On the way out some of the guys tried to abscond with an old piece of WWI equipment but they got caught at the railhead ~ so we had to give it back.
Most of the time our unit would have the troops ride the rails with the tracks on flat cars (tofc) and a few of us would ride down the autobahn, et al, mostly et al, to whatever training area they wanted us.
Once we returned to Kitzingen (Harvey Barracks) in our tracks ~ it was well below freezing ~ I was TC ~ WOW! Even a hawk jacket has trouble with that. The guys inside were roasting though.
Earlier that year we were up on the border with a radar watching a Russian/GDR guard post ~ major minefield in that area, and the Russians came down a road on the otherside just across from us IN A TANK COLUMN.
So, you might ask, did the guy at Tianamen Square wet himself up against that tank? ~ from experience I'd say he never noticed if he did. Tanks are impressive. Tanks that can be or could be aimed at you and fired are very impressive ~ a thing you'll never forget. When there's nothing between you and a bunch of them and what immediately seemed to be a very inadequate mine field, it's time to deedee out.
I spent almost half of my 1st 3 year tour with 3rd Armd Div at Graf, Hohenfels, and Wildflecken. I was an artillery FO attached to a tank company, where I FO’ed off a M60A2 doing the concept test from what became the FIST teams. Thus I got to go through artillery gunnery, tank gunnery as a TC, and then maneuvers at Hohenfels and of course V Corps exercises and REFORGER participation.