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US Army Europe – 1966

This is what field training exercises in West Germany looked like in the 60s and the 70s.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 30th, 2019 at 00:00 and is filed under Cold War, History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

7 Responses to “US Army Europe – 1966”

  1. Ray says:
    October 30, 2019 at 00:38

    This was awesome. No body armor no radios just a man and his rifle. Haha. Man those ttps for working in a mout environment. Great to see how far we have come. Thanks SSD.

    • FormerDirtDart says:
      October 30, 2019 at 16:16

      I’m wondering what unit was doing to MOUT training. They were wear VII Corps patches, so not infantry.

      Couldn’t help but remember how damn heavy those M67s were. Was always fun to haul damn near 40 lbs of steel pipe around in the field

      lol

  2. Fritz says:
    October 30, 2019 at 11:57

    In those days I was a child in Germany and my friends and me always thoroughly enjoyed these exercises in our area near the border to East Germany. The GIs were always extremely friendly with us and had great fun when we tried out our rudimentary English from school. We usually brought local food (sausages, bread etc.) in exchange for (in our eyes) very exotic c-rations. I still have a collection of badges which we swapped for little local souvenirs. We always followed the tanks and trucks with our little bikes for hours and the soldiers were terribly worried that they might run over one of us. Nonetheless nobody chased us away. On our luckiest days we were even allowed to climb into a M60 tank and have a look around. Hard to imagine that today. Great times & good guys!

  3. Ed says:
    October 30, 2019 at 12:31

    Are you sure this isn’t cut footage from Stripes??

  4. Will says:
    October 30, 2019 at 17:43

    Just think, most of these men are now in their 60’s and 70’s. Where the F does the time go?

  5. Snakeman says:
    October 30, 2019 at 17:50

    Been there done that. USAREUR, 5th Corps, 36 Group, 2nd Battalion, 5th FA. Babenhausen, West Germany 1970-71. M107 SP unit. Carried a M-16A1, and in the 577A1 track was my assigned M-79. Body armor? What’s that?

  6. Ex11A says:
    October 30, 2019 at 21:07

    And 25 years later, 2LT Ex11A was maneuvering probably those same M113s all over Baumholder, Grafenwoehr, and Hohenfels. And being un-stuck by the same M88 recovery vehicles.