A Brief Stay in BK - A/36th Engineers
(Combat)On our side of the street, the armored
cavalry had dug in for the long haul. Unless there was a
radical change in thinking and stationing plans, as long as
there was a border mission, there would be cavalry troopers
in Bad Kissingen. Across the parade field, however,
particularly in the 1950s and 1960s, units would
occasionally come and go. Sometimes, these movements were
driven by the gyroscope program that saw battalions,
brigades and even full divisions rotate from the United
States to Germany for three or four years and then return
stateside. Inside Germany, other unit moves were based on
mission evolution, home station locations were adjusted, the
troops would pack up their bags and move on.
One such unit enjoying a brief stay at Daley Barracks in
the mid 1960s was Company A of the 36th Engineer
Battalion (Combat) VII Corps. Ed Kozart, who has done a
superior job in collecting photographs to bring the history
of his battalion on line, picks up the narrative.
-- We were at Fort Leonard Wood in 1961 and the unit went
to Germany during the Berlin Crisis in Oct. of 1961.
HQ-B & C Company went to Bendlach, Germany and A Company
went to Bayreuth Germany. That was only 6 miles apart. We
did not have a D Company when we went to Germany.
There was a D Company, 237th Engineers in Bayreuth and
first they were attached to the 82nd making them our D
Company. In 1963, D Company was permanently assigned to us.
I think the reason they attached D Co 237th to us was
because they had the Atomic Demolition Munitions
responsibility and they trained a lot of our guys.
About the middle of 1962, the Battalion was moved to
Bamburg (HQ-B & C Company). A Company was moved to Bad
Kissingen. D Co. 237th stayed in Bayreuth.
D Company went to Bamburg around the 1st part of 1964 to
join the battalion as D Company of the 82nd engineers
I was told A Company left Bad Kissingen for Bamburg
around 1966 where they joined the battalion. --
I tried to more fully research the story of this
comparatively brief stay but really had no luck beyond Ed’s
recollections. Members of the battalion have, however, a
great web site with hundreds of period photos located here:
http://www.82ndengineer.net/
From the start page - select Photo Albums Page -
found in the navigation column on left.
As the new page opens - select A Company Guys -
The albums are arranged alphabetically, there are two
separate pages to choose from based on last name of
individual who contributed the photographs.
On the A Company photo album page, there is a slide
device to view all the thumbnail images. Located above the
thumbnail window are a series of album page numbers. Each
page number adds new thumbnails.
From the thumbnail window, click on the image and it
appears in central window. Select full view and the image
enlarges a second time.
This sounds more complicated than it really is, the
navigation is really straight forward.
Many of the A Company photo histories trace the
photographer from Fort Leonard Wood through the various
moves his unit made. There are a number of images of Daley
Barracks and Bad Kissingen found in most of the albums as
well as the usual training and FTX images.
For an enjoyable trip back to the days of the white name
tape Army and military life as it was captured on film on
the other side of the street, enjoy a visit with Ed Cozart
and his friends. Ed sent us this set of images to give you
an idea of content waiting at his web site, captions were
not necessary, the images are immediately recognizable.
