In the middle 60's, in order to disguise a reduction in forces supporting NATO, the Department of Defense came up with a scam and sold it to its European counterparts. The plan was to remove several thousand troops from Germany in whole-unit chunks, but to leave their equipment "pre-postitioned" in storage sites all over Germany. The idea was that the troops that belonged to the equipment could be returned to Germany in huge airlifts and they would be ready to get into any fray the other side would start up. It would be like a volunteer fire department. The fire engine is parked in your neighborhood but the firemen have to come from all over the county to start it up. Okay, maybe not exactly like that...

They called this masterstroke of genious "REFORGER". REturn of FORces to GERmany. Pretty clever, huh? What it meant for the average soldier was that at some point in the rotation plan, your unit would be identified for participation, would then be "stood down" (no more operational missions) and your equipment would be inspected, repaired, stored, and you would be sent back to the States. Sounds easy, don't it? Well...in practice, this is what it meant for a working truck company.

Stand down: At a certain date in May of 1968, the 513th Trans Company was no longer committed to any mission supporting 7th Army or USAREUR (U S Army Europe). The only vehicles that could be dispatched were for administrative functions...internal unit support. With trucks doing their job all over Germany, this was a more difficult task than it sounds like. I think it took more than two weeks to get all the trucks back to our base at Coleman Barracks.

Inspection: A team from USAREUR's CMMI (Command Maintenance Management Inspection...I think...kinda fuzzy on that) team came into the motor pool early one morning and spent the next two months inspecting all of our equipment. There were three levels of inspection, each one a higher and tougher standard than the last. This was not a run-of-the mill CMMI ( "run-of-the mill" for CMMI was the toughest inspection in the Army), the standard for storage was to make every truck in the unit come up to brand new specs. Trucks that were approaching candidacy for retirement to a parts yard were now expected to be turned out like brand spanking new trucks.

Repair: Everyone in the company became a mechanic overnight. We had a target date of October to get 60 task vehicles and more than twenty admin vehicles up to storage standards and turned in. We were assigned a rebuild shop contact team to assist in major component replacements, got priority on replacement parts, set up a paint and body shop, and worked like dogs 6-7 days a week, 10-14 hours a day until the end of September, when we were able to start the turn-in process.

Storage: Our unit was assigned to turn-in at Spinelli Barracks in Mannheim. We were met by another inspection team at the gate and the first day more than half the vehicles were turned back for one thing or another. We found we had to set up a wash point just outside the storage site gate...the road dirt picked up from Coleman to Spinelli was enough to flunk your vehicle (less than ten miles). It literally took weeks to turn everything in. All tools and chains and loose items had to coated in a thick tar, diluted with gasoline and painted on the equipment; then the gas evaporated, leaving a gooey coating...I think it was called PS-2. At the time the unit was scheduled to fly out, we still had three or four trucks that hadn't been accepted for storage...they left a few guys behind to finish it up.

The last element of this plan was the annual exercise to test the theory. Units from all over the States would be identified to take their turn in participating in REFORGER exercises. They would fly over to Germany, report to storage sites, unpack and prepare everything for war, then go out and manuever around the country with local USAREUR units.

I had arrived late in the evening one November night in 1967. They put me up in the Headquarters platoon the first night. A private that worked in supply introduced himself and told me I was lucky because this unit was going back to the States. I checked in the next morning and during the in-processing, I asked about the unit going back...I was assured that those rumors were flying around every unit in Germany. I was assigned to the third platoon. Dave Bean was my platoon sergeant...he became a good friend and mentor. I was a young buck sergeant and was assigned to be the first squad leader (my first leadership position in a real unit). MamaCharlie arrived in April of '68, just in time for the big "Stand Down". But the kid in supply was right: I was lucky. The rule was that anyone who had been in country less than a year could not go with the unit when it left Germany; they had to be reassigned to another unit. So after the toughest six months I had endured so far, I watched my comrades in the 513th Trans leave Germany for Fort Lewis, Washington. They boarded buses in front of the unit, waved to those of us left behind, and headed home. We turned around and went back to storing trucks.

This is how the story ends. The 513th was reassigned to Ft Lewis as an entire unit. Their families went with them, their household goods were shipped there, and they all went together in one plane directly to Lewis. There was a welcoming ceremony and a troop formation to greet them. And right there they handed the Guidon (the little pennant that denotes a unit's identification) to another truck company, changed their unit to the 513th and told all the newly arrived folks from Germany that they would be given new assignments. In just a few weeks, the majority of those people were on their way to Vietnam. Some of their families were on the wrong side of the country with no family or support and had to fend for themselves for the next year while their men went off to SouthEast Asia. Many of the former 513th truckers and leaders wound up in the same truck company in Vietnam. On August 14, 1969, on a stretch of road in Binh Long province, that truck company was ambushed. Dave Bean was killed. I haven't been able to determine who else may have been killed as well; I do know that several of them were wounded.

A lot of people with this kind of memory would blame the Army for its heartlessness and apparent abuse of its people. I don't feel that way. When we take the oath, we understand that we serve "the needs of the Service" which overrides all other promises, considerations, or priviledges. That doesn't mean we sign up to be shat upon; we have a right to expect our leaders to balance the needs of the service with the welfare of the soldiers and by extension, their families. This story illustrates the callousness of leaders who put their own agendas ahead of everything else and soldiers and families be damned. It wasn't the Army that made the decisions that screwed the soldiers and families of the 513th Trans. It was the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State and any of dozens of coat-holders who work for them. They came up with a scheme to reduce the cost of operating USAREUR and increase the troop pool available for deployment to Vietnam all in the same stroke. Clifford and Rusk, respectively, and a slew of suits and political uniforms did this...and the nameless, faceless bureaucrats in today's government continue to wield power and authority they were never granted under any interpretation of the Constitution.

A semi-humorous footnote: REFORGER exercises happened almost every year from 1969 through 1990. I experienced a few of them, myself. They were expensive, time intense and confusing at best. I wonder how the cost of bringing those troops into Germany from the States compared with leaving well enough alone. Considering all the unpacking of the stored equipment and paying for the accidents and mistakes made by soldiers unfamiliar with operating in Gemany. Not to mention the careless and/or intentional damage done by soldiers who had no concern for the equipment, after all it wasn't theirs, and they didn't want to be there anyway. Then putting all that stuff away, and all the time spent by these soldiers lost to their normal jobs, plus the normal expense of all that manueuvering around the countryside. etc, etc. Once again, DoD re-invents the wheel.