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| My postcard box |
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
