Two Guys from E Co 1/39 Inf, 1986 . . .
. . . were SP/4 Bobo and SP/4 Lespinasse, both fellows with French names.
Bobo came from a small town in Texas. I say "small town", but it was probably bigger than Baumholder FRG, with its population of 5000 Rheinlanders plus a half a dozen cows still living in a small hof down the east end of the Hauptstrasse. Anyway, Bobo was an 11 Hotel like most of the rest of the guys in E Co 1/39 Inf. If memory serves, he meant to go back home and study criminal justice when he got out of the Army. A quiet, serious guy. Married I believe.
I never got Reggie Lespinasse's whole story, but I think his family had come from the Caribbean, maybe Haiti, maybe the Virgin Islands. Still had a faint accent, and word was that he spoke good French. He'd been around a fair bit and was always a big hit with the ladies, especially out in the clubs on the economy away from town. Last time I talked to him there was some question of him marrying a European girl. Was she German or French? Whichever it was, I don't think she was from the immediate area. Perhaps one of the bigger towns over in the Saarland. Anyway, one fine rare sunny day we were cleaning out the tracks in the new washrack, the one closer to Lager Aulenbach that had the POL separation system, and you could see that Reggie was thinking real hard. Turned out to be about this lady of his, a big decision for anybody. Sorry to say that I never learned how it all ended up; I moved on down to A Co 1/39 Inf not long afterward.
But someone out there knows. . . .
Bobo came from a small town in Texas. I say "small town", but it was probably bigger than Baumholder FRG, with its population of 5000 Rheinlanders plus a half a dozen cows still living in a small hof down the east end of the Hauptstrasse. Anyway, Bobo was an 11 Hotel like most of the rest of the guys in E Co 1/39 Inf. If memory serves, he meant to go back home and study criminal justice when he got out of the Army. A quiet, serious guy. Married I believe.
I never got Reggie Lespinasse's whole story, but I think his family had come from the Caribbean, maybe Haiti, maybe the Virgin Islands. Still had a faint accent, and word was that he spoke good French. He'd been around a fair bit and was always a big hit with the ladies, especially out in the clubs on the economy away from town. Last time I talked to him there was some question of him marrying a European girl. Was she German or French? Whichever it was, I don't think she was from the immediate area. Perhaps one of the bigger towns over in the Saarland. Anyway, one fine rare sunny day we were cleaning out the tracks in the new washrack, the one closer to Lager Aulenbach that had the POL separation system, and you could see that Reggie was thinking real hard. Turned out to be about this lady of his, a big decision for anybody. Sorry to say that I never learned how it all ended up; I moved on down to A Co 1/39 Inf not long afterward.
But someone out there knows. . . .
UPDATE: I just wanted to bump this one in hope of improving search results for Darryl Bobo, Reginald Lespinasse, and Donald Peters, good old 11H hands from Baumholder days.
posted by mhg at 10:05 AM
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