The First 22 Years

I suppose that it was inevitable that I would try my hand at soldiering. I was raised to revere the memory of my father Karl Eugen Rieger, who died on the Ostfront in December 1944 when the headquarters of the LVI Panzer Korps was overrun by the Russians. He had joined the 7th Infantry Regiment as an enlisted soldier and won a battlefield commission, a rare event in the German army especially so early in the war. He died a Major a few months prior to my birth in Salzburg, Austria.

I was born in the waning weeks of World War II and, in fact, was bombed on several occasions by the Americans and the British. My mother told me stories about carrying me into bomb shelters in a wicker suitcase during the incendiary raids. My first combat.

The day I was born , April 12, 1945, will always be remembered by Americans of that era as the day FDR died (President Franklin Delano Roosevelt for any readers who are products of Outcomes Based Education). I have heard supposed friends referring to my birth as Hitler's Revenge.

I was raised by another soldier, Frederick W. Heller, who married my mother when I was about two. He was a former infantryman who earned his Combat Infantry Badge (CIB) at the Normandy invasion. He, too, received a commission and at war's end was a Military Police Officer helping run a P.O.W. camp near Salzburg. The former enemy were not just released when the fighting stopped but had to undergo a "denatzifacation" process. Many former Wehrmacht soldiers were held for months before their turn came.

At any rate, my Mother would accompany her sister to visit my Uncle Karl who was a "guest". My mother met my dad and a few years later I was a U.S. citizen. Fred Heller raised me and in all ways treated me as if I were his biological son -- he was a great man, a great soldier and a great father. He stayed in the army and I wound up being an Army Brat in yet another army.

I lived on or near army posts until I went to college. I attended ROTC at the University of Colorado and at Michigan State University and was graduated from MSU and commissioned a Regular Army 2nd Lieutenant in June, 1967.

Some day I may expand this account to cover my childhood and formative years. I have many memories of living in Italy, Austria, Alaska, Georgia, Denver, Carlisle Barracks, Ft. Dix, etc. I could also pass on the stories my Onkel Karl told me about his six years as a Gebirgsjaeger or mountain trooper in the German Army, fighting in France, Poland, Greece and Finland.... At any rate, perhaps it was inevitable that I try my hand at soldiering.

Click for Next Chapter

Back to Table of Contents