previous post next post  

Armorer Zen

By The Armorer on July 9, 2006 | | Comments (10)

Hosting provided by FotoTime

That's just purty. H/t, Boquisucio.

by SGT John Queen </p> <p>July 6, 2006</p> <p>Artillerymen from the 4th Battalion, 319th Field Artillery Regiment, render honors during the 1st Infantry Division’s departure ceremony at Victory Park in Wurzburg July 6. The former Big Red One artillery battalion was re-designated and re-assigned from the 1st ID to the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team.

by SGT John Queen

July 6, 2006

Artillerymen from the 4th Battalion, 319th Field Artillery Regiment, render honors during the 1st Infantry Division’s departure ceremony at Victory Park in Wurzburg July 6. The former Big Red One artillery battalion was re-designated and re-assigned from the 1st ID to the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team.

The white gloves are a nice touch, no? Nice symmetry too, since they're both firing blanks...

Interesting family connection, too. My father commanded the 2-35 FA, 24th Infantry Div (FWD) in Augsburg, Germany. When the 24th and 1st Infantry swapped out in 1970, the battalion reflagged as the 1-33 FA, 1st Infantry (FWD). Now it's morphed into an Airborne unit... On a completely unrelated note - I was born in Wurzburg. But it was then the home of the 10th Mountain.

Oh, oh. I left a setup in there. Farkle!

Share This Article:

Share |

Categories:

10 Comments

By SezaGeoff on July 9, 2006 7:35 PM
I have visited Wurzburg and toured the Bishop's palace, but unfortunately not the festung. I love how they revere an American soldier for saving the palace from further damage during WWII. Something about the bloke that painted the ceilings, I think. But lots of people have had Italian migrants in to paint their ceilings, so what is so good about Tiepolo? Staircase
 
By John the Baptist on July 9, 2006 8:29 PM
The Army does have funny ways - I was in Co. A, 1/506th Infantry, part of a reinforced air assualt battalion in the 1st BDE of the 101st ABN DIV in the mid-1970s. This unit, the "Currahees," was one of the original airborne units in WWII, was deactivated right after the war, resurrected as a leg BCT regiment in 1948, reflagged in 1956 as an airborne infantry "battle group," coverted to an "airmobile" full regiment in 1967 while assigned to Vietnam, brought back to Ft. Campbell with only the 1st battalion activated as said air assault in 1971, then deactivated totally in 1984. The 1st battalion of the 506th was resurrected, again, as AA (or maybe just plain leg)infantry in the 2nd ID, ROK, in 1987, where they stayed until reassigned to OIF in 2004. They returned to the states last year, and were intitially assigned to Ft. Carson with the rest of the 2nd ID, but then were reassigned with the reconstituted 2nd BN to make up half of the 506th RCT (along with 1/61st CAV, 4th BDE Troop BN, and the 4/320th Art'y), 4th BDE, back with the 101st ABN at Ft. Campbell. They are back in Iraq right now. What a convoluted history! It makes me wish the US Army had followed the old British regimental system, leaving the same line units in the same lineage , well, forever. BTW, I was stationed for awhile right close by where you were born, at Nellingen Kaserne, near Stuttgart. I used to go up to the old Luftwaffe base near Wurzburg to go power-gliding with the club there. JtB
 
By John of Argghhh! on July 9, 2006 9:04 PM
I lived in Stuttgart - in Vaihingen, at the housing area right outside of Patch Barracks - that was in the mid-60's, after USEUCOM relocated there when DeGaulle kicked NATO forces out of France. I can't remember, if the roller rink was at Nellingen or Robinson... I remember Boeblingen Elementary though, that's where I read the book that set me on the path to soldiering - Marine at War, by Russel Davis. I still reread that periodically. We do kinda follow the regimental system, it just doesn't have the weight behind it the Brit units do - and it manifests itself more in the Guard. We tend to keep the regiments alive by keeping a single battalion going. The Brits are more honest (well, were, before all the recent amalgamations) by calling battalions regiments. Except for elements like the Royal Artillery - which technically was all one Regiment.
 
By John the Baptist on July 9, 2006 10:50 PM
Small world -the roller rink was at Nellingen, which doesn't exist anymore, btw; they tore down the whole place to put up condos sometime in the past few years. The only reason I remember this is that the roller rink had slightly better bad pizza than the NCO club, and was a wee bit closer to my barracks room. Still had to hike all the way down to the other side of the base (which really wasn't *that* big!), next to the maintenance hangers and the PX/library complex, to get the milk-crate cases of Stuttgarter Hofbrau. "You fly - I'll buy!" I remember Patch and the housing area, but don't think I spent any quality time there - wasn't Patch where the big PX was located? I spent most of my off time on the economy, my gf was a nurse at Marinakrankenhaus, down in the "Turkish" quarter. More small world, I just found out last weekend that one of my uncles was a mobile target, er, tanker, at Panzer Kaserne back in the 50s. We used their rifle range for what passed for qualifications every year (I don't think it was possible to score less than "expert" on that range!). JtB
 
By Trias on July 10, 2006 4:24 AM
A purty flower. I remember many who witnessed nukes going off (aboveground ones) saying it looked pretty too. I rather like artillery. My father has a minature one done old european style wheels and all.
 
By Boquisucio on July 10, 2006 5:39 AM
Who knew that such flowers would attract such filth. Papa Gulf-17 is sparking like crazy down in the tool shop.
 
By John of Argghhh! on July 10, 2006 6:57 AM
The spammers are trying new tactics. They send out their spam bots and put up this random stuff. Then, 24 hours later, they start doing Google searches for their random strings. If you haven't cleaned 'em up, the spam bot comes back and dumps in hundreds of spam links. I think they're mostly looking for dead blogs that have the comments and trackbacks on. I leave comments on for one week, I turn off trackbacks generally after 1 day. It helps minimize this crap. They're getting more creative as we get better at defending ourselves. I really wish there was a way to get at these assholes. They literally steal time from my life.
 
By KCSteve on July 10, 2006 1:21 PM
Like that first picture - Peace through superior flowerpower!
 
By jim b on July 10, 2006 3:22 PM
I gave up on tryin to figgur our Army units decades ago. I think that the reason someone invented computers was to track that stuff. And John, it is a good thing you weren't born in Wacinov, specially during their annual festival. jim b walks away mumbling to self ...... 82nd Airborne my butt where are the other 81 Airborne Divisions??????
 
By John of Argghhh! on July 10, 2006 3:35 PM
In WWI, Jim, it was the 82nd Infantry Division, the "All Americans". When we decided falling from airplanes with bedsheets was a good idea, we stuck "Airborne" on it.