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Partnership
Training
You did not have to drive very far from Daley Barracks to
find either BGS or Bundeswehr units. The BGS had a large
Kaserne at Oerlenbach, only three miles to the southeast;
dive a little bit further to the southwest and you would
find a Bundeswehr barracks and school at Hammelburg. Heading
northeast and towards the border, you could give a wave to
the Bundeswehr barracks at Mellrichstadt. Considering all of
this so near, it is somewhat odd that more partnership
events - joint training or sports competitions did not
occur.
Erwin Ritter sent us clippings from the BGS newspaper files
that indicate in the 1960s, there was a steady cycle of
competitive pistol marksmanship events attended by troopers
from Daley and a wide variety of German sharpshooter teams
drawn from the military, police, BGS and even private gun
clubs. Thru the 1980s, this type of competition continued
but really only a few troopers participated. Every now and
then, in small groups or even individually - troopers
pierced the American bubble surrounding Daley Barracks.
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Joint German – American pistol shoot at
Reiterswiesen in 1977. |
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One memorable joint training initiative
in 1976 found a couple of lucky Eaglehorse platoons
attending the French Commando School. All went well with the
first group from F Troop but during the second iteration , a
soldier from Troop E was badly injured and out of
circulation for some time - that ended the commando
experiment. From a few years later, I have a distant
recollection of a couple of Lts going to the West German
Army parachute course, or at least a shortened version -
something like three days of training followed by two jumps
and the awarding of the Bundeswehr jump wings. Something
also makes me think that they actually participated in this
training while on leave from the squadron.
No good idea ever truly dies, however, and CWO ( ret ) Rick
Laws recalls the story of partnership training revived with
Fox Troop in the early 1980s and his own excellent adventure
with the French Army:
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Looks like a fine spread set out by the German cooks
at Mellrichstadt. |
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I was first assigned to the Eaglehorse in
January 1976 as an 11C with a secondary MOS related to unit
supply. This led to duty as the Troop TAMMS clerk at
Squadron Maintenance, then work in the unit supply room and
finally the consolidated S4 shop. I traveled quite a bit,
accompanying equipment being turned in, new equipment
arrivals, quartering party and rear detachment duties more
times than I can recall at Wildflecken and Grafenwoehr; and
somewhere in all of this, married a German girl, Monika, and
we are still together to this day. I had picked up some
pretty good conversational German skills and left BK in
1979.
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Military band in period costume for this affair. |
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I was only 1 ˝ years in the states and
returned to the 2/11th in 1981 and stayed until 1983. During
this time I spent most of it in F Trp as the supply
sergeant. During one of our border tours I was asked if I
could go translate at the German (352nd Panzer Grenadier
Battalion) at Mellrichstadt. It was assumed they had some
rifle ranges and we could get some of our guys at least
zero’ed on their M16s. They were extremely pleased that we
had interest in asking and I was taken to see their senior
1st Sgt, Herr Schug, who was also the senior NCO of the
brigade located in Hammelburg.
We had normally been aligned with the Bundesgrenzschutz as
we both had a border mission but it turned out that the
352nd was our right flank unit in the GDP area. It made
sense to get to know one another, just in case the Warsaw
Pact decided to come west, so F Troop and the 352nd began
exchanges of soldiers for rifle shooting, which earned
soldiers qualification badges and a chance to get the German
Schutzenschnur (shooting rope) which troopers could wear on
their Class A uniform while assigned in Germany.
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We exchanged NCOs during REFORGER and had
a few parties and some really fun times. During 1982, SGT
Phillips and I were invited to accompany the 352nd to train
with their French Partnership unit near Belfort France.
During this time the 352nd used the Marder Infantry Vehicle
which had a 20mm cannon and 7.62 coax. It also had Milan
anti-tank missiles and lots of firing ports in the sides and
a periscope mounted machine gun facing the rear of the
vehicle. We were only hearing about the M3 cavalry vehicle
at the time so anytime we got to train on the Marder was
quite something.
The French unit was the 35th Infantry Regiment which had
AMX-10 APS with 20mm cannons, sort of like M114s. They also
had AMX 30 tanks which had a 90mm cannon, sort of like an
M48. It was interesting that the AMX 30 had a 50 cal M2
Machine gun as the coax to the main gun. It was a ground
mount HB version and simply had a cradle in the turret to
pin in the M2 and the barrel stuck out a bit. The French
soldiers had an M2 field stripped during an orientation day.
I knelt down and, to their amassment reassembled the M2. I
flipped down the feed tray cover and it was stamped “US
Army”. I pointed to my shirt pocket which also said US Army,
and they shook their head in understanding.
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West German Marder |
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We got to shoot most all types of small
arms, drive and work on vehicles, road march and have some
smaller vehicle FTX type maneuvers in the French training
area near Besancon. After the training, we got to play
tourists for a while and saw the French sculpture, “ The
Lion of Belfort “
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_of_Belfort , done by the
same French sculptor who designed the Statue of Liberty. A
student group also gave us a tour of the area, and we
visited several sites of Roman ruins.
On the whole, it was a great experience.
Dec 2012
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Couple of views of the French AMX 10 fighting
vehicle. |
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French AMX 30 tank. |
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That’s me, center of frame in the BDUs. Anyone up
for a game of basketball? |
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