Wild Boar Hunting

  One of the things I will always be grateful for is colonel Alexander’s insistence that I know my counter parts in the German and French armies. He said the French army wasn’t all that important because, “all they know how to do is wave a white flag, surrender or defect.”  I did meet my French counter part at the Canadian base near Baden Baden but never had to work with him.

  My counter part in the German Army was Feldwebel Heinrich Goetz and he was stationed at one of the largest German Army bases in Southern Germany. He was in Weiden which was only a few miles from Grafenwohr.  Weiden is quite often where I stayed during the large maneuvers at Grafenwohr. Heinrich was a nice guy and we became good friends. Between boar hunting, foosball, German girl friends and great drinking joints in Weiden we had great times.

  When I had first met him on my short intro-tour with my CO he had invited me to go hunting.  He mentioned there were a number of places to go but that the backside of Grafenwohr was a great place to hunt.  I showed up early on a Sunday morning and he had us each outfitted with a 45 pistol and an M1 rifle.  Not sure where he got the  U.S, weapons but it wasn’t a problem with me.

  Headed out to middle of nowhere and eventually heard a number of boar. Didn’t see any for a while then we were confronted with a rather large, ugly beast and as it turned out a mean SOB. There were four of us. Heinrich and I had the rifles and pistols. The other two had pistols only. One of the Germans shot the pig and it charged. I dropped my rifle and we all scattered for the trees.  We all ended up in different trees anywhere between 4 and 6 feet off the ground.  I am proud to say I was higher than anyone else!  The picture below is what a cleanly killed boar looks like. It bears no resemblance to what ours looked like when we were done with it.

  I was made fun of for dropping my rifle. It didn’t make any difference because I hadn’t loaded it yet! The one German who didn’t speak any English was, I am sure, swearing at me. Heinrich was just laughing. He circled below my tree for a while but decided I was too high up so moved on to the next tree. We took turns shooting the thing.  All we seemed to do was make it madder. Finally Heinrich shot it between the eyes and killed it.  I’m not sure how many rounds we used but it was well tenderized.

  I think Heinrich had paid for a hunting license and he wasn’t going to waste the meat.  We loaded the hulk in the back of one of the jeeps and took it to an orphanage near Weiden.