A TRAVELER'S ADDICTION

-WITH REWARDS-

By: Ed Breeding

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

My “Addiction” to traveling began when I was 18-years-old, and beginning my three-year-tour of service at Sembach, Germany with the U. S. Air Force, holding a Top Secret Clearance in Communications. I had completed Basic Training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, and six months of Technical School at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi. Upon arriving in Germany, our work schedule was as follows: One week working a day shift followed by two days off, then beginning one week working an afternoon shift followed by two days off, then beginning one week working the midnight shift followed by three days off, before beginning the routine again, changing shifts every week for the entire three years. It was after completing our midnight shift, instead of going to bed, we had four free days, and some of us chose to stay up and travel to a nearby foreign country, such as Holland or Italy.
I have always been curious and driven to experience new things and learn, thus I typically traveled with some Air Force buddies, sometimes once a month, to different places in Europe, photographing and soaking up the cultures and events going on in each place that we visited.
After a year or so at Sembach, our 6910th Radio Group moved to Darmstadt, Germany, living in former German Officers barracks, and being an avid swimmer, there was a community swimming pool in the countryside nearby, and there I met a young German girl named Waltraud “Daudau” Korn, and we soon became good friends, and during my final two years in Germany she taught me a lot about Germany, and we traveled to nearby castles and such, furthering my ‘German education.’ Daudau was studying to become an English interpreter, and therefore she always wanted to speak English with me instead of teaching me German. Her family was originally from East Germany, and she was forbidden to associate with any Americans, and so…the rest is history, but we made the most of it without her ever telling her parents that she was seeing me. She spoke High German, whereby my military group that knew some German typically spoke Low German and that was comparable to the southern accent in the USA.
Before leaving Germany I had applied for a job with the CIA, and never thinking that I may get accepted, but after getting an Honorable Discharge from the air force in New Jersey, I was working at La-Z-Boy Chair Company in Monroe, Michigan, and while there I got a message from Washington, D.C. to go and test for the CIA. I was accepted and I took the job, but I was forbidden to communicate with any foreign nationals, except for Canadians and Australians. That’s when I had to stop writing letters to Daudau. I was not allowed to tell her why and what my new job was.
I loved my three years in Germany, and seeing trash on the streets in New Jersey where I was discharged, caused me to quickly realize that I did not want to live in the USA, and that was my primary reason for wanting to work for the CIA, whereby I thought I could continue living in Europe, but that was not the way ‘the game was played in the CIA.’ I would be assigned to different locations across the planet, and sometimes running a Communications Site all by myself, where my food and supplies would be airdropped to me in certain isolated locations. It was after a sister’s head on car collision death that I left the CIA, but…I still had the “traveling bug,” so that was when I began my national and global traveling at every opportunity. And so, now you know.