Forum Replies Created
-
Replies
-
Have you considered attending one of the BUSMVA reunions? Especially one in Berlin. I was fortunate enough to make several trips before health slowed me down. I’m glad that I did it when I had the energy to take some side trips.
In 2002 I rode the Duty Train route from Berlin to Hannover. When the conductor learned I was an Army railroader, he arranged for me to ride up front with the engineer. Here’s the bug-spattered view of West Germany from East Germany. The trees were planted to hide the border death strip. Every trip had something unexpected, mostly good.
-- rwr
One of my jobs at the RTO in 1969 was to escort the bus trip with a German driver and a baggage truck out to Tegel for the Pan Am 707. Sometimes the flight was scheduled to land in a secondary UK market, like Manchester, and sometimes in a secondary German market like Dusseldorf.
The Pan Am agent was an old-timer, so when I wasn’t sure how to handle something I leaned on him for advice. As that was their only flight from Tegel, he must have had time for coffee. Air France also had one flight from Tegel to Paris with a Caravelle. There were a few charter flights and that was it.
-- rwr
That’s ironic that you had to get home to NJ from out processing. I was out-processed at Fort Dix and so took a bus to NYC.
There were two of us in the shipment who were from the West Coast, both of us a bit older, and both of us having worked intelligence jobs. We had the same idea: we weren’t going to rush home and it had occurred to both of us that we’d like to do some sightseeing because we might never get back to NYC again. So we took the bus up to NYC.
I’ve written before in other places about my train trip from Grand Central Station to Portland Union Station. It reminded me of what a great country the U.S.A. is. It also has a lot of elbow room, as the attached Montana scene shows.
I did miss Berlin. It’s like leaving a movie theater half way through the show. In the next year I was driving a motor pool car and my boss told me that I was making him nervous by looking in the rear view mirror so much. My (new) wife would catch me daydreaming and said that I was back in Berlin.
At the Oregon Department of Transportation there were a lot of veterans. We kidded each other about what terrible shape the country would be in if we were called up for duty, but enjoyed hearing the many different service stories. Most of the top people were WWII vets. The funniest experience was at a Ports Commission meeting when the governor dropped in unscheduled. I saw him in the doorway and without thinking I jumped up and stood at attention. And so did the commissioners! They were all former Navy men. The governor was, too, so he said “at ease” and chuckled and then said that he kind of liked that. He’d been an EM in WWII, so it was a new experience for him.
-- rwr
When I arrived in June 1969, we were shipping people home via a Pan Am 707 flight to JFK from TXL. One of my duties in Transportation Corps that summer was to be PFCIC of a German bus driver and a German truck driver with the baggage and a bunch of wild GI’s who all outranked me, at least in time in grade. The homeward soldiers were out-processed at Fort Hancock.
The Pan Am station manager was an old-timer and so I followed his suggestions when we had any issues. I think everyone got home.
When my time in the Army ended in Berlin in August 1971 the first 747 services were in use and so we had the flight from Tempelhof to Frankfurt and then Frankfurt to JFK and then a “limo” ride to Fort Dix. The 707 route was much better, but I understood the economics.
-- rwr
I’m glad to see it is working better. For a long time, I couldn’t read or send messages even though there were clues that they still were in here somewhere. I was beginning to think I’d have to leave messages the way that the Soviets did.
-- rwr
Welcome! If you haven’t seen it yet you might be interested in my YouTube tribute to the 287th. I pasted it together from still photos when the 287th was reactivated to go to Baghdad with the Big Red 1. You can find it by searching in the YouTube search field for “Berlin 1969 – Part 1”
There are further Parts 2a, 2b, 3, 4, 5, 6. Each is about ten minutes long and is about a particular aspect.
-- rwr
Over the years, I’ve learned that I had distant relatives on both sides of the Normandy operation.
My maternal grandfather’s cousin was a truck driver in the Wehrmacht and in 1971 described to me what the paratroop operation looked like from the German point of view. A lot of credit goes to those airborne soldiers who took alternative actions when their drops were fouled up. The Germans were confused. (His unit was pulled out and after a leave at home he was sent to the Eastern Front where he ended the war as a POW of the Soviets. Because he was an enlisted man and a small-time farmer he was sent home sooner than many others.)
My father’s cousin was a lawyer who was trained as an Artillery officer before WWII started. Most of his class was sent to the Philippines. He was sent to a program that family could not identify when I visited them in 1969. However, he was fluent in French and I think that he had traveled there. He shows up in the St. Lo, France city council minutes as a G-5 officer (military government) a few weeks after that city was a scene of vicious fighting. He was hunting for stay-behinds (German intelligence personnel ordered to remain in the liberated zones or German deserters). Later, he shows up in Army directives ordering that Nazi files that troops found be shipped to his field office, preparing for war crimes investigations. After the war, he worked in DC for the Federal Trade Commission.
-- rwr
One “feature” that needs to be addressed is that although we need a password to get in here, there are times when forum messages appear on search engines.
-- rwr
I have reservations, for whatever they are worth. Last summer a trip to a family reunion had to be altered several times due to fires, mudslides, etc. This time we’re headed to a hurricane target!
Und sie?
-- rwr
Chris: It was great to read your notes on your recent trip. In the past I enjoyed travel in Europe on leave and then before or after our reunions and came across bits and pieces of modern history unfolding. These can be a nuisance at the time — as you experienced — but years into the future you’ll be ahead of others in understanding how things felt. In 2018 I visited Krakow and I thought about adding some days into Ukraine. Now I wish I had taken the extra time.
May I clip and quote your paragraph about the trains for the Amtrak Unlimited website? It has a side section regarding international rail travel and its readers enjoy first person experiences. I would credit you unless you’d prefer not to be identified.
Before or after reunions I also enjoyed visiting Reinhard. I turned up another photo of him.
-- rwr
My estimate is that we would have had a move-out alert for a day, with media coverage. And that leaves would have been canceled. But I wasn’t privy to the top levels.
Here’s what happened when Syria attacked Jordan in 1970, per Wikipedia: Syria sent an armored division into Jordan to reinforce the Palestinian forces under attack by [Jordan’s King] Hussein’s army. By July 1971, Syria had broken off diplomatic relations with Jordan over the issue.
Here’s what we saw: The Nixon administration ordered an airborne unit that was in field training in one of our sites in the former American Zone of Germany to pack up and return immediately to their barracks. They did so, followed on the autobahn by Soviet Military Liaison officers who snapped lots of photos, followed by a long traffic jam that made the front pages of the German papers. When our guys reached their base, the staff of the JAG office was waiting with prepared wills for any soldier who didn’t have one, and there was more media coverage. A stereotypical senior NCO was quoted as never having seen such a serious movement since Korea.
I asked some of my friends in Service Company if they had been put on alert for supporting the airborne with various technical skills. Nope. And then there was a pause while the British-trained Jordanians pushed back the Syrians. Diplomatic news was that the Soviet Union was urging the Syrians to back off — and probably showing them 8×10 glossies of the long column of airborne soldiers on the autobahn.
So based on how an outside incident that did not directly involve the U.S. was handled I would estimate that we would have taken actions for preparedness and publicity. NATO is doing that right now in the eastern border countries.
-- rwr
Here is my rough Google translation of the statement by
ALLIED MUSEUM DIRECTOR DR. JÜRGEN LILLTEICHER ON RUSSIA’S ATTACK ON UKRAINE
With Russia’s attack on Ukraine, the previous peace order in Europe was destroyed. This order had guaranteed the inviolability of borders and the territorial integrity of the states in Europe.
In 2020, our museum commemorated the 30th anniversary of the Two Plus Four Treaty on German Unity and in 2021 the 50th anniversary of the Four Power Agreement on Berlin. Negotiations, treaties and mutual agreements have so far secured peace in Europe. The Allied Museum views the unilateral denunciation of these principles and the military enforcement of imperial interests with great concern and fears for peace in Europe. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is an attack on our democracies and our fundamental values, values that the Allied Museum also upholds. Our museum therefore stands firmly and in solidarity with Ukraine and condemns this war in the strongest possible terms. Our thoughts are with the people of Ukraine!
-- rwr
One difference between the Ukraine fight and our situation in Berlin is that the Soviet Union didn’t need to invade because they had already done that in 1945. That’s a reason for the frequency of alerts — it would not have taken much time to get something started.
On move-out alerts we were clocked by the opposition. In October or November 1969, a middle-aged woman sitting in this car a few streets west of Andrews Barracks was there for over two hours as our units moved out. A well-run move-out sent a message to the Warsaw Pact countries that a surprise operation might not work.
-- rwr
