30 years ago today I witnessed the fall of the Iron Curtain while conducting artillery operations in Grafenwohr Germany which is right on the border of the Iron Curtain. I was assigned to 1st Battalion 36th Field Artillery Regiment, 17th Field Artillery Brigade, 7th Corps Artillery in a M110A2 Heavy Artillery Battalion. All of us serving at that time thought for sure that sooner or later we would be fighting the Russians in Europe as part of WWIII. Never in our wildest dreams did we think the fall of the Iron Curtain would happen in our lifetimes. We have been fighting the Cold War in ernest since the early 1960's. I have personally witnessed East Germans escaping to the west with great peril to their lives. Anyone who served in the Army in Europe knows that Grafenwohr was an old German Army training area that the Americans took over after World War II. That is the only place in Germany that has an impact area big enough to shoot my 8" Howitzers. That Howitzer firing one round has a sure kill radius of 80 meters. At 300 meters one round is still ripping off arms, legs, and heads. It is one bad *** Howitzer! My Battslion had 24 of these Howitzers. Three firing batteries of 8 Howitzers. So we shoot in box areas (same principle as B-52's) to maximize the kill zone and inflict the maximum amount of death and destruction. On top of all that these Howitzer's also fire nuke rounds that make Hiroshima and Nagasaki look like fire crackers. President Reagan warned Gorbachev that the U.S. Army would use tactical battlefield nukes in Europe. He was specifically talking about 8" Howitzers. Anyways....we go to Grafenwohr 4 or 5 times a year just to practice maneuvers and fire our Howitzers for accuracy. We can put a 205 lb bullet (plus 70 lbs of gun powder and a 5 lb fuse) inside of trash can at a distance of 20 miles during every shot. That is just how accurate these bad *** Howitzers are!
30 years ago today we were in Grafenwohr firing our Howitzers and all of a sudden we get a call on the COMSEC radio to "SEIZE FIRE FREEZE" . We only get this command when something goes absolutely wrong and someone actually shoots one of these Howitzers and the round lands outside of the impact area. This rarely ever happens....but it does from time to time. People die when this type of accident occurs. Then we get a call on the radio to put all of gun tubes in the stowed position and start heading to the railhead to load our Howitzers and ammo carriers on the railhead to go back home to Augsburg. Then we were told the Berlin Wall was coming down. We were all stunned! Happy but stunned. We worked through the night and loaded up on the railhead and sent our Howitzers back to Augsburg. We got a few hours rest and then we road marched all of our wheeled and tactical vehicles back to Augsburg. All of our trucks and HUMMV's always fly 12" flags on both mirrors every time we road March anywhere. We are always proud to fly the red, white, and blue! It was something to see all the East Germans and West German celebrating on the autobahn. Seen a lot of broke down Russian Traube's (Russian cars). We were mobbed by all the people everytime we pulled over at the restplatz for maintenance and rest breaks. It was an amazing event that I will never forget!!!!
U.S. Army Garrison Bavaria - Wikipedia
30 years ago today we were in Grafenwohr firing our Howitzers and all of a sudden we get a call on the COMSEC radio to "SEIZE FIRE FREEZE" . We only get this command when something goes absolutely wrong and someone actually shoots one of these Howitzers and the round lands outside of the impact area. This rarely ever happens....but it does from time to time. People die when this type of accident occurs. Then we get a call on the radio to put all of gun tubes in the stowed position and start heading to the railhead to load our Howitzers and ammo carriers on the railhead to go back home to Augsburg. Then we were told the Berlin Wall was coming down. We were all stunned! Happy but stunned. We worked through the night and loaded up on the railhead and sent our Howitzers back to Augsburg. We got a few hours rest and then we road marched all of our wheeled and tactical vehicles back to Augsburg. All of our trucks and HUMMV's always fly 12" flags on both mirrors every time we road March anywhere. We are always proud to fly the red, white, and blue! It was something to see all the East Germans and West German celebrating on the autobahn. Seen a lot of broke down Russian Traube's (Russian cars). We were mobbed by all the people everytime we pulled over at the restplatz for maintenance and rest breaks. It was an amazing event that I will never forget!!!!
U.S. Army Garrison Bavaria - Wikipedia
