Hi, Doug. I had never seen an aerial of McNair until a few minutes ago. Coordinating that image with what my memory remembers, I cannot equate what I remember of the gates with what the aerial shows. The motor pool looks different, like it is further back. I don't remember buildings between what was the barracks for the medical unit sharing residence with us and the "Seven Steps to Hell" unit sharing residence with us which were in the same wing'(in fact which might have been the same unit) and the motor pool.
We didn't have a "laundry mat", a modular shell such as construction management uses for their offices on work sites. We had a dry cleaner/tailor and we had laundry call once a week for bed linen, fatigues, socks, towels, winter dress shirts and summer dress khakis. Though we so seldom used dress clothes, it was just as easy to take them to the dry cleaner/tailor.
I don't remember a bowling alley, but I never went bowling. I think I remember we had one, but I only remember from the perspective of knowing about it. My memory of it is that it was over by the NCO/CO clubs, USO and movie theatre. I don't remember the field as it looks here, looks like farming going on there, at the left/top of the image. At the time, those fields were just overgrown weeds. Those apartment buildings might have been there, I remember apartments like that being there, about the same view. I was on my way somewhere cutting across those fields, apartment buildings (the same ones?) off to my right I believe, and I heard this commotion going on off left in the weeds off the path. I look over and a guy and girl were having a go. I don't know how far along they were, they had their clothes on. But they could have been seen from the apartments. The railroad tracks are still there, but that entrance face of the building and street looks different. I don't remember that sculpted configuration of the street, that little half circle roadway in front of the gate.
Rooms look as dingy. Same gray paint on bottom half, beige on top half. 11 foot ceilings? One photo of a guy near his wall locker bending over into his foot locker, yeah,that gives an image of the configuration of the room. Some of the pics of the rooms look the same, some look greatly improved. I still have dreams about the rooms. I don't remember having beer in the room, or the nice furniture that seems to be in some of the rooms. We had bunks. No easy chairs, no end tables. Living conditions almost look like a college dorm or a non-campus dormitory for single people. We never had women.
Headquarters Company was in the wing on the bottom left but I don't remember it being a separate building as it seems to be in the photo. I don't remember 5 companies being with the 32nd. We had HQ Company, A and B. All the companies except HQ had at least 4 platoons, maybe 5. Well, if there is a fourth floor, I guess there was a C company. That would make 4 companies. Although, I'm beginning to think now only 3 floors, and two companies (not involving HQ) were on 1 floor. I don't think there were any companies on the first floor on the side of the building at top of photo. All that was as I said Post Office, PX, Tailor, etc. I can't believe that the kaserne has been turned into an apartment building. I can't envision the rehabbing effort, physically or logistically, to make it so on such an old building. Why did they not tear it down and construct new?
Hmmmm, the view of the shoe tree. Is that from the second floor wing?---which would be upper left corner of pic, overlooking those fields. At the time, those fields were just wild overgrown weeds. If it is, I was in that room for about 4 months. TDYd to TAC-Team, a first response commo squad. Otherwise my proper room of five guys overlooked the Quad from the second floor, I think it was just to the left of the entrance into the Quad.
TAC-Team established earliest communications at a field site, or at an isolated emergency field site when there was a disaster level situation (we had these individual alternative sites so that if a natural disaster or enemy attack occurred, it wouldn't wipe out all communication which might have been located in one spot, just like they have contingency plans for the President, VP, Cabinet Members in Washington, everyone goes to a diverse location to separate the leadership so we have something instead of annihilating all of our eggs in one basket), while awaiting arrival of permanent installation and Wire-Ops people. If we went on scheduled maneuvers, Battalion might move out at 3 AM, we preceded them to the field maneuvers site leaving at 2 AM. We also had unexpected drills that they didn't have. My mobile commo unit--a 1-1/4-ton with two 555-557FM radios, and a single larger FM radio and commercial SSB equipment for RWI patching in a hut on the truck bed ---was up on Hill 880, a site of a radio tower and restaurant. Seems it was north of the area. ;We had a mobile UHF with us on a 5-ton truck, but we had two other similar units on our team---one went to an isolated location from us, one went with the battalion, who had their own similar 5-tonners and 1-1/4 tonners. UHF put up the horns, and we coordinated by running wire into them so we could shoot through their horns, but we also implemented our own vehicle-mounted aerials. We didn't need wire into a land line system---regular battalion did that when they got to field on regular maneuvers--we sighted all of our shoots until Wire-Op's set up permanently if we were in a non-emergency location, i.e., regular field maneuvers.
If I remember the second floor wing correctly, it was on upper left corner of building, but I can't tell from this photo because it doesn't look like the side of the building goes a little past the longer (north?) face of the building. Coming in from that side (not track side) of the building was the dry cleaner/tailor, px and mailroom, snack bar maybe and the mess hall. The TAC-Team squad room (where we slept, not where we recreated and played cards--we went to the NCO and USO clubs for that was, I believe, that room from which the pic of the Shoe Tree was taken. Next to it in the wing was our E5's room, and next to that on the wing was Company B office. I have to hand it to all of you guys who had the moxie to do landscape plans of the area, and the photos. My guys had other things on their minds.
Other than the TAC-Team, my whole time was with RWI. We did Phone-radio patching. Also one of the guys on my team ---Bill Mccollugh--- was radio-enabled sedan driver for the V-Corps Colonel who lived in housing across street from kaserne and worked in the Farben building. RWI worked out of the I.G. Farben Building in Frankfurt. Farben V-Corps HQ ran a civilian Ham radio link out of the first floor right in the lobby for civilian personnel wanting to talk home. Apparently they had their own wire patch RWI setup, civilian/commercial. We had free transportation from the kaserne, either a 1-1/4 tonner or a deuce-and-a-half, what ever was available. Trouble is, driver would be late or not at all. So then we were forced to take public transportation or not go to work at all.; And of course this affected the guys who came off duty, they wanted to get back to barracks, shower, sleep, maybe take a day trip. If they got back late, that ruined their plans. Not at all was not an option because our radio hut on the 7th floor of the Farben Building was manned 24-7. So we had to rotate personnel. We soon enough gave up on taking the deuce and a half to work in favor of the strassenbahn which was just about out our front door, to the right and down a little path paralleling those railroad tracks, there was a little kiosk down that path, we'd go over and get a wurst and a beer every now and then. Nice husband and wife had it. Strassenbahn went past the HauptBahnhof. We might have had to make one transfer/zumsteiger. But public transportation was so cheap despite what we were paid, it was the better option. You went to work feeling like you were going to work, a plus in nasty weather. Weather was never nasty. Snow was like fall/spring here in Philadelphia. You get an inch or two, its gone in two three days. Rainy got a little depressing, adding to the darkness, being in a northern attitude where the sun wasn't above the horizon as long as Philadelphia. What was nasty was doing 70 miles an hour on the autobahn into town in the dark or with the cold whipping under the canvas on the back of a deuce and half, wet fog or rain blowing in adding to the cold.
My standard crew was a crew of 4 or 5. Once in awhile we had six or seven. But they didn't last. I'll tell you why. My basic crew consisted of Ray Nakaya from Hawaii, with a degree in architecture from a college in Oregon; Gary Holst, who had a Masters degree in Oriental Studies/Philosophy, Bill McCollough, the Colonel's Driver who had a degree in classical music from a New England College and played the organ, especially at Church at home. Dave Nordang from Wisconsin, don't know what his background was. Scandinavian American guy. Good worker. We all had something in common. We all appreciated 24 on 24 off, never having any KP or motor pool or guard duty. We were such a low-manned short handed squad we never pulled any of that. Other people did our motor pool. I had KP twice in 18 months, Guard duty twice, and my crew had similar tours if not less.; That was not like the rest of the troops who every 3 weeks they were doing something. Both KP's I filled the salt shakers, both Guard duty's I was officer of the guard assistant. I didn't have any grunt duty. Anyway, other guys would come on our crew, not only did they not show up for work, or go wandering about once they got there, but by their attitude they had nothing in common with us. They didn't like the 24/7, 24 on 24 off arrangement. They would rather work their 9-1/2 hour days M-F and 5 hour Saturdays. What they wanted to talk about while we sat around on duty wasn't in our conversational dialogue. Their behavior was usually not very good, and they had no respect for us in our squad room back at the barracks. They didn't last long. Either they got disgusted with us (Good!) or we took the issue up with our CO. Either way, they were outta there.
I was voice-radio operator MOS 05B20, but trained in Morse at Ft. Dix. Never trained in voice until I got to Germany, and what training did I need?--- It was like talking on a phone, do people need to be trained to talk on a phone? Never used Morse Code in Germany.
I arrived at 32nd Signal in October 1965 and rotated back to the States April 1967. It seems the oldest vets on these sites of the 32nd go only back as far as 1985. That is because the internet started in the 1990s, and all of you younger fellows grew up with the internet and computers in a different way than what my generation did. Because of when the internet became publicly available my fellow soldiers who were there are disenfranchised from being on the rolls of such sites. Not through any fault of people who made these sites, but as I said, computer and internet availability and significance is different for your crew than for mine. Also, as I said earlier, my guys had other things on their mind. Vietnam. And we didn't have the social perspective that your generation did. We just wanted to do our two or three years and get out of there. From the living conditions there, and the co-ed habitation, it seems you had a more convivial atmosphere there. I still think of Ray and Gary and Bill, Buddy Peltier (since died, someone broke into his apartment, killed him), Dave Austin of Baltimore. But we didn't keep in touch. Buddy and I did until his death more than Bill and I.
Just days before I left there, there was a major alert. We had to go out into the field because a missile---this was not a drill--had been launched from Russia. We were very sober going out, because we, having some idea--some of us--what was going on in Vietnam, projected to ourselves visions of WW2 about to repeat themselves in real time. When I got home, I found out that Russia had launched an unannounced radio satellite.

Larry Toomey