January 1970 I finished the Microwave Radio AN/FCC-18 Multiplexer Operations & Maintenance course at U.S. Army STRATCOM headquarters in Mannheim, Germany in mid-January. My classmates and I were immediately given temporary travel orders to proceed to our various assignments at STRATCOM microwave radio stations across Germany. I received a railroad ticket that would take me…
Tag: Donnersberg
Flashback: US Army | The Night Train to Heidelberg
January 1970 I arrived in Frankfurt, Germany after a major snowstorm. Several of us soldiers were being ferried from Frankfurt Am-Main Airport to a processing center downtown. I had learned to negotiate slippery sidewalks the hard way (I had fallen on my butt twice outside the airport). <feature photo by pinterest.com I learned that I…
Flashback: US Army, Ft Monmouth NJ | Freedom & Foreboding
Oceanport, New Jersey 1969 The importance of FREEDOM cannot be overstressed. My first true understanding of it occurred when I climbed out of the rear of a deuce-and-a-half truck wearing my US Army dress uniform at Seattle-Tacoma Airport. I stood alone with my duffle bag in tow as plumes of smoke puffed out of the…
1970 Flashback | Donnersberg, Germany | A Perilous Journey Down the Mountain
Company B, 447th Signal Battalion, Germany <feature photo by usarmygermany.com The Company B, 447th Signal Battalion barracks lie hidden away at North Point, Kriegsfeld, just outside Kircheimbolanden, a quaint village in the Rhine Valley southwest of Frankfurt. It took a fifteen-kilometer winding drive in the back of a deuce-and-a-half (2 ½-ton) truck to reach my…
