Field Artillery and nuke clearance? You weren’t with the Pershing brigade, were you?
I was a communications person (SSB radio, then FM retransmission) from 83-85 with the Pershing missile brigade.
The US Army maintained three ‘firing units’ in West Germany, where Pershing missiles stood ready to fire at all times. Those ‘ready-to-go’ missiles were in case of a Soviet ‘BOOB’ (Bolt Out Of the Blue) nuke attack. In case of a possible invasion of Soviet forces, we’d likely have some fore-warning with observations of a buildup of forces, increasing global tensions, that sort of thing. If that was the case, the Pershings were designed to be able to move fast and not sit anywhere too long. If worse came to worse, and the Sovs had our backs against the wall, NATO would have likely popped the missiles and we’d run like Hell in a westerly direction.
(BTW...side note: The original Pershings [1 and 1A] were medium-range missiles that could probably hit the Polish border with Russia. The Sovs weren’t ‘too’ concerned with them. In 83, we fielded the Pershing 2. Improved accuracy, greater range...and could now hit well into western Russia from our German firing sites. THAT got the Soviets attention. It was about the time that the P2’s were deployed when large amounts of money started flowing into the ‘peace groups’ of Germany. Those who didn’t like American nukes [never officially admitted...but hey...everyone knew] in their backyard could now focus more of their time on protesting against us since they now had much more support money. You can bet that our intelligence people traced that money all the way back to 2 Dzerzhinsky Square...KGB headquarters.)
No, no Pershings, only field artillery.
It was the Field artillery aspect that impressed me about the clearance, to me 155 was so different than fancy missiles and such.
Pershings we get, but learning there were nukes for 155 freaks out people.