“I was just a typical northwest Iowa farm kid who got drafted,” the Fort Dodge man said.

The self-described typical northwest Iowa farm kid went into the military when the Korean War was still hot and served in a place that put him on the front lines of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Nilles, who is 92 and lives at Friendship Haven, was born in Gregory, South Dakota. When he was very young his family moved to northwest Iowa and lived on a couple different farms. By the time he got to high school, the family had settled on a farm near Ashton. He recalled that the family raised corn, soybeans, oats, barley, cattle and hogs.

“Dad had a lot of cattle,” he said.

He graduated from St. Joseph High School in Ashton and was drafted in December 1953.

Nilles was sent to Fort Riley, Kansas, for basic training. He recalls basic training as a lot of marching, camping, crawling under barbed wire, and marksmanship practice with M-1 rifles.

After basic training, he stayed at the Kansas post for an eight-week truck driving school. He was then sent for duty in West Germany.

He was among 3,000 soldiers who sailed out of New York harbor on the USS General Darby.

“I really enjoyed it,” he said of the two-week voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. “There was only one day when we had a bit of bad weather and the spray came up over the sides of the boat.”

The soldiers slept on canvas bunks that folded down from the inside walls of the ship.

“The greatest place in the world to sleep is on a rocking ship,” Nilles said. “Some of the other men wouldn’t agree with that though.”

The ship docked in Bremerhaven, West Germany.

Upon arriving he was assigned to the 598th Trucking Co., based near Stuttgart.

Although President Harry S. Truman ended racial segregation in the military in 1948, it took awhile for all units to get integrated. When Nilles arrived in West Germany, his unit and its barracks were just being integrated. He recalls going into the integrated barracks with his fellow soldiers for the first time.

“Us white kids were scared stiff,” he said. “We went up the stairs with our duffle bags on our shoulders and when we got up there all of those black kids were by the bunks looking at us.”

“There were no problems,” he added. “We were all in it together.”

As a driver, Nilles was behind the wheel of a Jeep or a truck the troops called a “deuce and a half” because it could carry 2 ½ tons. He said the trucks were made by REO or Studebaker and had a four-speed stick shift with overdrive. Later, he recalled, the unit got some GMC trucks equipped with a transmission advertised as a fluid drive. Contrary to their name, these trucks were very difficult to shift smoothly, he said. On occasion, a bumpy shift in gears would produce a profane outburst from troops riding in the back of the truck.

Nilles occasionally served as a guard at the gate leading into the base where he was stationed. He said he had to be all “spit and polish” for gate guard duty.

He was assigned as a bus driver to take the 37th Division athletic teams to competitions at other American bases in West Germany. He said he drove the baseball, football and basketball teams in a “government issue school bus.”

This duty took him to many locations during all seasons. He recalls entering one city during Oktoberfest and having to drive through throngs of drunk Germans.

“That was kind of exciting,” he said.

He also experienced the German autobahns, which at that time did not have a speed limit.

“They would get in the Mercedes and what have you and put the pedal to the metal,” he said of the Germans.

On his furloughs and days off, Nilles toured Switzerland, France, Italy, Britain, Ireland, Scotland and Holland.

“We did all of the touristy things,” he said.

On one occasion, he was able to get together with four other U.S. soldiers from Ashton, including his older brother Rob.

He returned to the United States by sailing from Bremerhaven to New York. He was discharged from the Army in December 1955 at Camp McCoy, Wisconsin.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and land surveying from Iowa State University in Ames before working for 37 years for McClure Engineering Co. in Fort Dodge.