In 1972, all of the black hats at the jump portion of jump school who met the bus on the first day, were Germans with heavy accents, it was an interesting thing to hear the accented yelling, when one was kind of caught up in the historical feeling of joining the Airborne of WWII fame, a little jarring.
Airborne Germans @ Benning reminds me that the sergeant major at my college’s ROTC detachment (1973-76) was a veteran of the 173d ABN in VietNam. I guess your story fills in a little bit about how that came to be. He retired from the Army while there but remained in the college town in a civilian job. His son was a cadet at the time and went on to a long Army career in Special Forces.