I had basic training at Ft. Dix in 1951, went to Vint Hill Farm and was sent to HSRO school at Camp Gordon, Ga. As I had been into ham radio I didn't have a lot of trouble with the code but it was hell to learn to type on a Mil! When finished there went to Arlington Hall and then to Ft. Devens, assigned to a new training company, the 328 CRC. Went over with the advanced party to open the base at Bad Aibling where the remainder of the company joined us several weeks later.
In order to make room for experienced personnel from several of the companies already in Germany I was "swapped" to the 332 CRC which was in Hof. (actually I think the First Sgt was glad to get rid of me as we never hit it off very well) I was assigned to the DF site there. Others of the team, as I recall, were Joe Egan (team chief), Vern Roark, John Breese, John Quincy Adams, Ray Lea, Jim Bayard, Nathan Woodbury, Jim Beers. When the company went to Heilbronn for the winter our team moved to Bindlach, near Bayreuth. We spent the winter there and in the spring moved to Coburg, up on the Flugplatz above the Veste Coburg, where the company joined us. The DF site was a mile on past the main company so we had pretty much privacy. They were in tents for a couple of of weeks until the barracks in Cortendorf were completed.
Being on a DF site to me was the best and worst duty you can get. You had a minimum of BS, just do your duty and go about your business. The only bad part was you were pretty much left to your own mercy with not very much support from the company. You even got paid when the Payroll officer felt up to coming around! You learned to scrounge from nearby Army units if you needed anything. We would make PX runs etc. and lived on the economy in Gasthauses except for Coburg and Bamberg. All in all I wouldn't have had it any other way. Drank a lot of great beer and met a lot of real fine Germans.
During my stint with the 332nd I had to fill in on several other DF teams when personnel were on vacation or were ETS'd. These included Rotz, (Waldmunchen) Roth, (Ansbach) and Memmingen. I was spent several weeks at Badnerhof Kaserne in Heilbronn.
The 332nd moved from Coburg to Bamberg not long before I rotated back to the States.
An interesting thing is that my son was stationed in the same Kaserne and building in Bamberg as I was only he was in a tank outfit, not the ASA!
Chuck Bowen, email: charbown@aol.com
Updated Jan 31 06