Did you serve in EUCOM?

I was stationed at Ray Barracks 2d Brigade 3AD in the early 1980s. I broke my foot, had surgery and through a series of events outside my control ended up being the S-2/3 for a provisional maintenance battalion. It's a long story...

Anyway, most folks on post had no idea what I did but they knew I was known to meet with the Brigade and Battalion commanders a lot. I still have the clipboard with Sgt Durand on the back I always carried. About 1000 hrs I'd make my way to the AFEES snack bar with my official looking clipboard to get a coffee and would stop at the entrance and look around. I did it to see if there would be a seat. Someone got the idea I was there to write up folk that weren't supposed to be there. It got to be funny after a while: the mysterious SGT Durand would walk in the front door only to see that unmentionable body part and elbows beating feet out the back.

Long story short is that I read Stars and Stripes everyday and only had to buy one on Sundays.

 

Freidberg, Hesse. That is where Elvis was stationed. It seems he never had to buy a Stars and Stripes either. I was there 1981-1984. We lived in Butzbach and Bad Nauheim.

FWIW: My parents have 8 grandchildren. Four of them (my sister's two, my oldest brother's youngest and my middle child) were born at 97th General Hospital in Frankfurt.

Were you ever stationed near there?

 

Engineer? My brother was in Aschaffenberg. 9th Engineers I believe. He left about six months before I got there. Salty was in lock up at Mannheim the whole time he was there. He'll tell you some yarn about being a supply sergeant in Zweibrucken but it's just a cover story. :laugh:

 

My niece has been in Heidelberg on vacation the past two weeks. She's been posting pics of the Schloss on Facebook. She had one pic taken inside the castle that almost made me cry. She was standing in the exact spot we had a tourist take a picture of us 30 years earlier.

In that picture was my wife and I and our two, my middle brother and his German wife, my wife's Grandfather from Canada. The tourist were a young couple. He was British and she was Italian. They both spoke French so that was their way of communicating. We all ended going to a Greek restaurant halfway between Heidelberg and Wiesbaden