March 1992-September 7, 2001.

3rd Squadron, 2nd Armored Cavalry, Amberg, W. Germany 1968 1970

I was in HowBtry.

Edit: I think you and I talked about this before, tasked with drawing Warsaw Pact forces up the A6 corridor.

on a trip to the South West this summer, she said the barracks are now apartments. Did you guys go up to the
border in Regan?

Civilian housing now...but they kept the old mess hall, and turned it into a gourmet restaurant!

I don’t recall ever eating a gourmet meal there...

K Troop; were you guys still using the Sheridan, or had they made the switch to heavy armor by then?
EDIT: just saw you were there before me, so I imagine you guys were still on the Sheridan.

When I was in FO section I did a couple of tours to Camp Rotz (later called Camp Reed) and to Camp May. Can’t remember which sector had the old train station which was bisected by the border; I remember that they had put a brick wall through the middle.

named Mighty Mike on a concrete pad, they fired a blank round every night at retreat, it shook the ground.
No I never had anything like a gourmet meal in that mess hall. I remember passing thru a town where the street
was paved with asphalt on our side of town and turned to brick with streetcar tracks on the Soviet side. We did our
border time at Camp May outside of Regan I think we did like 6 or 8 weeks, I did 2 single tours there and one double one. We also went
to Hohenfels and Grafenwer twice. So out of 13 months in Germany I think I spent maybe 5 of them in Amberg. The Soviets saved me from
Viet Nam when they invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968.

I was stationed at a place on the Czech border in an area that you guys patrolled out of Camp May in Regen. 1969 - 1972. We were on a mountain called Hoher Bogen near the border crossing at Furth im Wald (Schafberg). I was back visiting last year. It's beautiful country there. Amberg, Pond Barracks, was our closest Class VI store and US dispensary - although we also used Hohenfels.

As long as I know I can take a hot shower at the end of the day, and sleep in a decent bed.

I don't think I've been as cold as I was over there in Winter.

'89-'09. Two Middle East vacations with 2MarDiv and crossed to 42nd InfDiv

He almost came close to standing against my future father-in-law face to face, except that my father-in-law was drafted off his farm to be cannon fodder at Stalingrad, and was already back home, minus a leg blown off by a Russian artillery shell, by the time my dad was shipped to England after basic training in Texas in 1943.

Will sometimes tell his World War II story. He always begins "I fought in the War, we lost."

His Hitler youth group was drafted, he was 13 at the time. They were given Wehrmacht uniforms and marched to the edge of town where they were assigned to crew anti-aircraft guns.

His gun Commander was a veteran of the Eastern Front who had been wounded multiple times and only had partial use of one arm. When they asked if he was going to teach them how to use the gun his reply was,
" Hell no! I don't want to give any plane a reason to drop a bomb on us. We are going to sit here and wait for the Americans to arrive and surrender to the first one we see."

Three days later they spotted Sherman tanks. He had them throw any weapons into the latrine pit and they flew a white flag from the AA gun.

Stalingrad was so traumatic, it left a goodly number of survivors mental basket cases for life. My wife's dad was a farmer, used to the winter cold. He said all the city boys in his unit froze to death. He said he was well-treated by the Ukrainian nurses on the way back to Germany, but my mom heard from relatives that he was the sunniest disposition of the village before he was drafted, and when he returned, only his wife-to-be was able to lift his somber mood.

as German. It is hard to conceive of the carnage they describe. In many cases people were reduced to animals fighting to survive until the next fight. Your FiL is a rare survivor of the battle but I don't think anyone would say he is 'lucky" to have survived.

Fred considers himself lucky that he was young enough to not get drafted to military service until the very end. He spent most of the war in a village small enough to not be a target. He avoided most of the horrors of the war, though he did go through some air raids and saw those so wounded they were sent home.

When my wife was fresh out of nursing school she did a stint as home health nurse for a woman who had been a nurse in the Wehrmacht on the eastern front.

She served with them from 1942-45.

Tough lady, that one.

Active duty Jan 1976- Jan 1980. 8 years reserve after that. Made major.

1979 - 2017

WESTPAC

1979-1983

Best decision of my life was to enlist.

Lackland AFB, TX - 6 weeks Basic Training
Lowry AFB, CO - 9 months electronics and avionics tech school
Plattsburgh AFB, NY - FB-111 Avionics in-shop repair
Keesler AFB. MS - Tech School, cross-trained to Computer Maintenance
Sembach AB, Germany - Tactical Control RADAR Computer Maintenance, mobile unit (Even in the USAF we got to sleep in the mud!)
Fort Meade, MD - Computer maintenance on...well, if I told you, I'd probably have to kill you. Yeah, I went from a mobile deployable unit to a US Army base. (If asked, we were told only to say that we were assigned to 'the Department of Defense at Fort Meade', unless specifically asked by name about the DoD Agency that we were assigned to. This was a sort of transition period when they were no longer flat-out denying their own existence.)

Got out in 1984 before that bastard Reagan got re-elected and got more Americans killed.

I'm friends on Facebook with several of the people I served with, and they seem to be pretty evenly divided. They are either hard-core, tRump can do no wrong wingnuts or hard-core progressives working hard to get the country back on track and boot out the current regime.

fixed and mobile units

Father US Navy Submarine duty WWII at age of 19
My self, served in the American Civil unit fighting against the War in Viet Nam.
I honor my elders and they have honored me for our services to our country.

West Germany, 1974-75.

Prior to that: 9th Infantry, Ft. Lewis, WA, 1973-74.

Most likely won't serve past my contract but we'll see.

Army Reserve, SCARNG and NCARNG, 23 years total, one fun year in Afghanistan and lots to trips other fun places over the years.

then into reserves for a bunch of years at locations like Richards Gebaur AFB MO and Wightman AFB MO

I had never even heard of it before I got stationed there.

It's an Army installation now, and the airfield side is completely gone.

When I first got there the 603 TCS was in a compound near the bowling alley, but we got moved out to Site 1 in Mehlingen not too long after. That site is now a big soccer complex. When I was there all of the old MACE missile shelters were still in place; we used them for storage.

terrific schnitzel for 4-5 marks

I was with the 601 TCW - Logistics Office - 2nd floor of HQ building - right outside Wing Commander office.

Great times.

I remember getting burgers at the bowling alley but struggling to place the building.

The high ground made a better place for the RADAR watching the Fulda Gap than down in the valley <g>.

We used to go to the bowling alley for lunch every so often. Sometimes we'd decide to have a 'BBK Sandwich'...that was a bottle of BBK, with a bottle of BBK on either side of it. We were sometimes very relaxed when we got back to work.

Thanks for the thread!

He said he did his basic training (what little they got) on a ship headed to Korea. His hands were shot up. He was also shot in the chest, but the bullet hit his dog tags. He regained much of the use of his hands after spending 6 months in a hospital upon return and he always had an indentation in his chest.

He said one day they were marching along a road from one camp to another and a US tank came along and offered a few guys a lift if they wanted to hold on the outside. He passed but a buddy took them up on it. A short while later he saw the tank get blown up. He said he essentially saw this buddy die. Some years later after the war, my dad walked into the mess hall somewhere in Texas and who did he see? The buddy he thought had died! I think that was one of the only good news stories of his war experience.

in Detroit Michigan.


Served during the War on Drugs.

Last edited Sun Nov 12, 2017, 04:52 PM - Edit history (1)

Army Reserve from 1986-1989. Gulf War I, 1991.

United States Army, RA
1972-1975
USARAL Ft Richardson AK
76B
4th of the 23d 172nd Inf Battalion

Thats all remember. Been trying to forget ever since.

Spec4

so I wouldn't dare put myself on the same pedestal of those who were in harm's way and I remember today:

My father
Father-in-law
Uncle
Great Uncle
Grandfather

None died on the battlefield so I guess we were somewhat lucky. Three were badly wounded, suffering devastating, irreparable life altering injuries that ruined and curtailed their lives. For many decades, my siblings and I were forbidden to ask about my grandfather because of the anguish it brought my mother.

My Dad was a B24 crewman during WWII. My Father-in-law was a RNZAF pilot in London and my Mother-in-law was a WREN (nurse) in London during WWII. One of my uncles (my Godfather) fought all through Europe and I never knew until I read his obit. In other news: the local Vets for Peace were barred from marching in the Veteran's Parade.

I can't say for sure, but I would bet that more Vets in the Peace group saw action than the ones in the Parade group. I referenced my FIL above. He would never talk about his service until I took him and my young son to a military museum. Even then the only thing he said, close to tears, was that he remembers seeing friends go off on a sortie and never returning. There was a partial cockpit of a type of aircraft he flew and he wouldn't go near it while my son was in it. Years ago he was arrested while protesting against US nuclear ships allowed in NZ ports.

Joined army in 2005, He was electrician and after 9-11 He wanted to serve. In his 30s, 101st Airborne Air Assault. Tours in Iraq and South Korea and training recruits at Ft Jackson. Missed kids young years and decided to get out in 2016.

He is my hero. Thanking him and his soldiers and all veterans for their honorable service to us all.

Draftee, so term was only two years.

Never went 'south' though....

Now bed bound and in assisted living, but in good spirits. When he saw on CNN this morning that Pence said "we won't rest until all vets get the care they deserve ", he asked somewhat plaintively, " does that mean me too, or just the newer vets? " I had to assure him once again that we had "enough" to manage on our own, even if we lose the medical deduction. I can only imagine the anxiety of vets his age who don't have someone to reassure them of that.

Who served

Lackland, TX AFB - Basic 1/84 to 3/84
Sheppard, TX AFB - Tech School 3/84 to 5/84
Grand Forks, ND AFB - 321 CES 6/84 to 12/86
Osan AFB, ROK - 554 CESHR - 1/87 to 1/88
Niagara Falls, NY AFB - 107th FIG - 1/88 to 1/89

Honorable Discharge

Republic of Vietnam Dec 66 to Dec 67. Fort Meade, Maryland, January to May 68. MLK was assassinated while I was there, and we were confined to base for a week while riots were occurring in DC and Baltimore. Quite an interesting couple of years!

Naval Hospital Camp Lejeune
FOB Edinburgh Afghanistan Feb-Sept 11

or so I've been told.

VMA 131, Aviation Ordnanceman, NAS Willow Grove, PA

1974 - 1980.