My early days in the Signal Corps were as a young officer in 32d Army Air Defense Command. I was a history major in college but the Army in their way of doing things decided I would be a Signal Officer. It served me well for 27 years where a career was capped off with both battalion and brigade command before my retirement in 1998.

My first assignment was as the signal officer for the 6th Battalion 62d Air Defense Arty (Hawk) with a headquarters at Spangdahlem AB and the Battalion Control Center located about 20 miles north of Bitburg at Balesfeld.

I arrived in Feb 1972 and was a brand new second lieutenant that was being assigned to a captain's position as both the battalion signal officer and in fact what amounted to being the platoon leader for the highly disperse signal soldiers operating the multichannel radio relay equipment at the the BOC and the four firing batterys. USAREUR was still much in the shadow of Vietnam at this time, there were no facility renovation programs, drugs were an issue, race relations were not good and USAREUR was at a low ebb. It was a challenge.

I was in the 6/62d ADA (later redesignated 2d Battalion 62d ADA in late 1972 or during 1973). I learned so much but without a senior NCO to support my most critical responsibility of the ensuring the reliability of the multichannel radio relay systems in the Battalion and our shot to the Missile Control Center at Erbeskopf, it wore me down.

I did pursue and gain a reassignment in January 1974 to the Headquarters of the 11th Air Defense Signal Battalion at Kapaun Barracks in Kaiserslautern. I became the SYSCON Officer for the battalion for the next 19 months. The Battalion SYSCON, as all the veterans of the battalion well understood, maintain the status of all radio systems as reported from the designated control terminal within each of the line companies. It was me that had my SYSCOM operators constantly calling to get more and better information during radio system outages because I was the guy that stood before the battalion commander in the morning to explain every outage and every detail.

I was frequently armed with less than defining reasons as "bad wiring". I knew bad wiring was a defense mechanism when the site did not know what caused a system to come back on line but had to contort the all dreaded Reason for Outage or be required to provide a detail outage to report to explain what they could not explain in the first place. The good news was that the "bad wiring" RFO was not uncommon but generally reasonable explanations were given. It was a leadership lesson for me that it was my job to take the butt chewing from the battalion commander for not getting better information and a subsequent butt chewing from a company commander requiring detailed outage reports.

I left the battalion in July 1975 to return to schooling at Fort Gordon and subsequently a multi-service telecommunication staff officer course at Keesler AiFB, Biloxi, Ms. My wife and I missed Germany. I made a fairly bold decision to travel to Washington DC to meet with my assignment officer for a review of performance record, as officers are encouraged to do. My other agenda was to have some face to face contact and ask to go back to Germany.

I was successful as he put me on orders to USAREUR. I wanted to compete for company command as a fairly new captain and wrote to the 11th Signal Battalion XO, who was still in the unit from my time in the unit and knew me well, to tell him I was being put on orders to USAREUR and would like a chance at competing for a command in the 11th Signal. Things moved very quickly as he called MILPERCEN-Eur (later redesignated as 1st PERSCOM) to get me assigned to 32d ADDCOM and then directly into command of B Company 11th Signal Battalion in Wurzburg. I was elated but let me turn away from the career of John Welch and comment on a few things that I can provided comment upon from my time.

The radio system map presented on the 11th Signal Site was very good and reflected history as I heard it in early 1970s as to how things had evolved from the the mid-60s. There was important transition in 32D ADDCOM in the 1970 time frame as the need was seen to bring some air defense coverage back from the border facing East Germany to augment the Air Force fighter bases west of the Rhein (Ramstein, Zweibruecken, Hahn, Bitburg, and Spangdahlem). There were supposed to be two Hawk battalions that came west but eventually only the 6th Battalion 62D Air Defense Artillery made the move in 1970 to Spangdhalem with firing batterys providing overwatch for the fighter bases. There was also the addition of Chaparral-Vulcan units that beefed up the very close range support for the several airbases. This means that systems reaching down towards Munich and Bad Aibling were taken out when 6/62d ADA moved West.

The radio system diagram from the mid-1960s did not reflect systems to connect the Battalion Operations Centers to a missile control facility for integrated engagement among the several battalions. There is probably no indication of a system going higher from battalion because this was probably done with leased lines from the Bundespost.

Unlike the Hawk units, the high priority of security matters in the nuclear equipment Nike-Hurcules Battalion gave them the benefit of Bundespost landlines that went all the way down the Nike firing battery. There was a bit of a morale problem in the signal section of these Nike Battalions because the tendency was solely use the land line communication and not the more temperamental radio systems. It really made the MOS 31M personnel in these units a bit frustrated and wondering why they were working significant hours around the clock if their talents were not being used. The answer is, as the Nike Units got closer to their annual NATO tactical evaluation, there was a big rush in these units to train with the radio systems because it would be required during the TacEval.

I hope you are still out there covering down on this great effort of capturing the history of USAREUR. I grew up in USAREUR as a family member in Frankfurt, Baumholder, and Herzo Base before returning home in 1972 to 32d AADCOM.

I will return later to talk more of the signal sites and fill in some pieces for the 1972-1979 period.

Bn. was across the street from HHC. Just down the street and on the same side was our PX/Snack Bar. A little down the street from that and on the other side was 32nd AADCOM. That is pretty much all there was as I recall. The mess hall was on our side of the street kind of behind 32nd AADCOM.

I have a friend that lives in Hohenecken and she told me all the buildings are gone now. They are or have built a school there. This girl and I went to school together. We both grew up in Wentzville, Mo. I found her on Facebook.

I havent heard from any of the people that were there with me so I dont know if they have pics or not. I am glad I found this.

I was stationed there October 68 to May 69. I guess I lucked out as all the people I trained with were not sent to Vietnam.

Staff Sergeant Ball was site chief. Others friends were Paul Arndt, Greg Copado -- went to Vietnam among others. I lived in one of those trailers.

We operated the TRC-24 radios to HAWK missle batteries and I can't remember whether we had a shot to Co B in Würzburg. We had to use a special F band. These were very delicate and went off air frequenty. At that time USSR invaded Czechoslovokia. It was important to keep connected.

It was beautiful country. It was also cold. We kept warm with diesel fueled furnaces or some time slept in US Army sleeping bags.

Before this I was stationed at Giebelstadt. This was a combination Air Force/Army base. Boy the Air Force really lives far superior than Army does. I remember those Air Force guys always calling on the field phone. I guess they were worried. Guys told me Migs would play games coming into West German Air space. I don't know if that's true but I would listen in and hear something like Alfa Charlie locked on.

I would like to share a lot more memories of my experiences there.

Oh, at Giebelstadt it was Terminal 61. I also helped set up site at Lauda.

I served in B Company from 1974 to 1977. I was assigned to Emery Barracks, just outside of Wurzburg. My memory is a little fuzzy but I recall most of the radio terminal and relay sites. I got there as a Spec 5, MOS 31L. I was assigned to Direct Support Maintenance Activity (DSMA) B-4/5. DSMA B-4 was originally up the hill at T-62, but when I got there B-4 was consolidated with B-5 at the Kaserne. I had my family there and we lived in quarters at Leighton Barracks. I was on a “Command Sponsored,” three year tour and I shipped over my 1967 Chevy Impala. It was a tank on the roads compared to the small European cars. The Army subsidized the price of gas for people who had cars. We bought gas coupons that were only good at ESSO stations.

1. The Relay Sites were named after U.S. cars; Cadillac, Chrysler, and Buick – except for Sunbeam. The Terminals were all designated by numbers; T-62 up the hill from Emery, T-61 on Emery itself (replaced by an old WWII cable found going up the hill) and T-60 in Wasserkuppe (I think) or maybe Tauberbischofsheim (I forget).

B Company was Commanded by CPT Thomas W. Martell. The 1SG was Robinson. There was a 1LT Kessler. My memory is really bad – seems like a lifetime ago; but it was a great assignment and I got to see much of Germany and Europe.

I had all but forgotten that time I spent in the Army, overseas in Germany. I was drafted into the Army in 1970 (off the streets of Chicago), went to Ft. Lewis for Basic and ended up at Ft. Gordon for Signal School. I started out as an Operator (31M) and stayed on for additional training as a repairman (31L). It was pretty good basic electronics training at the time. Not much call for vacuum tubes these days but I still know what a grid leak resistor is.

My first assignment was in Korea where I reenlisted (didn't know any better at the time). Then I went to Ft. Riley, KS and was assigned to the 701st Maintenance Battalion. I went on a Reforger exercise; this would have been 1973'ish or early 1974. I remember getting PCS orders for Germany and coming home to watch Nixon resign the Presidency. By the Fall of 1974 I was in Germany originally assigned to Kaiserslautern but was rerouted to Wurzburg.

11th Signal had just replaced all the TRC-24/TCC-7 FDM communications with the "new" AN/GRC-103 (Band III) and TD-352 PCM equipment. Getting all this equipment in place and being able to provide maintenance and logistics support was the challenge. I spent most of my time going from site to site conducting technical inspections and troubleshooting outages.

I am in the air traffic control equipment and systems business now and spend much of my time out of the country. I have been back to Emery Kaserne (around 2006) and the surrounding area including Leighton Barracks. Emery looked to be commercial property, but Leighton was still there (the PX, Commissary, Housing Area and School). It looked really shabby. American troops were still stationed and housed there. Before I moved into Quarters (I was on a waiting list), I rented an apartment on the "economy" as it was referred to. I was in an a two-flat in Estenfeld but got into a dispute with the landlord and moved out. We moved into another two-flat in Uettingen.

This was a nice little village with a Gasthaus, a few bars and grocery store. My daughter was about one year old and everywhere we went in the village we were treated like family – many times at the Gasthaus cookies, cakes and beer would show up at our table – no charge. It was a great experience.

The mess hall was shared by the 3 units on the base. We also moved on the Kaserne a few times. We were in one building when I got there and moved later to one across the Kaserne. Once I made E-5 we were allowed 2 man rooms so I had to move up one building again. I do know on the one end of the post was the motor pool and our maint. shop. also a gym and EM club and a small EM Annex. There was another motor pool for the 6/62 on another side of the Kaserne. Also above the mess hall was a snack bar.

In a building to the right of the mess hall was where the Darmstadt Rod and Gun Club was located and to the rear of that building was a bowling alley.

As I remember there were no Co C personnel at the Griesheim Airfield. I don't even remember such an air field. Only Air Force stuff I remember was on the way to the 3rd MSL Bn, 80th Arty missile site was a monitoring station operated by the 6910th Security Wing, that was stationed at Cambrai Fritsch Kaserne. The 3/80th Arty used Sergeant missiles and I used to service the IFF Radar for them.

As for terminals, we had one main terminal called "Terminal 6A" which was located a few miles down the road from our Kaserne. All Comms went thru them going and coming. We had Maint teams in Hanau, Fulda, and I believe Giessen. Which also had radio relay sites on mountain tops in the same area. The guys on the relay sites lived in mostly in Quonset huts and had generators for electricity. At the Fulda site the maint. team was located on an Air Force radar site, which on a clear day with binoculars you could see a Russian missile base. The relay site was on top of another mountain.

As for the comm equipment, it was TRC-24 (track 24), field phones were TA-312. This equipment was all used in the radio relay sites, but we had some in our maint. shop for testing purposes. We were only 3rd echelon maint. with the hq in K-town being 2nd echelon maint. Anything else had to go to depot maint.

I worked quite a bit at Bann Hill (Site 71). At the time it was also being used as a demonstration site for the AN/TSQ-73 "Missile Minder" system which was a computerized tactical air defense command and control system. --

Terminal sites were numbered. Relay sites were named after cars (Triumph, Simca, Morgan, etc.)

D company HQ: If you look to the west there is a long building going north/south with a red roof. That was the female quarters ("WAC shack") when I was there. To it's south you see another long building east/west also with a red roof. That building was the D company HQ. Co. D had the basement and first two floors. The top floor was an ASA aviation unit. The HQ offices were on east end of the building in the basement. DSMA, arms room and orderly room were in the basement, as I recall, with the first and second floors being barracks.

I am not positive exactly which units we provided comms for but I knew there were several fixed site Nike/Hercules batteries, a few fixed HAWK sites, and some mobile HAWK and Vulcan/Chaparral units. The kaserne across the street (Daenner) had a Chaparral/Vulcan unit and I believe that was HQ to at least an ADA battalion, if not a brigade. It is likely that the fixed sites were a different unit from the tactical mobile batteries. That was probably the 108th and looking at a Wikipedia entry for that unit it says Kleber and while the brigade HQ offices might have been on Kleber, I remember the barracks and motor pools of the batteries being on Daenner across the street.

Terminal 71 (Bann Hill) - I do not recall precisely on a map where the hill itself was located at Bann. There was a large clear area, the antennas for this site were very close to the gear as it was UHF, darned hear microwave, and you couldn't get the antennas too far from the gear. It was at the top of an open hill which could be forested by now. An air defense unit shared the hill with a demonstration project for the AN/TSQ-73 which was coming on-line at the time. I recall General Alexander Haig being on the site one day during a demonstration for the Iranian military which was apparently interested in purchasing the system at the time. They also had an additional large trailer up there with a 6-foot projection screen and several comfortable seats for high ranking dignitaries to watch the air battle exercises/simulations along with a satellite ground station. This came in real handy for the Super Bowl in 1978 when we were able to receive the satellite feed for the game and the ADA guys invited us into the trailer to watch the football game with them.

The operators (MOS 31M) would have known more about exactly which units were supported that I would. I was a repair tech (MOS 31L) and visited a few of the sites but mostly only when they were converting from the old gear to the new stuff that was being deployed at the time. We had sort of a dual mission in that we supported both the fixed batteries (94th) with fixed site assets (the numbered sites and named relays) and the 108th with tactical communications mounted on shelters in 2.5 ton trucks. We did have some overlap in that the relay sites (most often Triumph in the areas where I ended up) were also utilized for tactical shots during field exercises. So the network of relay sites supporting the 94th acted to integrate the tactical mobile batteries of the 108th into the net. We could reach one relay or another from practically anywhere in that region of Germany. This meant that the tactical gear could be used for terminating comms for the mobile batteries and we didn't need to use tactical relay sites very often.

All comms were radio except one cable shot that I am aware of to a command and control bunker somewhere in the hills between Pirmasens and Bann (Ruppertweiler?). This site was generally never in use except in a period of extremely high alert and I only went there one time when an exercise was being run to see how quickly the ADA HQ could move operations from their garrison HQ to the bunker location and some equipment needed to be installed.

Now that I think about it, there were also alpha designators for the sites in addition to numeric. For example, I seem to recall the Kleber site also being known as LA (Lima Alpha) with the various D company sites using the first letter L. So there might have been Lima Alpha, Lima Bravo, Lima Charlie. I'm not sure if they were converting from numeric to alpha designations or if it was a separate comm net that used the different designation that shared the same site.

Actually, now that I think about it, I believe they were converting from numeric to alpha designators and both were in common use at the same time when talking about the sites. I believe 72 for example was also LC. So people might say they were headed out to site "seven two" but the radio call sign used in operations would be "Lima Charlie".

But again, my recollection is suspect as it was a long time ago. I was also stationed for brief periods at the DSP facilities at Pirmasens and Spanghalem. Reason for that is most of the techs there were familiar with the older gear and I had gone to school on the new stuff so as units were converting to the new gear, I would go up to lend a hand with familiarizing the people on it.

Some names if it will help you in your research:

There was a Lt. Bickford who was in charge of the site at Kleber. Not sure I remember who the NCOIC was. DSMO was headed by a Warrant Officer named Parchman who was also OIC of the various remote DSPs. The Kleber DSP was headed by SSG Charles Whitaker or something close to that spelling (might have been two "t"s). DSP in Spangdhalem was run by SSG Cline Calhoun and Pirmasens by SFC Thurman Spurlock. Not sure who the commander of the company was at the time, the name escapes me.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
DSMA was the Direct Support Maintenance Activity