15th ORDNANCE COMPANY FULDA, GERMANY

1957-60

Great story from Bill Steed on his experiences while stationed with the 15th Ordnance Company in Fulda.
 

I was stationed at Fulda with the 15th Ord from April 1957 until
September 1958.
I was in the fire control section of 15th Ord, our shop was located
between the track shop and the recovery section, looking  right out onto
the parade grounds.

The fire control section was responsible for the maintenance and repair
of all the sighting devises on the M48 tanks, the M52 self propelled
howitzers and all of the sighting devises and time pieces that a armored
regiment has. Our section provided support to the Battalion's at Fulda,
Bad Hersfeld and Wildflecken. To add to this responsibility, we also
provide support to a unit at Giesen and a couple of units in Frankfurt.

I was older than most of the troops at Fulda because I did not get
drafted until I was twenty-five. My wife and I were well on our way to
building our future when I got my greetings letter. I lucked out and was
assigned to the Fire Control School at Aberdeen Proving Grounds in
Maryland, after six months of school I was transferred to the 15th Ord
in Fulda to help set up a Fire Control Section, there had been none
until we got there.

My wife and I had a nice apartment on the outskirts of Fulda, Straus
Wissen 15, we paid the grand price of  100 DM ($25.00) per month. The
rent seems pretty reasonable until you realize that on an E-4's salary,
that was a lot of money, things were better when I made  E-5.

I can relate very well to Collen Powell's statement about things being
glossed over in Germany. We had a big problem keeping the M48's an M52
on the firing line. At one time we had every M52 dead lined because we
could not get parts to fix their sighting devices repaired.

I remember an event similar to the live round that came into Colin
Powell's  bivouac
area. We had the same thing happen up at Wildflecken with an M52 105
howitzer. The crew had broken the azimuth reset counter on the periscope
sighting device. They did not know they were 180 degrees off their
azimuth until they dropped a round in the company area to the rear of
their firing position

Well I guess that is enough nonsense for now.... as you can see I have
many vivid memories of Fulda and the time we spent there, I also have
three albums of great photos
Bill.
 

11-26-07

I received an email from Jim Conley this AM, he was with the 15th Ord at
the same time I was. I can't place him, however, I can remember many of
the guys he mentioned in his email.

I was wondering, how would I go about making a posting to your web site?
Being a member of a support group to the 14th, we saw a completely
different view of the goings on across the parade field. I remember very
clearly the incident with the M48 A1 tank being pointed at the
regimental HQ with an HE round loaded up the tube ready to fire.
 I remember an incident with a M52 up at Wildflecken where the breach
block had broken, the tank commander wanted to finish his firing for
record exercise, so they loaded up a round, someone smacked the firing
cap with a hammer, killing everyone in the turret.

With the help of my computer, I have become somewhat of a good story
teller, so if you would like, I will be glad to share my memories with
the other members of the group.
 

11-26-07

Memories of Downs Barracks, Fulda, Germany

We to start?
I guess that it might be best to start off with a little background on
myself and the events leading up to my time with the 15th Ord:

I grew up in a farming area in Eastern Idaho. Since the economy was
basically related to farming there was not much future for someone that
had no ties to the land. Upon my graduation from Idaho Falls High I
decided to pack my bags and see the world. Many of my friends and class
mates had done the same thing, only difference was they joined the
service, mostly going into the Navy or Air Force.

I bummed around the western United States for a while finally landing in
Las Vegas where I stayed for two years. After acquiring a wife, a near
new car and a bank account, working on the construction of the new
hotels that were popping up all along the strip, we decided to move to
Los Angeles. Things were good in LA, I got a good job as a general
foreman and my wife landed a job as an office manager..... then in
September of 1956 things turned completely around.... I got a draft
notice from my draft board in Idaho.

I was almost twenty-five when I got the notice so it was quite a shock.
Up until the time I got the "greetings" notice, the system had been
working just fine. Due to the poor economy in Idaho, most young men
either signed up for the service or as Collen Powell said "they were
given the choice of the Army or prison".  As a result of the 'volunteer'
enlistment's Idaho had not had to resort to the draft to fill their
quota... I was soon to become a number, both to fill a quota and
US56xxxxxx of the U.S. Army....

I was not even in Basic Training when I came to the conclusion that this
army game could be played two ways, the hard way, always in trouble or
the easy way... I choose the easy way... I quickly became the best
soldier the US Army ever saw.

Following the completion of basic training, by the luck of the draw, I
found myself assigned to a very prestigious electronic school run by
Philco at the Army Proving Grounds in Aberdeen Maryland. My wife and I
went to Maryland and started on a venture that is still dear to our
hearts. I spent over four months in school graduating third in my
class.  Upon my graduation I was transferred to the 15th Ord in  Fulda.
I made one big mistake while I was at school in APG. My MOS was good for
WO-4, I was offered six more months of school, graduating as a WO-1, the
catch was I had to extend for a year..... I turned the offer down.

I took my wife and car back to LA, caught a plane to New Jersey,
reporting in at Fort Dix. I no sooner sat my duffle bag down when I was
told to gather up my gear and report for transportation. The next thing
I knew I was on a MATS plane heading for Frankfurt. An over night stay
in Frankfurt and I was on the train to Fulda where I was picked up at
the train station by a driver from the 15th Ord. Only ten days had
lapsed since I had left APG.

I was assigned a bunk in a cubicle, the 15th Ord had billets adjacent to
the HQ consolidated Mess. The cubicles were semi private two man
cubicles, however, the majority of the first floor in our billet only
had one man per cubicle. I was taken on a tour of the Post and
especially the shop area. Our shop was just being set up so the first
order of business was to get the equipment ordered, paint the walls and
build work benches.

Our section chief was Sgt Anderson, he was a lifer in the Army having
joined in 1936, getting out in 1940 only to be pulled back in with the
start of hostilities in WWII. Anderson had been given the section
because he was an E-5 Staff Sgt with years in grade and not much hope of
making E-6. With his assignment as section chief he was immediately
promoted to E-6. Sgt Anderson was clue less as to what we were doing, he
made it very clear to us that he would stay out of our way so long as we
did not screw things up and make trouble for him.. If we made life easy
for him, he would go to bat for us, and make our life easy... He was
true to his word.

To be  continued:

11-27-07
Memories of Downs Barracks,  Fulda, Germany
A recap of eighteen months of  keeping the peace on the Eastern Front

By:  Wiliam (Bill) Steed, 15th Ord DS 1957/58

Chapter 2.

As all of our equipment and supplies started to show up we found that we had two shops. One shop was contained in two duce and a half  shop van trucks, the other shop was in the building between the Tract Shop and the Recovery Section. We actually were only authorized one shop van, the second one came in as a duplication of the first order. As is usual in the Army, when we heard an IG inspection was coming, we would send the second shop van out on a "blind work order", then what the inspector's could not see was not written up.

Another problem came up..... My MOS was classified as a "Critical MOS" and as such, I carried a set of orders with me that had been given to me at APG, in these orders it stated that if I was not working in my field as a Remote Control System's Specialist, I was to ask for immediate transfer to a unit that could utilize my specialty.

So just what is a Remote Control System? In a nut shell it is systems that control (s) indirect artillery/missile firing, in lieu of line of sight, generally applied to anti air craft weapons. I actually was trained on some of the guidance systems for the early missiles, as well as radar controls for other types of anti air craft weapons..... Ya sure.... all armored calvary units had Nike missiles hidden under the First Sergeants bunk.

So here I am, stationed in a place that has no idea what I do, the one advantage was that the 85th Ord Battalion and the 15th Ord had a specialist that no one else had.  Sounds almost like a script out of MASH. 
The special orders I carried were very powerful, giving me the authority to jump the chain of command. Did I exercise them?...... NO! I liked what I saw in the 15th Ord and Fulda so I dummied up. After all my wife was on her way to Germany and I had located a nice apartment on the economy.

It is very unlikely that the average soldier had any idea what we did in the Fire Control Section. Actually the majority of the 15th  Ord did not now what we did. We formed up with the rest of the company, marched to the shop area, walked into our shop closing the door behind us. Sgt Anderson would go up to the shop office, turning in the completed work orders from the previous day and picking up any new ones that came in. The few people that did come in saw oscilloscopes with their eliminated screens and sqwiggly displays looking like electronic worms dancing across the screens, and rows and rows of binoculars.

Usually there were at lease two technicians working on the repair of optical equipment. Every thing was usually very orderly as long as Sgt Anderson was around, once he left all hell broke loose. One of the guys thought he was Elvis, he would pull out a wig with long sideburns, turn his collar up and get out a phony guitar he had made. He was very intertaining,  his rendition of You Ain't Nothin But a Hound Dog was pretty good.
We had another fellow named Ron Mensus, he was from New Jersey, he was very intertaining in another way. Ron was the ultimate barracks lawyer. always  messing with the senior NCO's and inventing scams.

One of Ron's scams was really good.  Some of you might remember the 'C' rations at the Mess Hall door. There were always barrels with the main courses which had been removed from the 'C' rations for the troops to use as snacks,  ya know.... wonderful things like turkey thighs with cheese sauce, or the tried and true SPAM.  The one thing that was always missing was the small candy bars and the small cigarette packs, five smokes to the pack.

One day we were standing inside the billet, watching the line going into the mess hall. Ron noted that the mess sergeant, Sgt Crews had his green and white Pontiac Catalina backed up to the rear door of the mess hall. Sgt Crews was loading things into his car, candy and cigarettes. Ron went to his room, got a camera and walked out into the parking lot, he told Sgt Crews to smile for the camera. Needless to say Crews was not a happy camper, being a Master Sergeant caught loading goods into a private vehicle was not a good thing. Ron took off with Crews in hot pursuit. Ron went through the billets out the other door and disappeared. Crews was mad as hell, trying to do his best to get us to give Ron up, which we did not.

A few days latter Ron went to Crews, telling him that he would not turn the picture in if the troops got their candy and cigarettes back. The next day there was barrels of candy bars and cigarettes. 
The rest of the story... there was no film in the camera, of course Crews was never informed about this.

Black markets were a big problem in Fulda. The Germans were so use to it because they had resorted to black marketing to get the necessities of life during the waning days of the war so it was natural to assume that all army's worked the same way. A carton of Pall Malls at the PX would cost about $2.50 if I remember correctly. The Germans would gladly pay $20.00 per carton. American coffee would bring $13.00/15.00 per pound. My land lady tried many times to get me to pay my rent  with coffee and/or cigarettes. I refused, electing to give her a pound of coffee now and then as a special gift..........

continued

12-10-07

Hi Jim,
You asked for it... so here comes another chapter of my Fulda saga....Bill

Memories of Downs Barracks, Fulda Germany
A recap of eighteen months of keeping the peace on the Eastern Front
By: William (Bill) Steed, 15th Ord DS 1957/58

Chapter 3.
I mentioned in  Chapter 2. that my wife (Gerry) was making plans to travel to Germany to join me in our next adventure. She had to get our affairs in the States in order, secure her passport  and make travel arrangements to Frankfurt where I would meet her. It took her a little longer to get everything taken care of so it was almost three months before she started her trip to Germany.

My wife is a very capable person, she is a college graduate with a degree in accounting and business, and we are both the same age, only nine days apart..... so the prospect of traveling half way around the world was not a big deal to her. When she finally started her trip, she flew to New York City, there she boarded the Marsdum, a ship of the Holland/American Line bound for Rotterdam. Gerry's trip across the Atlantic was very memorable, being unattached..... traveling by herself, very personable and quite attractive, Gerry was invited to join the Captain table almost every night. Maybe the Caption felt a little paternal towards a young lady traveling by herself?

After landing in Rotterdam she boarded a train for Frankfurt. I met her in Frankfurt.... Since we had not seem each other for almost three months, I had made arrangements to stay over night in Frankfurt at a nice hotel. After doing some sight seeing and shopping in Frankfurt we boarded the train for Fulda in the first class section of the train.  For those of you that have never traveled by train in Germany, first class was a private compartment which cost only a couple of 'marks' more than regular coach. class.

I might not have been playing quite fair, treating my wife to first class accommodations, I felt I owed it to her. Our time in Maryland had been the pits. It was winter when we got there, we were short on money and the apartment was infested with roaches. Then to top things off she could not get a job and the New York Central's tracks ran right by our apartment, a train every 17 minutes. I was stationed at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, where we lived was called Aberdeen Breeding Grounds because of the trains.

It was getting dark by  the time we arrived in Fulda so we took a taxi to the apartment I had rented two months earlier.. I was very proud of the apartment I had found. I had engaged the services of a lady on the Post that assisted the GI's with all kind of social services.  Most of the other couples that I knew lived in one or two room apartments and either had to share a bath with another apartment or in some cases had to go outside to an out house. Our apartment was a three room unit,  bed room, living room, kitchen and bath. We paid 100 DM per month for the unit, a princely sum when you consider that a German would have paid 25 DM per month.

The only problem with the apartment was that the owner had never rented to GI's, so her idea of a furnished apartment was much different to ours. Since Fr. Henicker (sp) was fluent in German, I talked to her and she talked to the landlady. It was a good thing that I had rented the apartment two months early because it was a big battle to get the landlady to do everything she had agreed to do. When I had visited the apartment with Fr. Henicker a few days before my wife was due to arrive, everything was done except for the light fixtures, a bath tub, water heater and a stove to cook on.  The land lady assured  us that everything would be ready.

Our apartment was located at the end of a very dark street and it was a pitch black night. All of the other houses on the street were all dark, no lights showing anywhere, everyone had the steel shutters cranked down for the night. We walked around the building to the rear, the entry did not face onto the street, (I will explain why later on.) I unlocked the entry, we entered and climbed the stairs to our apartment on the third floor. Even with all of our noise stomping up the wooden stairs, no one came out of the other apartments to see who or what was going on.

Hang on to your chairs...... things get really good about now.
I unlocked the door, picked my bride up and carried her across the threshold of our apartment. While I was holding her in my arms, I reached for the light switch, there was none!!!...  just bare wires sticking out of the wall.  In spite of my wife's light weight, she only weighted 115 pounds at the time,  and I weighted 140. I had to put her down while I fumbled for my trusty Zippo lighter. Upon retrieving my Zippo from my pocket,  one  turn of the  wheel and it was going, the all to familiar orangish glow surrounded by the thick black smoke of gasoline barely eliminated the room.... Oh those good ole days of dipping the lighter into the gas tank of a truck in lieu of buying lighter fluid.

My wife took one look around the room and started sobbing which quickly turned into a complete melt down.  She wanted  to know where the phone was she was going to call a cab and go to a hotel for a couple of days until I got the lights hooked up. A closer look of the apartment, with the aid of my Zippo revealed there was no stove, either electric or coal, no bath tub and no hot water heater. In lieu of a double bed we had twin beds with German style straw filled mattress's.

Since there was no phone, my wife was going to walk to town, I finally was able to calm her down by lighting some candles the landlady had left for us, she worked in a candle factory across the street from our building. I then opened a bottle of wine I had purchased for this special night.... in short order we pushed the twin beds together and settled in for our first night in Fulda....... 
All was well on the Eastern Front........  Continued
 

12-11-07

Memories of Downs Barracks, Fulda, Germany
A recap of eighteen months of keeping the peace on the Eastern Front
By William (Bill) Steed, 15th Ord DS 1957/58

Chapter 4.
Following our first night together in Fulda we awoke to a beautiful summer morning. I had had the foresight to stock the apartment with linens, kitchen utensils, a coffee pot, toaster and some basic food stuffs so I made a pot of coffee. I mentioned earlier that our building was the last building on the street, beyond us on one side of the street was small gardening plots which people from the inner city would come out and tend on the week ends.

Across the street was a large displaced persons camp.  All of the structures in the 'camp' were constructed of tar paper over wood framing. Each small shack/yard had an out house. Since our apartment was on the third floor we had an unobstructed view of garden plot from one kitchen window and the DP camp from the other kitchen window.  I knew about the 'views' my wife did not, the smell of fresh coffee finally brought her to the kitchen. She got a cup of coffee and started walking to the window, I suggested the easterly window, which over looked the garden plots. As she moved towards the southern window I cautioned her about the DP camp. She was a little surprised but not overly upset.

General public transportation was not the best in Fulda unless you wanted to go from the main business area of town to the Kashern. I purchased a 1950 Opel  from one of the guys on post that was getting ready to rotate home, the only problem was I had to wait a month for him to clear the post. While I was waiting I made arrangements for one of the other married guys in my section to pick me up in the morning and drop me off in the evening.

The waiting for the Opel seemed to drag by, my wife was not happy because she was stuck at home with no one to talk to. She tried talking to the land lady but she spoke no english and Gerry spoke no german. I finally got the car only to find out I had a problem, a very big problem!!!  I was not aware that since I was an enlisted man, I had to have permission of my commanding officer. Hell... I had not even asked my father for permission to buy my first car and that was when I was fifteen, now I am almost twenty-six and I have to ask the company commander, on top of that I have to ask permission of the Shop Officer to see the Company Commanding Officer.

To add to my problems,  Caption Drubber, the CO, was out of town with the Regimental Pistol team., the acting CO was a 1st Lt named Kriesberg. He was a jerk of the first order and to top it off he was two years younger than I. I got permission to see Kriesberg, I stated my case and handed him the papers that had to be signed. Kriesberg started in by telling me that he did not think I understood the responsibility of owning an automobile. After a very fatherly lecture, he denied my request and threw the papers in the waste basket.

I went over to the PX where my wife was waiting, I told her what happened...... my wife is Irish with a temper to match so she was out the door heading for the Company area.  I was close behind her trying to get her to back off.... short of throwing her to  the ground I could not stop her. Gerry flew up the stairs to the  Company Clerks office, going past him and into the CO's office.

Before Kriesberk could say a word she jammed her Passport into his face, informing him that she was a citizen of the United States and that he was only an employee of her country.  She also informed him that she was in Germany on a visa, which she did not think he was, and since she was there legally, which he was not, she could and would buy the car and drive me to and from work every day for the next sixteen months.

I was trying my best to calm  her down, I could picture the SP's on the way, me being carted off to the stockade and my stripes being torn from my sleeve. To my surprise Kriesberk fished the papers out of the waste basket, signed them and apologized for any inconvenience he might have caused us. I got my wife out of there before someone changed their mind.

My wife had very big issues with the U.S. Army. She had never known discrimination until we found ourselves in the Army, being the wife/dependent of an enlisted man subjected her to a suttle type of discrimination she had never known. A perfect example was a situation that occurred while we were at APG. It was winter when we got there and it was damn cold.  We were going to go to a movie on post one evening with another couple. It was bitter cold so the girls put on slacks and sweaters.  As we approached the ticket window we noted a sign that said.... FEMALE DEPENDENTS OF ENLISTED PERSONNEL WEARING SLACKS AND SWEATERS WILL NOT BE ADMITTED..... we did not go to the movie.

A couple of days after the  Slack/Sweater sign  had appeared at the movie  theater a similar sign was posted at the entry gates to the post, my wife was livid.... I wonder? did the brass think that the female depends of enlisted personnel were more sensual than officers wife's...... or did they just think that the females/wife's  of enlisted personnel were all tramps........ Continued
 

11-18-07

Hi Jim,
My wife and I only spent one Christmas in Fulda, but it was a very
memorable one. Since we were living on the economy we attended Mass at
the Dom on most sundays, Christmas mid-night mass was especially
meaningful.

In the following I will share with everyone our 1957 Christmas in Fulda:

There were three couples in our little group of close friends, the men
were all members of the 15th Ord.  Several weeks before Christmas we
were all sitting at the kitchen table in our apartment, which was
usually the case because our apartment was larger than the other
couples. The subject about what we were going to do for Christmas came
up,  following much discussion it was decided that we would have a joint
Christmas at our apartment, that way there would only be one tree and
the decoration for same involved.

Decorations for the tree turned out to be a big deal, we were all short
on money so the thought of purchasing decorations for one Christmas was
out of the question. It was finally decided that we would make the
decorations. We all smoked so we started saving the foil out of the
cigarette packages, we separated the foil from the paper wrappers and
set it aside. Using cookie cutters as patterns we cut out trees, balls,
etc., out of light cardboard, we covered the cutouts with the foil and
added a small string to the top to tie them onto the tree. We then made
pop corn, which we strung with cranberries to make colorful ropes.

The fun part was going out into one of the local forests to cut a tree.
We had to contact one of the local Forest Miesters to do this, and he
had to accompany use. The seven of us would trudge through the snow,
seeing a tree we liked we would tell the Forest Miester...Das... he
would reply... Nix... we would trudge on some more, each time we found a
tree we liked, the FM would say.... Nix.  After looking for over an hour
the FM finally walked up to a small tree, pointing at it.... he
said..... DAS.... we cut the tree down, paying the FM for it and left.

A couple of evenings later we all got together to decorate the tree, the
tree actually looked pretty grim in spite of all our work...... the tree
needed lights but we had none, nor could we buy any because the Germans
used candles on their trees. We finally decided to pool our money and
buy a set of tree candles. The tree candles were small silver holders
that would clip onto the tree branch, there was a small silver cup on
the bottom which the candle fit into. We installed the candles onto the
tree but were afraid to light the candles for fear of burning the
apartment down. We finally decided to light the candles, everyone got
their camera's ready and we lit the candles, the tree was beautiful....
we all hugged each other, wishing each other a Merry Christmas, then we
quickly took a  picture of the tree and blew the candles out.

We we took the tree down a few days after New Years, we split the candle
set up between the three couples, that way each couple would have
something as a memento of our  Christmas in Fulda. Through the years our
portion of the candle set has slowly disappeared, as has our friends........

Bill Steed
15th Ord DS

Chapter 5.
After getting the car issues straightened out things started going well
for us. The lights got installed in our apartment, we got a coal stove
in the kitchen for cooking and heating. Yes.... we had to build a fire
in the stove to make coffee or cook, in spite of the fact that it was
summer time. The land lady just would not pop for an electric stove,
because she thought the stove would be to expensive for us to operate.
She also would not step up to the plate for a refrigerator, even though
she had agreed to provide one.

The fighting with the land lady was not worth the effort so we rented an
electric stove and a frig..... the frig was the size of a state side bar
frig, at least it was better than an ice  chest. We were still trying to
get the land lady to install the hot water heater and bath tub, these
two items would take two months before she had them installed.... When
the hot water heater did get installed we were aesthetic with joy, that
is until we found out that we had to build a fire in the water heater
and wait two hours before we had enough hot water for both of us to take
a bath.... we found that...... save water, take a bath with a friend,
became a way of life...... Hmmm?
 From time to time I would cheat, I would shower on the post before I
came home, claiming that we had been exposed to acid or something,  that
way my wife could take a leisure bath by herself.

The work load in our section was always very heavy. It appeared as how
the using units could break something on the range finders in the M-48
tanks as fast as we could fix them. The M-52's were just about as bad,
almost every time the periscope sighting devise was moved from the
firing position to the travel position, the azimuth reset knob was
either badly bent or broken off. The problem with the M-52's became so
bad that a directive came down from HQ that we were to file a Statement
of Charges  to the tune of $3,300 against any crew/tank commander, that
sustained a broken azimuth counter.

Evidently the problem with the azimuth reset was not isolated to the
14th AC, the supply of reset mechanisms dried up so we had a stack of
back orders in lieu of parts. In short order we had every M-52 in the
14th AC dead lined. The gun could be fired, however, since it was
mounted in a tank turrets,  there was no way to know where it was firing
unless someone stood outside to direct the gun crew. The direct fire
control system was not very accurate because it relied on line of sight.

We in the fire control section had been reluctant to file Statement of
Charges against the gun commanders because we felt the design of the
periscope travel case left much to be desired.  For those of you that
are not familiar with the M-52's... The periscope sighting device had to
be removed from the gun carriage prior to moving  the vehicle, the
periscope had to be carefully placed into it's travel case which was a
rubber padded vertical metal box that was located to the side of the gun
mount.

Naturally.....  great care had to be taken  to do this, if the sight was
just dropped into the case, the reset knob would hang up on the case
rim, a couple of times hitting the rim and the shaft was bent or broken.


We finally had no choice but to start filing the Statement of
Charges.... I really felt sorry for those first few sergeants that got
the SC's, $3,300. was a lot of money in 1957... Once the word went out
that SC's were being filed against gun crew commanders the problem of
broken/damaged resets fell off dramatically. I can still see the look on
one sergeants face when he was handed the Statement of Charges. He was
married with two kids, and close to a years wages just went out the
window....

As I recall the Army did not take the money in one lump, they spread the
deductions over a period of time, the kicker was that until the money
was paid, you could not get out of the Army. A friend of mine had lost a
45 pistol when he was in Korea, he had a SC filed against him which
caught up with him as he was being 'mustered' out at Fort Ord, his
mustering out pay took a serious hit to cover the cost of the 45 pistol.

With so many critical pieces of equipment dead lined, the issue of the
uncompleted work orders quickly became a big deal. To add to our
problems the CO's of the howitzer Company's started pestering the Shop
Office for action, this in turn added to our problems because the
Company CO's started coming into our shop demanding action. Something
had to be done, so I got creative.

I took one of the azimuth reset counters apart which I was not
authorized to do. When I got everything stripped off of the main shaft,
which was the part that was broken I found it was a pretty simple shaft.
I went down to the machine shop and asked them if they could make me
some shafts, their response was they could, but couldn't. The problem
was they did not have the steel to make the shafts out of and they could
not order the steel without a work order. Since the project was
unauthorized for both our sections, we were in the old catch 22.

I went to the welding shop, asking them if they had any welding rod that
was of a quality similar to the steel in the shaft. They had some
stainless steel rod that would work.... In a few days I had a pile of
azimuth re-sets all made up, ready to be installed.
I felt pretty smug about the whole deal, however, in a few months I
would find myself in deep trouble over the whole matter....... Continued

Hi Jim,
Here's another segment of my story.... I have two more already written.
I have been holding off on sending the articles in, hoping that someone
else might chime in..... no such luck so far...
 
Memories of Downs Barracks, Fulda Germany #6
A recap of eighteen months of keeping the peace on the Eastern Front.
By: William (Bill) Steed, 15th Ord DS 1957/58

The 15th Ord was basically a full service Company that could repair
and/or rebuild anything mechanical. The Company was comprised of a heavy
Track Shop and a Wheel Shop which did complete rebuilds,
removing/replacing engines, transmissions and the track drive
assemblies. There was also an Artillery Section for major rebuilds of
the guns on the M48's & M52's.
The Fire Control Section, where I worked and a Recovery Section that
transported the equipment that the 14th broke. A Small Arms Section, a
truck transport section  that functioned like any cross the road
trucking company, ie; Roadway, Yellow, etc, except it was ran by the
U.S. Army. Unofficially the trucking unit was dubbed "The Red Ball
Express" named after a famous unit in WWII.

The trucks used by Red Ball Express were specially modified duce and
a-half's that had hiway tires, dark glossy OD paint  in lieu of flat OD.
The drivers carried special 7/24 passes and open trip tickets which
allowed them to go anywhere in Europe. The drivers for the Recovery
Section had a large squad room in the end of the billets facing the
street next to the Regimental HQ consolidated mess hall.

If the door to their room was closed, the standing rule was that no one,
other than the Section chief, W/O Mr Good, or M Sgt Schnieder, the
senior NCO for the section was to open that door because one or more of
the drivers were sleeping. I was good friends with one of the drivers, a
fellow named Cundy, from San Bernardino, CA. Cundy was a typical truck
drive. His uniform always looked like it had not been washed in some
time and that it had been slept in for many days, which usually was the
case. Cundy also liked to blouse his pants low over his boots, below the
ankle, which added to his sloppy appearance. Cundy had a habit of
saluting an officer by placing his hand below his belt line. Most
officers on the post were use to Cundy's antics, however, once in awhile
he would run into an officer that took exception resulting in Cundy
being hauled before the CO. His restriction would last until they had
another "Red Ball" dispatch which got Cundy out of everyone hair for awhile.

The 15th also had a supply section, Tec Supply for parts, Machine Shop,
Welding Shop, Body/Fender/Paint Shop and a C-E (Tune-up) Shop. Lastly
there was the Salvage Section which handled all of the broken parts,
batteries, etc, sending them off via rail cars which looked like the
normal junk yard load.
The nastiest detail in the Company was to assist the Salvage Section
haul their junk to the rail spur on post and load the open gondola rail
cars. This event was usually a bi-weekly affair. As a general rule the
Track Shop and/or Wheel Shop had to assist the Salvage Section because
most of the junk came from their shops.

The Recovery Section also doubled as a wrecker service for the German
Police. Whenever one of the Germans wrecked a large truck, the German
Police would ask for assistance by the Recovery Section, who in turn
would dispatch their large wreckers and "low boy" tank recovery units to
gather up the mess.
Payment was always received for this service, the money being put into
the Company "entertainment fund" which paid for sports equipment,
Company parties, etc.

The 15th Ord had a soft ball baseball team that took the division title
three years in a row. The pitcher, a fellow named Hammond who was the
Company machinist, could as a rule keep the opponents to a near
scoreless game. Hammond re-enlisted and extended his tour in Germany for
eighteen months so he could play two more seasons of soft ball for the
the 15th Ord.

For the most part , the 15th Ord was a well run Company. The general
attitude was that we had a job to do in supporting and maintaining the
efficiency of the tactical units. The 15th Ord was not considered to be
a tactical/combat unit. The largest weapon they had was the M2 .30 Cal
Carbine.
However, in a later article I will show that the 15th Ord was truly a
first rate combat ready unit that could and would defend their position
against aggressors....... continued

Chapter #7

I believe that I mentioned in one of my earlier stories that my wife and
I had only been married for nine months when I got drafted into the
Army. We had gone together for almost two years before we were married
so we knew each other pretty well when we got married.
I have also written that my wife did not deal well with the life of
being and Army wife, in fact she hated it. Being in Germany was a
definite improvement from Maryland but then we were still limited in how
much freedom we had. Shortly after getting our car I was informed that
my wife had to report to the Kasern for indoctrination about the
evacuation route she would take, and for assignment of the dependents
she would take with her in the event hostilities with the Soviets was to
break out.

In some respects living off post was very much different from living on
post, we did not have "bed check" but we did have Big Brother telling us
what we could, or could not do.  A few weeks after getting settled into
or cozy little nest we were awoken in the middle of the night by a duce
and a-half roaring down the street with his horn blowing. Within seconds
there was an armed soldier stomping around in the stairwell, beating on
the doors shouting "ALERT, ALERT".
I knew what was going on, and had told my wife to expect such a thing,
my only mistake..... I had not told the other three family's, all
Germans, that such an event would happen. I threw on my uniform and ran
out the door, not knowing that I had left my wife to face the very upset
Germans. The Germans were convinced that the Russians had breached the
border and WWIII was on.

My wife was trying to get to our car to get to her assigned pickup
station, however, the Germans were more intent on going with her because
they feared the Russians with a passion. Since my wife did not speak any
German at all, she was not having much luck explaining to the Germans
that the whole affair was most likely a practice. With seven people
screaming at her, blocking the stairs out of the building she finally
had the presents of mind to grab a mop, putting it on her shoulder and
marching around the foyer shouting  HA, HA HA. The Germans then caught
the message that the whole affair was a practice drill, so they started
following her around the foyer saying HA, HA, HA....

Being in Fulda and living off post meant that in short order life
settled into being almost like any job in any town. I got up in the
morning, made a pot of coffee, did the normal morning things, got
dressed, packed a lunch, kissed my wife good bye and went out the door
to drive to work. I usually stopped and picked up a couple of other guys
on my way to the post.

In short order my wife got a drivers license so from time to time she
would drive me to work so she could have the car. Actually there were
very few GI's that had cars, either living on or off post. A car was a
very expensive item, what with gasoline costing .10 US per gallon and
oil being  .05 per quart. Most of the cars the GI's had were cars they
had brought from the States.I had purchased an Opel Olympia because the
insurance was based on the horse power of the engine. The Opel had less
than 37 HP so it had the cheapest insurance you could get. I pitied the
guys that had brought their large American cars with them. Our little
Opel did just fine, getting us anyplace we wanted to go.

I was a PFC when I got to Fulda so I made the grand sum of less than
$40.00 plus my separate rations allotment of $30. per  month, my wife
got $137.10 so our combined monthly income was $207.10. This amount was
not equal to one week of my BFA income not counting the $150. per week
my wife made....
Yet all and all we were OK since our rent was only $25.00 per month, we
both smoked so we burnt up $10.00 a month in smokes and my wife is a
thrifty shopper. We actually were able to save a few bucks every month.
Four months after I got to Fulda I made Spec 3 (E4) which they later
converted to Spec 4, a little over five months later I made Spec 5 on a
waver. For some reason or another I do not recall the monthly income
from the time I made E4-E5, and when I got mustered out.
I was very fortunate to have the job I had and being in the place I was,
making E4 in less than a year and E5 in less than 18 months was very
unusual in Fulda.

I can truthfully say that being in the Army actually taught me the value
of a dollar. I had never had any trouble making money from the time I
was fourteen. My father had taught me to be a ceramic tile layer and by
the time I was nineteen I was a journeyman. I was a general foreman on
the Rivera Hotel in Las Vegas before I was twenty and always had money
to burn until the President sent me Greeting, we want you.... continued


Chapter #8

Since I was older than the average soldier, I had pretty well out grown
the urge to waste away my off duty hours drinking in the EM Club or
hanging out in one of the down town bars. In spite of the fact that I
had not seen my wife for over two months, I did not find the Germany
ladies to be that attractive. I was really turned off by their lack of
personal hygiene, namely, not shaving their legs, pits, etc. Maybe some
of you readers might remember one the jokes that circulated at the
time..... "How do you tell when you are on a German or Italian Air Line?
Hair under the wings"......

Before I became a teenager with raging hormones that prompted me to
chase anything in a skirt, I had been very interested in building model
airplanes. I was quite surprised when I got to Fulda to find that there
was a very active group of guys building and flying remote control (RC)
and wire guided planes. The planes were usually flown in a vacant field
between the HQ Mess Hall and the ammo dump. I fell right in with these guys.

My first plane was a Cessna 185, I painted it red an silver. Next I
built a copy of a 1930 Pole Racer. It was an open cockpit, really a neat
looking air plane. My Last plane was a RC WWII P 47 Thunderbolt,
complete with retractable landing gear. I did not finish this plane
until long after my wife arrived in Fulda. I put so much work into
building the planes that I could not bring myself to fly them, I finally
hung them up in our shop, selling them before I rotated home with the
provision that they could not be flown until after I was gone.

Model airplanes was a very big deal in the Army. The PX's carried huge
stocks of about anything needed to build great planes. The Army being
the Army though, meant that some parts/accessories were available in one
PX, while other items needed were maybe in Bad Hersfeld or Gession. My
job allowed me to travel around pretty much at will, so I would plan a
service trip to Bad Hersfeld, Gession, etc., alerting the guys in the
Flying Club to get their shopping lists together so I could gather up
the supplies they needed..

Sometime in early 1958 the PX's and Snack Bars were declared "Off
Limits" during normal duty hours. SP's were posted at the doors to check
the entrants to see if they had an off duty pass. We beat this game by
attaching our collar brass Ordnance Bombs, (commonly referred to as the
flaming piss pot) to our collars. When we walked up to the door to the
PX/Snack Bar we simply raised the collar so the SP could get a good look
at the brass, and walked right in. Of course this little game did not
sit to well with some of the 14th AC people, but there was nothing they
could do about it because we were a part of the 85th Ordnance Battalion,
not the 14th AC.

When we took one of our little shopping trips we always made sure we had
a work order or two with us for the appropriate Battalion. We would then
go to the Motor Pool, check in and get the key to the tank park. Once we
were in the tank park we would go through the motions of getting our
equipment out and proceed to check a tank out.

After going through the motions of pretending to be fixing things,
naturally a break was in order, I would retreat to the snack bar, then
to the PX, so I could purchase the items on my list. Upon  my return to
the tank park, my buddy would beat feet for his turn in the Snack Bar.

The tank park at Bad Hersfeld was especially nice. It sat up on top of a
hill overlooking the dependent housing area. Naturally, calibrating the
range finder on an M48A1 required powering up the turret and the
traversing of same. With the powerful optics of the M48, the view into
the dependent area was very good.

While scoping out the area one day we came upon an apartment in the
officers housing section that was filled with several very attractive
young ladies, all of which were totally nude. The group of ladies were
dancing around the room as if they were little girls at a May Pole dance
in the woods. We  viewed the ladies several times, making sure to
traverse the turret after a moment of viewing so as not to draw
attention to ourselves.

I was not long before we got greedy, stopping the turret in lieu of just
pausing. One of the ladies happened to walk over to the very large
picture window, giving us the view of views. As she stood at the window
she started to turn, looking up as she turned, in doing so she saw the
tank with the gun tube depressed, there was no doubt in her mind what we
were doing. It was like we were eye to eye, she screamed, pointing to
the tank park and dropped to the floor out of our sight. The rest of the
ladies hit the floor or ran into other rooms within the apartment. We
locked the tank down and got our butts out of there.

No inquiries were ever made about the incident. It would have been very
easy to have caught us because we had signed in for the tank park, so we
were the only people in the park. I have often thought that the ladies
were to embarrassed, having been observed doing  their little nudie
party, to report the incident to anybody.......... continued