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More obscene amenities...

By The Armorer on February 21, 2007 | | Comments (9)

Hey, Cold Warriors! And some of you younger ones, too.

Remember how *good* these looked when you got to get into 'em at Graf and Hohenfels?

Hohenfels barracks, late 70's.

Positively luxurious. What with the walk through the mud and the slush to get to the latrines to shite, shower, and shave and all.

Courtesy of Sanger, this shot is of his barracks at Hohenfels. But they could be training area barracks anywhere in Germany at the time. And maybe still today.

Sanger sent along another shot of a multi-tasking leader using one of the luxurious latrine facilities at Fort Hood.

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9 Comments

By Neffi on February 21, 2007 10:18 AM
Those obscene amenities at Graf and The Hole definitely put the meaning of *cold* into the Cold War... especially the winter of '79. A unit rotating through for gunnery qual had an incident with the diesel-dripper which resulted in a fire- so the heaters were pulled from the rooms. Ach du Lieber, war es *KALT*!
 
By Pat on February 21, 2007 10:48 AM
The ones in Graf hadn't changed by '89-'91 either. 1RCHA spent part of every fall there for a gun camp. I still remember one guy that had too much to drink at the mess, deciding that chasing a wild boar away from the backdoor of the hut with a bayonet was a good thing. It was a long walk to anywhere other than the kit store. I still have the Matterhorns I bought there in '89. I still miss the Green Goose chain of Bar/nightclubs as well, there was one not far from the base, although the Nurnberg one definitely had more eye candy around. I probably caused some permament liver damage during my three years in Germany. "Sigh" Good times.
 
By MajMike on February 21, 2007 10:57 AM
we would do them back to back, so it was all one big "Grafenfels" deployment... we actually got permission to road march all our little beasties down the highway from Graf and into the maneuver box. the trail vehicle for our squadron cleared the RP only 3 minutes behind schedule...
 
By Roy Patterson on February 21, 2007 1:36 PM
Graf! I have two winter and one summer at Graf under my belt! I preferred the winter! Unforgettable how we got those M60A1's on those little German flat cars!Fun train ride down from Fulda though. I remember being at Camp Normandy for at least one of those times. I was an FM radio operator, radio mechanic, and drove a big ol M577. Proud to have served! Roy Patterson San Jose, Ca 14th Armored Cav '66-69' Bravo 3
 
By MajMike on February 21, 2007 5:59 PM
yeah, and Fulda bahnhof was always such a joy to load out of... unless it was the month of April when the universe shuts down. or if it was a Friday. or during daylight hours. (Fulda 89-90, Bad Kissingen 90-91, Wildflecken 92,93) GO CAV!
 
By SangerM on February 21, 2007 7:39 PM
You guys are killin' me! I must be tired 'cause I am laughing still... Ahh, the memories!!! I spent 76-79 as a radar guy in 2/81 in Erlangen. For each of those years, I spent no less than 6 months away from the Kassern. We were either at the border (Camp Gates being my fav! and Selb--talk about eye candy), or at Graf for tank gunnery or gunnery support for some other tank unit, or at Hohenfels for ARTEPS and ARTEP aggressor, or on some cold-a$$ winter reforger or winter bridge crossing exercise at Hassfurt (I actually got to ride on a combat enginer pontoon boat/bridge piece, and then cross on a pontoon bridge...), or some other thing. There were months we'd come back on Friday, clean and restock, and then leave on Monday. Oh, and of course, there were the the post-3 day weekend alerts at 0200, and we'd be moved out to Tennelohe for a day or two... (and that says nothing of the Ammo dump guard, range guard, gate guard, and every other manner of fun stuff.... And yeah, I remember the narrow flatbeds, we had to get the m60s on there so they only overhung by about 4-5 inches on each side... And Normandy is where I spent a lot of time. In fact, I still have the zippo lighter I had engraved by the old guy at the little PX there (he used to carve in the zippos using leather carving tools).. And my favorite fast food is STILL microwaved hamburgers you could get and the autovending machines all over graf (you know, the burgers where the buns got all hard when you nucked em)... And I can say with pride I NEVER once went to the stab and jab. (Of course it was off limits every time I ever went to Graf, but hey, it kept me pure...) And the only bad thing that ever happened there was when one of our guys turned a 45 on another guy in the next building over and got a couple of bystanders too. Talk about a hectic hour after that. And of course, those stupid squalid rooms had to be GI'd before we left. I wa advance party and clean up when I took that pic. We had just come down from the border and we're waiting on the company to show up. Oh, and that multi-tasking guy... He took me flying one time down to Austin in a kiowa, and on the way back he decided to chase axis deer all over the top of one of those sawed off hills between Hood and Austin. I barely kept my lunch, but it was fun. I recall his air medal ribbon had the number 8, but that seems high in retrospect.. I'm second-guessing myself, so I'm no longer sure. Either way, he sure was fun to fly with! V/R
 
By Blackhawk on February 21, 2007 8:33 PM
Don't forget the pigs. Our HHC mess section, in an act of complete lunacy, used to dump their leftovers behind one of the barracks at Graf. Every night, a herd of porkers would serenade at all hours. One of our city slicker aviators decided to play a game with the herd one night. A couple of us woke up when we realized that the serenade was a little louder than normal. There was the city slicker, standing in an open door way, chucking MRE crackers into the herd. When we, in a very cordial manner, asked him as to the purpose of his endeavors, he replied that he was trying to get one of the 'little ones' into the hootch. He thought it would be funny. We expressed our disagreement and used 100mph tape to prevent further transgressions in judgement. We did cut him loose next morning.
 
By fdcol63 on February 21, 2007 8:57 PM
Ah, yes ....... Graf and Hohenfels memories! LOL At least these Spartan quarters were much better than Tent City at Camp Kasserine! LOL Loved watching live fire at the helicopter range next door, though. Remember once on a winter Graf when I was driving for the S-3, we had set up a GP medium for staff, with those dim light bulbs strung up inside. I was supposed to pull radio watch at 0200 or something like that, and was zipped up in my sleeping bag on a cot. Musta been several inches of snow on the ground. I woke up and felt something hit my feet, thinking somebody had come in to wake me up to go on watch. I unzipped the sleeping bad and look outside, and saw one of those big Graf warthogs with huge tusks rooting around the cot next to me. Scared the shite out of me! LOL One of my most vivid memories of the Stab and Jab was watching some poor little Fraulein trying to dance on stage, but it looked like an awkward version of PT instead. LOL Spent way too much time and money at The Green Goose in Nurnberg ...... but jeez, what fun!
 
By MajMike on February 22, 2007 9:04 AM
Camp Aachen or Camp Cheb, for only the finest in accomodations. and the Italian Ice Cream man would come around in his truck and make the most magnificent bowl of spaghetti ice with toppings... ..and then south to Parsberg railhead, where it was always icy and/or wet. I would always forego wearing my tanker boots on Parsberg railhead days, and would don steel toe mechanic boots. My safety brief there would begin with the following two sentences: "I'm wearing steel boot boots today, so that if anyone falls off the top of their vehicle or gets electrocuted, I can come over and stomp your skull in immediately. Trust me that there is less paperwork involved in me defending myself at Court Martial than there would be for me to have to fill out the accident report.."