stephen ricker

“Daddy? What did you do during The Eternal Cold War?”
In the tradition of MASH and Catch-22, The Kaserne answers that question on behalf of several ten-millions who served abroad in this vividly realistic story of soldiers, civilians, men and women, Americans and Germans on a small forlornly threadbare US Army base in Germany one swamp-muggy August heat wave afternoon in 1980 when a heartbreaking tragic accidental death occurs among them. Romance, the human comedy, espionage, special-ops commando school, cavorting with the natives, and variations on the eternal GI’s How I ended up in the Army story are the stuffing and substance of a historical memoir narrated by Raymie and Désirée Wolfsohn, a husband and wife team of undercover civilian DIA agents, of hilarious, tragic, and touching comings and doings of marvelously all too human youthful (mostly) Americans abroad struggling to define their place in the peculiar institution that is the army.