I was transferred to Rothwesten in January 1955. I had applied for permission to marry a non American citizen. Because of that my Cryptographic clearance was pulled, and I was not allowed to perform the duties that I was trained to do.
At first in Rothwesten I was assigned to the motor pool. There I drove around Germany with officers. I was up in the English zone to an English Kaserne in the Hartz mountains one time. Also I was to Frankfurt and on to Baumholder. I drove a soldier from Altefeld to Heilbronn also. He was called home on emergency leave.
However, the wonderful ASA put the CIC (or whatever) on me. I did not realize it at the time, but years later it became obvious to me. He made it a point to go to the train station with my comming wife and I. There we had dinner. He had all kinds of questions for her. At the time he had a beautiful handlebar moustache. Later he shaved it off. A short while after that I was on permanant guard at the famous main gate of the Kaserne and at the entracne to the off base officers area. I was told that I was not allowed to overhear officers talking even though I never traveled with more than one at a time.
My friend Dean Slagle has wonderful web pages about Rothwesten and other sites where he served. In the beginning he was in the 331st Comm Recon Co that later became Company A, 307 Comm Recon Bn. It was that compamy that I was transferred to from Altefeld.
The Rothwesten Kaserne was a Luftwaffe base during WW2. There isother info on the internet about this base. It was locted north of Kassel.
Here is a site with pictures and text about Rothwesten, Kassel and Waldau. There was a lot of war manufacturing in Kassel.
Here is Tim Olson's web pages about his time in Rothwesten.
Here is a link to the 601st-615th AC&W Squadron that was also located in Rothwesten.
Here is a site about the History of The airfield in Rothwesten. The pages are by Bernhard Weiss who supplied pictures to my Altefeld pages. The pictures are taken in Eschwege. Bernhard has a great website about all German Luftwaffe airfields from WW2.
New Page July 7, 2010
Updated Sept. 25, 2011