Closing the Door on History
By streiff Posted in Miscellanea — Comments (9) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
This isn’t world shaking news, but it is significant news to me and to a few generations of American soldiers and airmen.
Today the United States Air Force handed over the keys to Rhein-Main Air Base to the operators of Frankfurt-Main International Airport.
Read on.
Rhein-Main was the gateway to and from Germany for American forces since aircraft rather than troopship became the preferred means of providing overseas replacements in the 1960s.
I first arrived in Germany as a young lieutenant at Rhein-Main, coming off an 8 hour trans-Atlantic odessy that began at McGuire AFB, NJ at around 1am. It was a World Airways Boeing 747. I was on the plane early. In dress greens.
The stewardess (we could call them that when I took that flight) offered me a headset for a $1.00 rental fee. At the time I was making the princely sum of $672.50 a month. I declined. I figured I’d just sleep through the flight. A terrible, terrible blunder. The plane became packed as we neared departure time. Every single seat had at least one passenger. Many of those occupied by dependent wives heading to Germany also contained a squalling infant.
I begged the stewardess to give me a headset.
We landed briefly at the civilian airport at Hannover around dawn and completed our journey to Rhein-Main. Because of an administrative screw-up I became probably the only commissioned officer to arrive in Germany without an assignment directly to a unit. So I beat time all day, still in my now wrinkled and funky dress greens, until the toads at 21st Replacement Command cut orders assigning me to 4th Battalion, 6th United States Infantry in the Berlin Brigade.
So I waited some more and caught the “duty train” for West Berlin around 7pm. Stayed awake all night so I could see what it looked like when we crossed the Inter-German frontier at Marienborn at 3 am and was unceremoniously dumped at the Berlin Bahnhof at 5am. Odiferous, wrinkled, sleep deprived, and jet lagged out of my brains.
Rhein-Main was the way out, too.
If you wanted to risk a substantial portion of your leave time trying to catch a free flight to Dover or McGuire AFB, you sat at Rhein-Main waiting on your space available slot to become available.
Friends of mine became connoisseurs of the space available flight system. For instance, you could easily wait for a week to get a flight back to the States (or the Land of Round Doorknobs, or the Land of the Big PX, or The World as some of the troops referred to it). But if you signed up for a flight to Keflavik, Iceland you would get there the same day, spend the night (you weren’t allowed off base under the SOFA), and catch a flight to McGuire the next day. Then there was the weekly “round the world” medevac flight that started in St Louis and stopped at McGuire and Frankfurt-Main and Incirlik, Turkey and points east arriving back in St Louis at the end of the week. If you were feeling adventurous this was the flight.
But back to the point. Generations of young Americans got a taste of Europe on Uncle Sam’s dime. And generations of Europeans, especially Germans, learned a lot, good and ill, about America from the young men stationed there. So the closing of an iconic installation leaves me with mixed emotions. While I am ecstatic to see US forces leave Germany it also leaves me a bit maudlin. Those troops did more than the State Department ever did to tie our future firmly to the future of Europe. We’ve rather cut that bond now and it is only inevitable that we will grow farther apart and understand each other less with each passing day.
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Closing the Door on History 9 Comments (0 topical, 9 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
Land of the Round Doorknobs...never heard that one!
Ramstein Air Base will still be there I take it, so the American Army's presence continues, but much smaller than 15 years ago. Ramstein AB is probably the only place an American can find a decent steak...I still remember that little treat at the golf course restaurant. If you can't fathom that, consider Germany's idea of a tortilla chip -seriously- is a Dorito (at least it was in the 90's).
The lesson learned about Germany is that even though World War 2 ended 60 years ago, and the Cold War 15 years ago, we still have American military presence in Germany. To not expect the American military to be in Iraq for even half that duration is foolish thinking. But when you consider all the (unappreciated) good that came from having Streiff and many others standing nose-to-nose and tank-to-tank with the Soviets in West Berlin, it's a sacrifice well-worth making. Their presence kept Western Europe free from Soviet occupation and persecution.
That brings back memories, even though I was a dependent, not a soldier. Wasn't the US also called ZI, for Zone of the Interior? Coming back into McGuire in 1960 as a 12-year-old after three years in England, I remember being impressed most of all by all the big cars on the New Jersey Turnpike. And that's when American cars were BIG!
"Ramstein Air Base will still be there I take it, so the American Army's presence continues, but much smaller than 15 years ago."
I'm sure we'll always be able to use Rein-Main if necessary. Most people don't realize it was deactivated once before and reopened when we began pulling troops out of Kuwait in the 90's. I spent a couple weeks there and it was spooky with only a handful of us on base.
"Ramstein AB is probably the only place an American can find a decent steak...I still remember that little treat at the golf course restaurant."
There are some Kobi beef places on Okinawa that are absolutely killer!
premier air base in germany now. We have several close friends stationed there. Hubby says it's okay, but he does miss Frankfurt.
Back in October, hubby and crew flew Colonel Gail Halvorsen, aka "the Berlin Candy Bomber" into Rhein Mein for the official closing ceremonies. It was an honor for him to have played a role in that historic event. A buddy of ours flew the last ops mission out of there heading back to Charleston.
Indeed, an era has ended, but our presence in Germany is far from over. Hubby will spend every waking hour he has left in the AF trying to figure out a way to serve just one tour over there. :)
I took only a single trip on the space available system back in my Air Force days. I started at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois headed for Hawaii. I changed planes in Mather (California) by sprinting from one plane to the next, while the tower was convincing it to stop for 1 more passenger. I arrived in Hawaii on Thursday morning just in time to watch a tropical storm for 2 days from the Officers Club. I then caught the next flight back to the mainland.
My 2 days in Hawaii gave me a good appreciation for the Hickam AFB officer's club, but precious little knowledge of the rest of the state.
to Hawaii was taking a the weekend P3 Orion Naval Reserve "anti-submarine" patrol from NAS Alameda to Pearl Harbor on Friday and returning on Monday.
"We've rather cut that bond now and it is only inevitable that we will grow farther apart and understand each other less with each passing day."
Perhaps, but I think only for a short time,
We have gotten it mroe right than they have...
as they correct their systems, which they must, they will come around closer to our view.
Perhaps. History tends to get in the way of pre-resolvable logic.