June 1999
Once John was done at Fort Leavenworth it was time to head over the pond to Germany. We were so excited. When John joined the Army there were 2 places we wanted to go, Hawaii and Germany. We had been to Hawaii twice and now we were getting to check Germany off our list. There was so much to do before heading over. Our household goods had been shipped from Alabama so they were waiting for us in Germany. When John started at Fort Leavenworth we shipped our van and got by on just our Saturn. Rob and I already had our civilian passports since Korea but because Germany was an accompanied tour the government issued us a second passport for official travel and it contained a SOFA stamp (Status of Forces Agreement).
We had about a week in St. Louis to say goodbye to friends and family. You would think since we had moved around so much that this one would be easy but it wasn't. There wasn't anyway to just jump in the car and drive home or find a cheap flight and hop on a plane. Our friends and John's fraternity brothers gave us a good bye party which turned out to be more of a drunk fest. They claimed to be getting us ready for life in Germany...yeah right. Then our families held one to say good bye also. They both were wonderful and awful at the same time.
The day was finally upon us. All our bags were packed, documents in order and we had a ride to the airport. John and I had plenty of books to read on the flight, Rob had new toys and books to keep him busy and we had a big sedative for Lady. Everything was going smoothly. That should have been our first tip off. We gave Lady her pill, checked our bags, got through security. We watched out the windows at our gate as they rolled Lady out in her kennel. The pilot came over and checked on her and then started walking up the steps. We were standing in line to hand over our boarding passes when we heard our names being called over the intercom. We had no idea what was about to happen.
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