HomeCommunity NewsSalute to Our Veterans: Robert Almanza

Salute to Our Veterans: Robert Almanza

Some veterans return home with medals, all lug back memories. But San Marino resident Robert Almanza’s tour of duty netted something more meaningful than either: a bride.

Almanza was 25 and had just finished his Master’s Degree in Languages at UCLA when Uncle Sam came calling.

“I went to Fort Ord, then Fort Carson,” said Almanza. “I took several tests. They wanted me in the Signal Corps because I tested well there. At the end of the day, they ended up sending me to Germany because I had special abilities in Italian.”

Almanza was the only member of his company headed for Europe.

“Everyone else went to Korea and I went to Ireland,” he quipped.

In February,1957 Graziela found himself in Wildflecken, Germany as a machine gunner.

“Within three weeks, I became the secretary of the battalion,” Almanza recalls. “They saw that I went to college and could type. So I ended up with the 103rd Armored Infantry Battalion. My duties were more like a secretary than a soldier.

“During my stay at Wildflecken the U.S. military strength was to be reduced and many sergeants were in danger of being booted out if they did not do well on tests,” said Almanza, whose first language is Spanish. “An education center was created and I was the director. I taught classes in math, English, geography. My salient experience was helping a soldier from Puerto Rico who was an excellent marksman but who surely would be sent home because he could not speak English. Within four months of being in class and getting whatever encouragement I could give him, he became a proficient speaker of English. He obviously had all the knowledge stored in his mind and all he needed was a key to bring it out.”

His multilingual tendencies made him popular among his peers.

“Soldiers would come to my desk to have requests written for them,” Almanza recalls. “One of them came by on a Friday for me to write a request that be allowed to marry a local girl.  On Monday, after his weekend stay in Berlin, he came in to have the girl’s name on his request changed.”

Almanza and his company traveled throughout Eastern Europe by truck or pill box.

The Army was a lot of things, but not concerned with the environment.

“We took frequent trips because we got gasoline and had to use it up,” Almanza said with a laugh.

Though an expert shot, Almanza wasn’t big enough to carry his own machine gun.

“I carried the tripod,”he said.

His inability to tote his weapon had hidden benefits.

“One day the Sergeant Major called me a 90-year-old weakling,” Almanza said. I made a joke back with him and I think he liked that I would poke fun at myself. He would make me take three-day leaves, which was pretty nice.”

And why not?

“My father didn’t want me to go to college,” Almanza continued. “He wanted me to work. So by the time I was in the service, I was twenty-five, I had money and I was in Europe. I was also fluent in several different languages. It was a pretty good life.”

It was about to become a pretty great life.

It was the summer of 1958. Almanza had two months left on his term, his superior had found Almanza’s replacement and sent him on a three-week leave.

“I was going to Italy, England and then back to Germany,” he recalls. “I was in Paris at 9:00 a.m. and she got on my train. The conductor said ‘all the places are taken’ and I invited her into my compartment. After a while, she opened up a book that said English/Italian. I started speaking with her in Italian. Graziela was studying English in Italy and her teacher knew a family in England so she was going there for a vacation. We talked all the way from Paris to Calais. I waited for her to get checked in. I gave her my address.”

Almanza’s voice trails off as though the story has a sad ending, until he comes back to life.

“About Thanksgiving, I got a letter from her,” Almanza recalls. “I asked her if I could visit. She said yes. I went in December and was two days late. Her mother was upset because I was late.”

The long-distance romance continued.

“I kept going back,” Almanza says with a smile. “I was there so often there was no way she could have a boyfriend. I got stuck to her. She couldn’t get rid of me.”

Still hasn’t, and Graziela always looks as thrilled about that chance meeting as Robert.

The Almanzas have two children and three grandchildren.

Robert retired after a career in education that he began just days after he first laid eyes upon Graziela.

Robert spent two years in the Army on active duty, two more on active reserve and another two on inactive reserve. He was a Specialist1, E5, Sergeant upon discharge.

His most dangerous duty was by way of happenstance.

“The most contact we had was in Germany,” Almanza said. “Some of our soldiers would end up in the Russian zone in Germany and some American officers had to go get them. That is as close to any contact as we ever got.”

He got a lot closer with Graziela…

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