Oh yeah, the commander never left the post. He stayed in his comfy digs until it was all over.
When my MLRS unit did the wintertime Graf we had GP tents and Yukon stoves. Our tents had liners and we mixed the Yukon fuel 50-50 mogas-JP8. We didn’t get extreme temperatures but with the Yukon glowing it was down right toasty in the tent. I always tried to have hot cocoa and coffee on the Yukon for my soldiers.
We were lucky that our command was in the field with us and our equipment had many hydraulic seals which wouldn’t do well in low temps. If the equipment was run below 20 degrees the vehicle would deadline post haste. Rather than freeze our backsides off in broken equipment we’d drink hot cocoa and coffee in our tents and wait for it to warm up.
Just sayin....
I was PDA at Graf (FMTD) from 83-86.
When I was there in ‘69 it was not an unusual winter.
Still, our tracks (M113 with Chrysler gasoline engine)
would not start reliably in the morning. Only by spraying ether into the air cleaner intake could we get them to
start.
We would have had to leave em in the motorpool if the Russians came.
I'll never forget Feb '78 at Todendorf, a German anti-aircraft range on the Baltic. IIRC, it was about 20 degrees, with 30 MPH winds coming off the sea. Hated every minute of it.
The Army made up for it, though. I spent the summer of '79 as the XO of the Admin/Log group. We were the only Americans for 200 miles. There was a tourist town nearby, named Lutjenburg. I developed a friendship with the owner of the Hotel Ostseeblick, helping him close down the bar most days at 4 AM.
He liked the way I would loosely translate American colloquialisms into German. My nickname for him was damentotschlager..."Lady Killer".
I made so many friends that summer, I spent long weekends up there, even though it was 400 miles from where I lived. With the autobahn, it was only a 5 hour drive.