Storied U.S. Barracks Closes With Little Fanfare (Campbell Barracks, Heidelberg, Germany)

The New York Times ^ | September 7, 2013 | Alison Smale

[2ndDivisionVet]

HEIDELBERG, Germany — For Germans and Americans who had long imagined a dramatic coda to the cold war, it came instead in a few solemn, quiet moments. After both national anthems were played, seven American and five German soldiers lowered their national colors, marched at the edge of a bedraggled parade ground and carefully folded the flags for the last time.

The ceremony on Friday afternoon, before about 300 onlookers, marked the closing of Campbell Barracks, which, as the headquarters of the United States Army in Europe, issued the orders for the millions of American soldiers — 15 million in Germany alone — who have served on the Continent since 1945. It was a day that most present, mostly an older crowd, had never imagined could come.

“We had no idea that Heidelberg will ever close,” said Regina Hingtgen, 62, who has worked with the Army for 41 years, and first honed her English when her parents billeted G.I.’s. The Army was the best employer, she said, affording her, among much else, a flexibility as a divorced single mother that “no German company would ever have done.”(continued)

[Radix]

I did 3 years @ Kleber Kasern in K- Town. Great duty station.