High on a mountain in the Bavarian Forest in 1975, U.S. Army and Air Force Cold War signals intelligence operatives target Soviet and Czechoslovak military entities across the nearby border. The young Americans at this small outpost live among German villagers in the valley below. A suspected communist agent operates a café frequented by Americans, and a National Security Agency analyst is assigned to observe him covertly while on temporary duty at the military base. Meanwhile, a disillusioned U.S. Army chaplain on medical leave has quietly taken up residence at the village church as he strives to regain the faith he lost in a tragedy related to the fall of Saigon. The two join forces and deal with illicit sex, a failed suicide, and drug trafficking, as well as the threat posed by the suspected agent.
The detachment's closely knit soldiers and airmen are not typical service members. Many have at least a year or two of college and have been trained as linguists and intelligence analysts. All have well above average IQs, and nearly all have a self-taught working knowledge of German, a necessary skill in a rural area where few of the villagers speak English. The young Americans' lifestyle of lax discipline and alcohol-induced misadventures are a mix of M*A*S*H and Animal House, but they perform their duties with distinction, knowing that they are sentinels on the front line of freedom.
This is the final installment in a trilogy describing life at Army Security Agency border sites in Germany during the Cold War. These isolated posts were closed in the mid-1970s when operations were consolidated at a central point in Augsburg. ASA itself ceased to exist in 1976 when it was subsumed into the Army's Intelligence and Security Command. The author hopes that this book and its companions keep the memory of the border sites and their lifestyle alive even after the last ASA veteran has answered the final bugle call. Semper Vigilis.