AMERICANS ABROAD: Goodbye to All That

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Like a latter-day Mongol horde, the fighting men who serve the U.S. around the world are followed by their wives and children—484,000 of them in 1060. In a drastic effort to reduce the flow of dollars abroad, President Eisenhower ordered the number of U.S. military dependents overseas reduced to 200,000 within two years. This may cut the U.S. payments deficit as, much as $500 million a year, counting what the Pentagon"spends on dependents and the $1,000 a year each dependent is estimated to spend abroad. But last week, at one of the lushest dependent settlements overseas, the good life still reigned and the money was still pouring out.

The week's doings read like social notes from Newburyport, Mass, or La Jolla, Calif. Cub Scouts were meeting at the home of Den Mother Katherine Williams.

The Holy Name Society elected B. J. Lawler as its new president. Popcorn-munchers at the movie theater sat through Executive Suite and Brides of Dracula. Before cheering thousands, the high school eleven, sparked by Quarterback Ronnie Tapp, rolled to a 28-0 Homecoming-Day victory.

Wall to Wall. Though the scene was as American as deep-freeze apple pie, the setting was not. The tightly knit settlement of 15,000 U.S. citizens—mainly Air Force dependents with a sprinkling of Army folk—stands on a wooded hilltop above the baroque German city of Wiesbaden (pop. 250,000) at a bend of the Rhine River. In this slumless paradise, each officer's or noncom's family is assigned a completely furnished, one-to five-bedroom apartment in buildings erected for them by the West German government. Some 600 bachelor officers and civilians are housed downtown in the rambling American Arms Hotel. Nearly 400 single girls take their ease in the $2,760,000 Amelia Earhart Residence Hotel, seven stories of attractive rooms complete with wall-to-wall carpeting and picture windows overlooking the Rhine valley.

Food? A busy supermarket does a business of $300,000 a month selling milk at 15¢ a quart and turkey at 41¢ a Ib. Entertainment? There are five nightclubs with free floor shows, inexpensive dinners and 25¢ highballs. The Teen Club is dominated by a free-play jukebox loaded with 60 rock-'n'-roll records and no reject button. Motoring? U.S. cars come direct from the factory at prices far below Stateside and gasoline is pumped into the tank at 14¢ a gallon. Vacation? If bored with the local 18-hole golf course (family membership: $40 a year), try a pleasant few days skiing at Garmisch or Berchtesgaden, where a private room-and-bath is priced at $1.25 a night. Instruction and equipment for nearly any sport costs, as a military brochure puts it, "next to nothing." Sick? The 350-bed Wiesbaden U.S.A.F. hospital sends no bills to any patients—except for maternity care, which costs $1.75 a day.