Ok, it’s mid August in Darmstadt, Germany (about 35 kilometers south of Frankfurt). There was a U.S. Army base in Darmstadt that was using a World War II German army base. The Air Force had one tiny part of the post.
Our barracks buildings were three story, various sized rooms on both sides of a long hallway with stair wells on both ends. I was in an 8 man room when this happened. My side of the barracks faced a wooded area with about 20 meters of space between the barracks building and the perimeter fence. Immediately beyond the perimeter the trees formed another “fence”.
The windows in the barracks were wooden framed. The outer windows swung out and the inner windows swung in. Between the right and left sets of windows was a vertical separator.
This particular night it was hot and there was an enormous thunderstorm on its way. I had just come in from being in downtown Darmstadt and I was pretty drunk on German beer (the best in the world in my opinion). Anyway, I was in a pretty good mood and was singing some songs that would never be sung in church … they were pretty foul.
Of course we had one room mate who was a devout Christian and he told me God was going to send me to hell if I didn’t stop singing that “trash”. So I opened the inner windows, then the outer windows. By this time it was pouring down rain and there was lightening flashes and thunder not too far in the distance.
I dropped my pants and my skivvies, and climbed up into the opening of the window. Hanging on to the vertical separator, I hung my bare ass out the third floor window and shouted, “Here I am God! Come get me if you want me to stop singing!” No sooner had I uttered the last word than a bold of lightening hit a tree exactly opposite the window I was in and split it all the way to the ground. Every hair on my body stood on end (yes I had head hair then LOL), I could smell the ozone from the lightening and feel the static discharge all around me. Then immediately there was the crack of thunder that rattled the windows.
I dove under my bunk screaming “HOLY SHIT! HOLY SHIT!”
The Christian room mate started laughing his ass off. “I told you!” He said, “I told you!” He had tons of fun telling everyone he ran into about the incident where God almost fried my ass.
