Was stationed in Germany. We went on alert. News was very sketchy. Didn’t actually know at the time. The alert was at night time, which was odd. Only found out later about the President being shot.
I do have a vivd memeory of Lennon being shot as I was in PNOC listening to the radio at 4 am buffing the bedroom floor and getting ready for the day. Monday night football was on and it was announced then. heard later he died. Had SSGT Rock (his real name) saying it was good they got the bastard. I thought it must be pretty bad in the states of they are going around shooting musicans.
“Was stationed in Germany. We went on alert.”
Ditto - I was the Staff Duty Officer on the kaserne.
This was back when I was a student at the radio program and a community college in Spokane.
It was the first day of classes for that week and we were getting ready for the 1st day of our News and Reporting class. The teacher asked me to go turn on the teletype. We had one of those old Associated Press honest-to-god teletypes that made all the rattling and clacking as it typed out the news. I turned it on and walked away for a few minutes. The teacher just wanted me to get enough copy so we could talk about how to present it.
After a couple minutes, I went back to the teletype room... Just as the 10 Bell alarm went off. 10 bells on a teletype meant one of two things-either an EBS test or activation, or a bulletin. I went over to the teletype and look down at the copy as it was coming across and saw the words that the president had been shot.
Breathlessly, I ran around the corner and ran into the classroom and stood in the doorway. My sudden arrival made people look up and I was the one that said, “Gang... The president’s been shot”. It must have been the look on my face that made people realize I was not telling a joke. A group of about 10 people bolted out of the room and ran into the teletype room, which could only hold about two people. They were crowding around trying to look over each others shoulders as the news came acrossed. The teacher heard what was going on and got a radio and put it in the classroom and turned it on to the local news station. As class began, we were learning about News and Reporting while a major breaking story was happening at the same time.
As I recall, nobody cheered, nobody laughed, and nobody was anything but respectful.