John,
I met Archie when the two of us arrived at Ft. Devens, MA, in late 1957,
as Army privates enrolled in the communications intercept school of the
Army Security Agency. Both of us preferred joining the Army for three
interesting years involved in clandestine communications work vis a vis
being drafted as rifle-toting infantrymen. Archie was a very skinny kid,
skinner than even I, back in those halcyon days. He had an impish grin
that would crawl across his face when something struck him funny. I was
a Southern California boy who had never met someone from the Deep South
before.
Archie and I and two others completed our ASA schooling, and then were
shocked to discover we had been assigned to the Third Infantry Division,
then at Ft. Benning, and about to "Gyro" to Germany. The four of us were
upset because (A) we had no idea why we should be placed in an infantry
division, and (B) we wanted the "hi-tech" atmosphere regular ASA guys
experience in their clandestine listening posts surrounded by great
racks of communications gear.
We were packed on a train and taken south to Ft. Benning. In those days
train travel was luxurious, even for soldiers. I still recall my night's
sleep in a very soft upper berth as being one of the best nights of
sleep I've ever had. When we arrived at Ft. Benning Archie helped me
learn to enjoy to life in the South, which was very different from
California. Three months later we boarded a troop ship and crossed the
North Atlantic.
Archie and I and our two compatriots quickly discovered that our
assignment to the Third Infantry division was serendipitous indeed. We
were assigned to the signal battalion with an "M.O.S." of Direction
Finder. And we instantly appreciated the fact that all four of us were
holding E-5 slots! Sure enough, we all rocketed from PFC to Spec-5 with
six months. Archie made SP-5 a week earlier than I, and he never let me
forget it!
Being 18 or 19 and exploring postwar Germany was heaven indeed. Archie
and I spent two years playing in and around the fair city of Wurzburg.
Both of us learned to speak quite good German, which the frauleins
appreciated. And since our "secret" work was off-limits to all but two
or three signal officers, we really had a cushy job. We'd go out on
maneuvers in the countryside and set up our DF van and really do nothing
more than play around! We never did get an assignment from above as to
what we should do! Nobody knew. It was "Snafu" in the best sense of the
word! I remember one day Archie and I were sunning ourselves shirtless
next to our van. Suddenly Archie said, "Larry! get up! Stand at
attention!" I said, wha--what?" "Just get up!" I then saw why. An
olive-drab car had chugged up to our spot, and there was a star on the
license plate! Both Archie and I, half naked, stood at attention
delivering stern salutes. Apparently we got it right for from within the
car a shadowy figure in back returned our salutes, and then the car was
gone.
Finally the day came when it was time to go home. Again we took a troop
ship, but this time we were holding a little rank, and our sleeping
accommodations were considerably improved over our trip over. And when
we docked in New York we all swore, the way high school and college
students do on graduation day---we'd stay in touch forever! Of course we
didn't.
I don't recall Archie and I discussing becoming ham radio operators. But
as I learned from Archie years later he got his first ticket in the
early sixties. For me it came later---got mine in 1977 at the age of forty.
About seven or eight years ago I got a letter in the mail. It was from
Archie. He'd run across my name while searching through some callsigns.
Was I the same Larry Forbes from the Army days? Indeed I was. We had a
few phone calls and some snail mail, and not long after that e-mail
started up, and Archie and I became closer than ever.
Just about every day for the last few years the first thing I looked for
in the morning was a new e-mail from "Mckay." Since both of us became
writers---Archie in the newspaper business and I in the advertising
business, we enjoyed writing long e-mails to each other. We shared our
most secret feelings and thoughts and opinions with each other. We
discussed a lot of ham radio stuff, or course. But we also forayed into
politics and much else, including our day-to-day activities.
Archie had a lot of health problems. He'd had a bypass, and he'd had a
bout of colon cancer. We discussed a lot of medical stuff. I believe
strongly in lots of vitamins and in particular fish oil for heart
disease. I urged Archie for at least two years to get on the fish oil
program, and he indulged my exhortations but always gently told me that
his doctors knew best. Like Archie said, it was the luck of the draw,
and heart disease ran in his family. He also told me he thought his
clogged arteries were due to a decades-long diet of greasy Southern
fried food. Archie had ten stents in his arteries, and he received his
eleventh stent last year.
Archie's daughter Jan decided to write a book about house musicians
working and living in Las Vegas. Archie and Cuba had just last year
completed a book about Rabun County. So in early January of this year he
and Cuba drove to Jan and her husband's place outside of Vegas. Archie's
e-mails became somewhat fewer than daily, but I ascribed this to his
work interviewing for the book. He had set up a ham station there but it
didn't quite seem to work right.
The about ten days ago I received an e-mail from an unfamiliar
addressee. Turned out Archie was in a hospital in Las Vegas and had
borrowed a laptop from a hospital worker to let me know what was going
on. He said he'd been having some dizzy spells, but it was no big deal.
Then around ten days ago he wrote me to tell me had had gotten out of
the hospital and was feeling better. He suggested we get together soon
on forty meters.
Then the messages stopped. He'd had problems setting up a reliable
computer arrangement there in Nevada, and so I figured his computer was
not getting the e-mails out, because some he'd sent me earlier were
never received, and vice-versa.
I felt uneasy though. Once he'd reached Nevada, his emails didn't seem
to have that old "spark" in them. I grimly thought that one day I'd get
an e-mail from "Mckay," only it would be from Cuba, bearing the news I
dreaded to hear.
That e-mail came last Friday morning. Archie had died the night before.
Quickly, and apparently painlessly.
Archie didn't seem to have a mean bone in his body. In our e-mails I'd
sometimes go into diatribes about things going on that made me mad, but
Archie's responses were always calm and collected, never wild and crazy
like mine.
I have most every e-mail Archie ever sent me, stored. I can't bear to go
back and look at them right now. That last e-mail he sent was about a
week ago. It was short by his normal standards. In it he mentioned that
when he got back home he was going to see if his doctors couldn't find a
way to lighten up on the heavy load of medications he was taking.
Archie will never be far from my mind. He was just a couple of months
older than I and his death has reminded me of my own mortality. He was
also the second very close friend of mine to die prematurely. Both of
them were the most decent and kindest persons I ever met.
There does seem to be truth to the saying that the good die young.
Larry Forbes, AA6US
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