Niles man drove tanks, played bugle, met his wife in Germany

Staff photo / Daniel Newman
Army veteran Fred M. Smith Jr. of Niles stands next to his Hometown Hero military banner at his house. The city offers the banners for military veterans living in Niles.

NILES — Before returning home from military service in the early 1960s, Fred M. Smith Jr. spent his time in Germany playing the bugle for his comrades and embarking on a new life with his wife of 58 years.

Born in Niles in 1939 to Fred Sr. and Justine L. Smith, Fred Jr. said he was delivered in the parking lot of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish. Growing up without an interest in sports, unlike most kids at the time, Smith found an early interest in antique cars instead.

Smith’s favorite types of cars were made in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, but he did not favor any particular make over another.

His 65th Niles McKinley High School reunion was a few weeks ago at Amen Corner in Girard. His life after high school, he explained, set up the bulk of his journey.

After high school, Smith, now 84, worked for Packard Electric before being laid off and finding another job.

“I worked at Republic Steel, and then I went into the Army,” Smith said. “I went down to Fort Knox, Kentucky, and I was there for about three years. From there I went to Wurzburg, Germany, and became a tank driver,” Smith said.

He said the tanks’ “little tiny” steering wheels would drive him crazy, but it was what he wanted to do.

“Elvis (Presley) was there when I was there, but I wasn’t with him,” Smith said.

His time in the Army was more than a decade removed from the end of World War II. So, as Smith put it, “there wasn’t a whole lot going on.”

“We controlled the tanks, but we didn’t control anything else. We would pretty much just do whatever we were asked. I was a bugler, and when I was in school, I played trumpet. And they would say, ‘remember now, you might want to stay with that trumpet because someday you might need that.’ And when I went to Germany, they said ‘anybody here know how to play bugle?’ Well, I said ‘right here.’”

Smith said becoming a company bugler got him out of doing lots of tasks that other soldiers were asked to complete.

“In the morning I played to get the guys up,” Smith said. “They hated me for it, but that’s the way it goes. I didn’t really play much when we were in our duty stations, but when we went to the field, to bivouac, that’s when they demanded me to get the guys up. We had different sounds for different things.”

Just before Smith’s supply sergeant went home to the United States, he became a supply clerk. When his sergeant could not return to duty because of his wife’s death, Smith was put in charge of his base’s supplies.

However, Smith never became a sergeant himself and maintained a role as a supply private.

On his way back from one particular supply delivery, Smith found himself rolled over after hitting a boulder in a Jeep driven by one of his comrades.

The accident caused injury to his left leg, and still reminds him of the jobs he worked while stationed in Germany.

Smith said he found his wife through a German comrade in the same platoon who was originally from Youngstown. Steve, Smith’s future best man, became a good friend of his and introduced Smith to Rose Marie through his own fiancee, Bridgette.

“I said ‘Geez, I’d like to meet a nice girl, too,’” Smith said. “She said she had a lot of German friends, because she was from Wurzburg, and she introduced me to a few other girls a few other times we’d all gone out, before Rose Marie. But I had to learn to speak German, because Steve told me if I didn’t learn German, I wasn’t going to get anywhere.”

When Smith and his wife first met, she didn’t speak English, and he could only speak 30 German words. But after practicing and continuing to go to classes, Smith learned to speak fluently enough to chat with Rose Marie.

The couple married in Germany in 1962 and celebrated with a reception in Niles.

“Out of all of the people there, we got $128,” Smith said. “We thought we were rich.”

When they arrived in the United States, Smith said Rose Marie became a homemaker, looking after their son, Fred III, now 56, and daughter, Sabrina, now 54, as well as taking care of home duties. Smith went back to work at Republic Steel, with five-year seniority perks.

“We spoke German in our house, so the kids wouldn’t understand,” Smith said with a laugh.

Rose Marie learned English on her own by watching television and reading comic books.

“My mom studied all on her own, and eventually passed her naturalization test to become a citizen,” Fred III said.