Excerpts from Letters to Mom in italics.
21 June 1963
No, I haven't heard from Gretchen, but I saw her mother twice per chance and exchanged hellos.
I know a nice (attractive) blonde who speaks English, French, a little Spanish and her native German. When she comes home from the University of Munich on vacation next month, she said she'd teach me some conversational French. Too bad she's not my type. [Query if his type is uneducated?]
Young Fehr was a studious type who often committed German poetry to memory when broke. Straining to stay out of trouble, one eye remained focused on the lovely young ladies strolling by his carefully chosen perch in the Rosengarten. A particularly lengthy verse, a classic poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832), was Der Erl König (The Fairy King). The German text below is filtered through a usually faulty memory and more than 35 years. The pertinent prose is buried about seven stanzas into the saga where the fairy king (death incarnate) is talking to the delirious boy who is fading fast. The desperate father clutches the boy to his bosom while galloping through the dark, cold night on horseback to the doctor. The ancient lines that Fehr later shamelessly employed totally out of context to further his sexual advances were never used again, at least not successfully.
Attempting to stimulate the blonde university student, Fehr the suave, begins to recite the chosen verse from the Fairy King. It would sound as incongruous today as if someone, especially an enlisted GI, were to suddenly spout Shakespeare.
"Ich liebe dich,
mich reicht dein schöne Gestalt,
und bist du nicht willig,
so brauch Ich Gewalt!"
Loosely translated, "I love you, I love your beautiful form, and if you are not willing then force I'll employ!" She burst into loud, uncontrollable laughter. When the "studentin" recovered some time later, the enterprising swabby did earn a few kisses, but not the full measure of devotion desired.