Postcards

My postcard box

For some reason today I went through this old shoebox I've kept for years full of postcards from my travels.  Once I got started, it was impossible to stop.  I went through them all, even reading those that had been through the mail.

Ruedesheim am Rhein

I haven't traveled much since retiring from the Army, but I've been to a lot of places.  The cards sort of document my travels.  In Germany, I visited places like Ruedesheim on the Rhine.  That was a place accessible on the Rhein cruises.  But I think we drove there more often.  The quintessential Rheinland-Pfalz town.  Just made for postcards.

The bridge house in Bad Kreuznach

Bad Kreuznach was the first German town I ever experienced.  I was stationed there in the early '80s, employed by the 232nd Signal Company (headquartered in Worms), 102nd Signal Battalion (headquartered in Frankfurt). My barracks were on the old hospital kaserne which, I understand, no longer exists.  I worked shifts in a Defense Information Systems Agency (back when it was called the Defense Communications Agency) communications station--a microwave/technical control facility--on the top of Cow Hill (Kuberg).  I remember climbing the antenna tower one New Years' Eve (highly unauthorized) to view the town's fireworks display.  Nearby locals were also shooting their own, and they seemed to be aiming for my antenna tower!  So I didn't stay up for as long as I would have liked.

About a year and a half after leaving BK, I returned to Germany, this time to Helmstedt, in Niedersachsen, and this time with a family.  We had one daughter when we got there and two when we left.  In Helmstedt, I worked at the Helmstedt Support Detachment, a unit of the 6/40th Armor Battalion, Berlin Brigade.  We traveled to so many places from Helmstedt--to Berlin, of course, and to nearby small towns, to Schoeningen, to Koenigslutter, to Celle and Wolfsburg, to Braunschweig and Hannover, and to the Harz Mountains.  We were at Helmstedt when, on the night of November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall fell and all the travel restrictions between East and West Germany were overcome by events.  Out town was flooded, absolutely flooded with East German cars, little light-blue Trabants, or "Trabbies" as they were called.  We traveled to Dusseldorf, to Frankfurt am Main, and to Heilbronn, down in Bavaria.  We rode the duty train from Helmstedt to Frankfurt and back.  From Frankfurt, I connected to Heilbronn to visit friends there.  We also visited Switzerland once, and Liechtenstein, and I made a trip or two to Rotterdam, in Holland.

Taukkunnen Kaserne in Worms

Within six months of the Berlin Wall falling, we learned that our little detachment would deactivate.  I was sent a few months later to Worms, about a six hour drive to the south.  I worked at the headquarters of the 5th Signal Command on the old Taukkunnen Kaserne.  We spent three years in Worms and did quite a bit of traveling.  Our longest trips were to Berchesgaden, deep in southern Bavaria, and to Austria, and to Holland. The German towns we visited included Karlsruhe, Mannheim, Speyer, all the little villages along the Rhein and the Deutche Weinstrasse, Kaiserslautern (or K-town, as the Americans called it), and Ramstein, and many others.

In front of Greeley Hall
at Fort Huachuca

After Worms, the Army sent us back to the States.  Our first assignment was at Fort Huachuca, adjacent to Sierra Vista.  This was our second adventure in the American Southwest.  In between my first overseas assignment in Bad K, and our return to Germany a year or so later, we had been stationed at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.  In that part of the country, we visited places like Alamogordo, Cloudcroft, and Las Cruces in New Mexico.  In Texas, we spent a lot of time in El Paso, drove up and down War Road counting rabbits and snakes, and crossed the Organ Mountains back and forth.  We even made an 800+ round trip to Houston! In Arizona, our favorite haunts were Bisbee, Tombstone, and Tucson.  We saw Phoenix once or twice.  And I made it up to the Grand Canyon, with my mother and grandmother.  Still haven't lived that one down!  While in Sierra Vista I was sent to school twice.  One trip was back to Fort Gordon, Georgia.  I bought a car there from some lieutenant and drove it back to Arizona.  The other trip was to Fort Jackson, South Carolina, for Recruiting School.  I drove both ways.  I remember making over a thousand miles a day on the two-day return trip, I was so anxious to get back home. But I drove around the block several times, when I got back to Fort Huachuca, because the Atlanta Braves were playing in the World Series and I had been listening to the game for the last 250 miles.  I just couldn't stop and turn the car off in the bottom of the ninth inning.

Downtown Gloversville, New York

From Arizona we went to New York.  Might as well have gone from Jupiter to Mars!  I left Sierra Vista just after Thanksgiving.  Everyone was wearing t-shirts and shorts.  The girls were still going barefoot.  In Schenectady, New York it was snowing.  We lived in Schenectady for a few months, then moved to Johnstown to be closer to where I worked--at the Gloversville Army Recruiting Station, which no longer exists.  Altogether, during our New York stay, we visited Albany many times, and places like Troy and Amsterdam.  As a recruiter, I drove everywhere it was possible to drive to within Fulton and Montgomery counties.  Just to name a few, there was Mayfield, Northville, and Wells to the north; Fort Plain, Canajoharie, Dolgeville, and a few other places whose names escape me, to the south and southwest; Fonda and Fultonville to the south; and Broadalbin, Vails Mills, and Amsterdam to the east and southeast.  Of course, I traveled to Saratoga and saw the horse races.  And we made a trip or two down into Pennsylvania, to Carlisle.  Actually, we hit Carlisle during one of our round trips to North Carolina when my grandmother died.  I also traveled to Fort Detrick, near Washington, DC, once.

Izmir

We were supposed to go to Verona, Italy when we finished up in Gloversville.  However, after sending all our household goods there and signing out of the battalion, we were informed that we had been diverted to Izmir, Turkey.  I remember Connie throwing herself across the bed and crying upon hearing the news.  But it actually turned out to be a great assignment.  I worked at the NATO headquarters in Izmir.  We lived in Bostanli and traveled across the bay, almost daily, on those ferry boats that criss-crossed between Alcanjak, Konak, Karsiyaka, and Bostanli.  We didn't have a car in Izmir, so we got around on one of those thousands of yellow taxis.  We traveled to Ephesus once, to Yeni Foca, Kusadasi, and of course to Istanbul.  While in Izmir, I was deployed to Kosovo for six months.  My barracks were in Pristina. I made a few trips outside the wire, but I cannot remember the names of any of the towns without looking at a map.  I also spent time at the rear headquarters in Skopje, Macedonia, coming and going.

From Izmir, we took a vacation and traveled back to Germany.  We visited K-town, Ramstein, Mannheim and Worms.  We traveled to Luxemburg and saw the Allied cemetery there, where General Patton is buried.  We were in Izmir when 9/11 happened.  Events conspired to force a curtailment of our tour and we returned to the states about eight months later.  And ever since completing our assignment in Izmir, we've been right here in Augusta, Georgia, from where we've traveled to Baltimore, Maryland, through Virginia and North Carolina, to Pensacola and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and to Omaha, Nebraska--all job-related adventures (except for Pensacola) that allowed me to take Connie along.

And I have post cards from nearly all these places!