1st Trip to Europe

I would finish my tour in Viet Nam in April 1968, but if I rotated home, I'd have to 'play the game' for fun, i.e., without combat pay. So I decided to extend my tour for 6 months, knowing that I'd receive 60 days 'basket leave' and a ticket to anywhere. Then, after my tour, I'd rotate home, and muster out of the Marines. So where to go... if I could go anywhere, where would I go in 1968? I wanted to go to a Grand Prix in Europe, that's for sure. And the Grand Prix de Monaco, was at the top of my list. I wanted to see Dan Gurney drive again. I had seen him at Watkins Glen in 1964 driving a Brabham.
So I bought a copy of Frommer's "Europe on $5 a Day" and sure enough, it could be done. I asked for my leave during the month of May, and went to the American Embassy in DaNang to get a passport. I told them my leave address would be YMCA, Rome, Italy. And off I went to Camp Hansen, Okinawa, for final processing. My airline ticket read, "Naha, Okinawa, to Taipei, Taiwan, via Northwest - to Hong Kong via Cathay Pacific - to Bangkok, Thailand, on Pan Am (via their Route #1) which continued to Calcutta, India, and Beirut, Lebanon and finally, Rome Italy.
The fellow I was sitting next to asked me to take his Nikon thru customs, and if I did I could stop off and visit him in Milano. Sounded OK at the time, so I foolishly did it. And I took a cab to a pensione in Rome that had a room with breakfast for $3 per day. Rome was a great place to visit in 1968, I didn't have any trouble with anything, and I ordered a pair of prescription sun glasses, and spent the rest of the week visiting many of the sites in Rome and the Vatican. The most impressive thing I saw was Michaelangelo's Pieta. So after my glasses were ready, I bought a ticket to Amsterdam on the 'Rapido' which was the high speed, few stops way to get there.
Frommer's book gave me a good tip on another good place to stay. I rented a car and drove to Copenhagen. The car was a Dutch made DAF 33, with a 2 cylinder engine and a "continuously variable transmission". It didn't use much gas, but the only car I passed on the autobahn was an old VW, and the only place I could do that was downhill. I made it to the statue of Hans Christian Andersons "Little Mermaid" and went back to Amsterdam.

After a bit, I bought a ticket to Milano, and phoned my new "friend" upon arrival. But he was too busy to deal with me, so I went to visit the Duomo and bought a ticket to Genoa. I had a little time before things would began to happen in Monaco, and I found Genoa a nice warm place to spend a few days. Finally, I boarded a bus to Monte Carlo and found a cheap pensione next to the train station - imagine $5 a day in Monaco! The city was ready for the Gran Prix, meaning the armco barriers were up, and traffic was limited. I even went to the Casino and won $20 francs on roulette.
And I got to see Dan Gurney drive one of his own Eagles in the Grand Prix. I even went down to the pits and talked to one of his engineers wearing my "Charter Member - All American Racers" jacket, which I still have somewhere. Graham Hill won the race in a Lotus, and Dan's Eagle unfortunately broke down.
After the race, I went to Barcelona, where I saw the flamenco, the Duomo, and posters for the European Hill Climb Championship at Montseny. Since I didn't know where that was, I contacted the "Diputacion", which turned out to be a local government building. Remember, General Franco was still in power in 1968, but these people were very kind, and showed me how to get to the hillclimb.
These little cars were very interesting and very small. The fiberglass was so thin that I could see my hand under a fender. There were Porsche 910 for Gerhard Mittner, Dieter Quester, and Ludovico Scarfiotti and a Ferrari and an Abarth. Buy this time, I was low on money, and I bought a train ticket to Madrid, and went to the Pan Am office downtown, and changed my ticket so I could leave from Madrid.
All in all I had a great trip, and after some time back home in Seattle, I flew down to Camp Pendelton, and out across the Pacific to finish my tour. I had a friend back in Chu Lai that liked Francoise Hardy in the movie "Grand Prix" so I brought him a 45 rpm record of her singing in French. And I got to listen, too.