. Simple freedom.

MaxineBut then they get back to the States, and there's another loss. The Army shipped all their belongings from Germany — everything they owned, all his books and papers, all the 35mm slides he'd taken — in a large wooden crate. And the ship collided with another vessel in the North Sea. The hold flooded. Their stuff had been underwater for weeks. Almost everything was ruined.

PhredFive thousand dollars from insurance. Which in 1965 was a decent sum. But you can't replace the photos. The slides. The record of those years.

MaxineIt's another loss. Another thing that didn't make it through.

PhredAnd then — job hunting. Harry lists every offer he got. IBM in Cambridge. Standard Oil in New Jersey — his MIT advisor told him he wasn't a mathematician and shouldn't take it. Turner Construction in New York. Touche Ross, the accounting firm, but they'd make him spend two years becoming a CPA first. Irwin Management in Columbus, Indiana — highest salary, eleven thousand dollars. He took it.

MaxineAnd then the final line of the chapter: "Though I was very happy with most of my experience in Columbus for the next five years I don't think it was a particularly good career path. I now think the job at IBM would have been better for me professionally."

PhredThere's Harry's honesty again. He doesn't pretend he made the best choice. He admits it. "I now think..." That phrase — we've seen it before. He's always revising, always willing to look back and say, I got that wrong.

MaxineLet's talk about the audience for this piece. Who is Harry writing this for?

PhredHimself, partly. It's a memoir. But also — I think he's writing for his descendants. His children, grandchildren. He wants them to know what his life was like. Not just the facts, but the texture. The mud at the train station. The wooden Buddha. The flooded crate.

MaxineAnd the self-assessment at the end — "I don't think it was a particularly good career path." That's instruction. He's teaching by example. Even his mistakes are lessons.

PhredThat connects to what we saw in the MIT chapter. Harry the teacher, even when he's writing about himself.

MaxineAnd how does this connect to his other writing? We've seen Harry the philosopher, the technologist, the spiritual seeker. This is Harry the young adult, before any of that identity was fully formed.

PhredI think the seeds are there. The commitment. The honesty. The willingness to be the odd one out — staying in ROTC, leaving the Catholic Church, choosing the job that paid most instead of the one that fit best. He's figuring out who he is by making choices and living with them.

MaxineWhat did we learn about Harry today that wasn't in the profile before?

PhredI learned how close he came to Vietnam. That changed how I see his whole life — every subsequent choice, every marriage, every career move, happened in a timeline where he didn't go to Vietnam. What would Harry Baya have been if he'd come back from that?

MaxineAnd I learned about the family absence at his wedding. We knew Harry left Catholicism. We didn't know the cost was that stark — his own father considering whether to come. That pain is buried so quietly in the text.

PhredWhat would we ask Harry about this chapter?

MaxineI'd want to know more about Wildflecken. He writes "I would like to write more about my experience in Wildflecken" in brackets, like a note to himself. What didn't he write? What was too much, or too little, or too something to put down?

PhredAnd I'd ask him about the slides. The 35mm photos from Germany, all ruined in the North Sea. What was in them? What did he lose? Does he still remember the images, or did they go with the water?

MaxineThat's a good question.

PhredRight, so what stays with me from this piece... it's the combination of danger and ordinary life. Combat alert one month, backyard wedding the next. Blowing up bridges as a career plan, then a VW bus holiday. Harry's life isn't one thing. It's all these things, layered on top of each other, and he just keeps moving.

MaxineWhat stays with me is the restraint. He could have written a dramatic Cold War memoir. He could have written a tragic wedding story. He could have milked the Vietnam near-miss for everything it's worth. Instead he gives us facts, a few feelings, and lets us do the work. It's generous, in a way. He trusts the reader.