Addition: I dug out the remains of my old military orders to clarify my organization in Germany and found that I was a member of 7793rd until I was posted to Melibocus as a member of 550th Signal Company, and was separated from the 550th when I left Germany. I don’t remember a transfer, but——-.

In early October I volunteered to transfer to a mountaintop radio relay station just East of Bensheim, Germany (half way between Darmstadt and Heidleberg, on a mountain top called Melibocus (or Melibokus). The site boss was S/Sgt Lou Follett from Philadelphia, who had been trained at Lorenz. The rest of us were OJT by Lou. We had two 100 foot high towers, each with four huge 38 mHz “lazy eight” broadband directional antennas. One system pointed North to Darmstadt, the other South to Heidelberg. The stations were used by the Bonn government, and carried eight voice channels and at least two submultiplexed channels containing several teletype channels. There were four transmitters and four receivers, but now 42 years later I’m not sure if some were spares or operational. Since we were a relay station, we handled only the 38 mHz FM radio signal and could not read the subchannels, except for the single “orderwire” channel for intra station communication. The station, equipment by Lorenz, was housed in a concrete block building inside a tall fence. There was a backup diesel generator that automatically came up on power failure. The was a crew of five, one would stay overnight, the remaining four would go back down the hill at night to the house in Bensheim, about six miles by a dirt road.

We lived in a huge house commandeered from some Nazi bigwig. It was stone, three floors, many rooms, with a kitchen and servant quarters in the bottom floor. We were able to hire two German women, one to cook and serve meals, and the other to housekeep. We bought groceries at the PX in Darmstadt and some on the local market, and we were able to hire the two women, pay expenses and still come out ahead on our living allowance. Another group of GIs lived in the same house independent of us.

Many evenings the off duty four of us would drive to a very small town called Jugenheim to eat at a restaurant called Drei Mohren (three chimney sweepers).

That Winter we had some big snows and had some tough times getting up and down the hill. We had a 3/4 ton dodge 4x4 (power wagon type) with chains, but had to shovel in spots (no snow plows on that road). We were able to borrow a Weasel, a small tracked rig built by Studebaker, from the Darmstadt HQ for a couple weeks. The people at the restaurant we ate at sometimes called it Das Kleine Schnee Panzer. (The little snow tank).

We had a telephone line using field wire running cross country down the mountain about two miles, where it was spliced in to a German telephone line. Our part of the line was tied to trees, we carried a short ladder cross country to tie the line up. A big wind that early spring blew a bunch of trees blew down, so we laboriously spliced and fixed the line. A few days later the line went out again, so a couple of us packing the ladder and a coil of wire followed the line down the hill. We found a crew of Germans with axes and saws cutting up the windfalls, and they had sawed down a tree holding our line. It was the only tree they had cut which was not a windfall. They were laughing at us and thought it was pretty funny. We fixed the line then Sgt Follett and I went back up the hill and got 2 M3 “grease guns” which were cheap sub machine guns that fired .45 cal pistol ammo, several extra barrels and 500 rounds of ammo, went back down the hill. We got about 50 yards from the German woodcutters, then took turns firing the machine guns at the sides of an 8” tree, until it fell. By that time the Germans were gone, and we had no more phone line problems.

Sometime early that Spring (1953) the GE Microwave equipment arrived in Germany and my old buddies were put to work installing and checking it out on “Castle Hill” in Heidelberg. The promotion freeze had ended and I was a full blown corporal. As such I replaced S/Sgt Louis Follette (rotated to States) as supervisor of the Melibocus station for about six weeks before my rotation back to the states. None of the GE microwave gear was operational by the time I left In April.

At Camp Kilmer, I was approached by a rep from Philco (they had a contract to install and maintain the GE equipment) to go to work for them back in Germany as a civilian, for $7,000 a year on a one year contract. I was sorely tempted as this was big bucks, but I had college and electrical engineering in my sights.

Some other names I remember were:
Melibocus:
Herb Cach
Frank Gianetti
7793rd:
Albert Ando
Ray Braun
Arthur Burns
Ray Francis
John Koski
Bob Gosser
Jack Lieberm

(Webmaster note: For more on the Melibocus Radio Relay Station, click here.)

RUFM - Major Tape Relay Station Frankfurt

An Account of 4th Signal Group's 3816th Signal Service Unit, Frankfurt, Germany
From 1966 to 1968, and it's Major Tape Relay Station, RUFM….

In 1966, the 4th Signal Group was headquartered at McGraw Kaserne, in Munich, Germany. It was served as a tributary off of the Frankfurt Relay station, using the routing indicator RUFMBM.

In March 1966, I arrived in Frankfurt, Germany, as a 17 year old right out of AIT 72B20 USASESCS Signal Corps school at Fort Gordon, GA.

After reading the accounts of the 4th Signal Group on the web site, I was surprised that there is no mention of any of the 4th Signal Group's 1960s-era units in Germany. So far as I am aware, there were two (2) relatively large elements which belonged to the 4th during the period of my assignment which lasted until late 1968.

They were:
3816th Signal Service Unit (SSU), located in Frankfurt, Germany, and it's sister unit, Signal Service Unit, Nurnburg. I don't know too much about the SSU Nurnburg, but since I was in SSU Frankfurt, I will talk about it.

Sometime after my arrival (March 66), the "3816th" part of the unit's name was dropped. My original assignment orders from Fort Gordon were to the 3816th SSU, but the locals just referred to the unit as SSU-F.

Upon arrival, the "new guy" orientation included about 3 days of rigorous training, indoctrinations, security briefings, SAEDA briefings, crypto briefings and TA-50 issues from the local CIF activity (field gear). In 1966, SSU Frankfurt was a USAREUR asset, as USASTRATCOM had not yet come of age in our part of the world. We were however told that we (our unit) was part of STARCOM which was an acronym for Strategic Army Communications, the forerunner of what later became a unified STRATCOM. Our shoulder patch was the US Army Europe (USAREUR) patch, and for unit crests, all we wore the small, metal USAREUR crests which were miniaturized (metal) versions of the USAREUR patch.

The mission of the SSU Frankfurt was to support the Frankfurt Area and some surrounding areas in wide-area Army communications requirements which included telephone services, dial central office exchanges, MARS stations, several commcenters, ELLA Long Lines, data-link (card) communications in the pre-AUTODIN age. Frankfurt was located in the "Taunus District" of Germany in a day when the US Army still honored German states in it's hierarchy system of units (which it ceased to do in the early and later periods). Units and commands supported were: EUCOM, USAREUR and V Corps primarily on the large scale, and numerous others locally and further away. SSU Frankfurt was a greatly-oversized battalion performing a signal brigade's amount of work in both a geographic and technical sense.

The flaming sword patch was on my uniform. We had a total of about 200 people there including WACs. Not counting civilians. It was in a secure building with lots of teletype and related machines in it. The civilians worked on the non-classified section and the Army worked in the classified section.

We never went into the field. We had our own mess hall but there were a number of mess halls and barracks beside and all around us.

I am in a golf league here and was talking to one of the guys and found out that he was in the Signal Corps and was stationed in the same facility in Pirmasens that I was and at the approximate same time.

We were not in the same company, however, and I have no recollection of ever meeting him over there.

Has there been anyone inquiring about the company or the people that were stationed there? Is this Army post still there or did they move it and now call it Husterhoeh Kaserne?

We had secure (classified) teletype circuits all around the world…FT Detrick; FT Meade; Asmara, Ethiopia; Leghorn, Italy; Ankara, Turkey and more. We were a 24/7 operation with both enlisted men and woman.

We had an ‘uninterruptable' power supply via a large, heavy constantly-rotating flywheel which supplied momentary power while the generator started and got up to speed.

When I left FT Gordon for Germany in June 1964, we were told we were part of the 7th Army and wore the "seven steps to hell” patch. Shortly thereafter, we became part of USAREUR and then, six months later, we were STRATCOM. Think our Headquarters was in Heidelberg.

Shortly before I left Pirmasens, satellite communications was beginning and we had a new facility near Landsthul, I believe.

My wife, Judy, and I had two children born at the Muenchweiler Army Hospital near Pirmasens.

In about 1992 we vacationed in Germany, visited Pirmasens and found the Muenchweiler Hospital had recently closed. I left active duty when I rotated back to the States in June 1967 and was in the inactive reserves for 8 years I think. I retired 13 years ago after 34 years with GE.

I hope this really old info helps.